Yes, hello, I'm talking to you. Not that you're listening. Listening isn't one of the things you do well. If it were, if you were actually listening to your leaders and to yourselves, you might be starting to slink home with your heads down, dragging your colorful regalia behind you. You might be starting to wonder what the hell it is you've been doing out in the streets for the past several months, who exactly it is you're supporting and why. But you don't listen. And you don't think much, either. You just act. Acting is more fun.
I know all about it, believe me. I know all about the intoxication of unquestioned moral superiority, the seduction of being one of the in-crowd, knowing better than all those simple people who, by definition, disagree with you. I know all about the rush of luxuriating in the worst sort of self-indulgent behavior while pretending to be moral and altruistic. And I'm quite familiar with the comraderie of the mob, banners and fists defiantly raised, the adrenaline rush as you link arms with total strangers, wearing little more than your naivité, and stare into the helmeted faces of the riot police. Been there. Done that.
I also know all about the happy trek home afterwards, full of righteous indignation and self-satisfaction, feeling like you've done your part and made a "difference," sitting down to a nice hot well-earned meal and a few hours in front of the TV before snuggling in for the deep, restful sleep of the just. Or, in the alternative, slumming it for the night with some flea-bitten, dreadlocked, loser who seemed attractive in the heat of passionate raging against the machine but who, in the cold sober light of morning, looks pretty bad and smells even worse. Been there, too.
But that was a long time ago. When I was a child, and didn't quite grasp that "indoctrination" wasn't the monopoly of the "right." When I thought that to change the world, you had to spit on it, and incite it to spit back at you. When the line between good and evil was defined by who had "power" and who didn't, but only when the power-holders looked and talked and dressed a lot like me. Fortunately, I grew up. You should try it some time. It's not half as bad as it's cracked up to be.
