THE YEAR THE WORLD SHOOK
By Dawn M. Sanders
26 Dec. 2016
Okay, so I’m not doing or saying anything anyone else isn’t and it’s a cliché, but oh well, what does anyone expect?
This year started out with the death of an artistic/music icon – David Bowie, along with a whole string of others: Prince, Sharon Jones and Leonard Cohen – but these are only sad because they were all famous and broke down barriers through their music and art. Twice as tragic is death and drowning from just a lot of ordinary people fleeing war and the unleashing of human horror.
There were the shocking shifting political sands and mud fights of Brexit, the US primaries and the chaos or full-blown elongated circus that followed. The end results signifying the beginning of an unpredictable era, with undoubtedly more quakes to come, as the earth shudders from the wrath of her inhabitants.
The point is, in the last several years, I’ve noticed, each year tends to end with some kind of large-scale catastrophe: a boxing day tsunami, plane crashes… This year is no exception and, it all happened simultaneously just yesterday: the Russian plane crash, a strong quake in Chile and yet another death of a popstar, George Michael.
That was ‘one day’ the universe and those watching over it, telling us what is inevitably on the horizon…
What is on the horizon? I think we all know: more seismic turbulence which will test human resilience and resolve, to the limit, but to what limit?
Where/when, do we as world citizens, the majority, the subjects of the powerful elite say, enough’s enough, take our world back – and I don’t mean with a click of a mouse in signing yet another petition, going to yet another debate or protest, then cracking on with the washing or going down-the-pub to sit and philosophise! No, who will light the fire under our scared and wary asses, to remind us of what we must fight for, reclaim and salvage?
The tug-of-war could never be more clear and defined between good and evil.
I’m no sooth sayer, but there are already those who have been brainwashed by fascism, extremism and reactionism, and all the other toxic ‘isms going. Those are the ones shaking up the world in discontent and desperation.
Yet, there are those who, are bemused and bewildered by the normalisation of insanity and recklessness in all its belligerence and jaw-dropping bullshit!
As corruption festers within crumbling democracies of the West and dictators wage holy hell to keep their power at any human cost, what will it take for us, the majority to open the flood gates to a new brand of revolution?
Old revolutionaries like Fidel Castro are dying off – the world needs, not just one person to unlock those gates, but a tsunami of change to bring down the walls of division, a movement manifesting in wave after wave of unrest, challenge and the kind of revolt we only now read about in history books of the distant past: the Crusades, the War of the Roses – not of course because I endorse bloody battles – far from it. I’ve been to every Stop the War Coalition and anti-capitalist, anti-racist demo I can get myself to in the last decade, but how do we storm the halls of power and destruction with peaceful, meaningful intent – retaking our governments and planet?
How?
? .