Let them eat cake (day 19)

Apparently Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake" (actually "qu'ils mangent de la brioche").  Having heard this expression repeated throughout my life, and having no context to attribute to it, I made up several meanings and contexts over the years.   The one that stuck the most is the one where Marie Antoinette being a selfish narcissist decides that she will give everyone cake so that they will shut up, so busy will they be in their newly found comforts.    Of course I know now the actual context of the phrase and in that story she is still a selfish narcissist but was giving no one cake.

I wonder about massive protests in the past and in the present but in other places.  Why don't we massively protest in Canada and the US?   What would it take?  How uncomfortable would we need to be? We are eating cake so the idea of protesting and possibly losing the cake is not so appealing I suppose.  We could also just be asleep from too much cake.  So when something bad happens like, oh I don't know, the failing of a flawed financial system, we just sit there dumbfounded unable to grasp that things won't just go back to normal soon, and that taxpayer money is being used to bailout a system that made billions for some and nothing for most.  It's really unbelievable and, when you're full of cake, it's even harder to get up and do something about it.  I remember the moment when the bailout was rejected ('blamed' on a speech by Nancy Pelosi).  That was amazing.  A grandstand moment if I ever saw one.   But short-lived and at my most cynical, orchestrated to appease and scare at the same time.  That was the last of the influence of 'main street'.   Long live main street.   

The other-worldliness of large broken and oppressive systems is daunting.  I wonder what it might have felt like for Puerto Ricans to rise up for self-determination.  I wonder about the feminist movement and their struggle for the vote.  I wonder about African Americans rising up for equal rights and freedom.  I can watch countless YouTube videos and movies but I still don't know what it might feel like.  I've never been in it.   My peer group likes cake for now.

A song and performance for this post.