The World In Protest, Revolution or Civil War?

This was first published in late 2011.

Part One:
Protests and revolutions of various types have broken out in many parts of the world. In America, once in the forefront of revolution and change, reactionary forces have gotten a grip on the country, the likes of which hasn't been seen since before the Great Depression, and the way we're heading, it may date back into the post-Civil War era. When Barack Obama took office, mainly right wing elements mobilized in protests against many of his proposals, although he took certain aspects of these plans from Republicans (such as Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts), or he continued inherited plans from the George W. Bush administration (bank and auto company bailouts). The protesters often declared they feared a "socialist" takeover of the country, and they seemed to believe every problem facing the country began with Barack Obama, although he hadn't been in office very long. The group was the Tea Party, and they waved tea bags and held mass rallies across the nation, acting at times as if they were the only patriotic Americans around. They had and have every right to do so, although I truly believe many are terribly misguided in aspects of their protests (more on this later), although they have some points, too. Business groups and allied right wing organizations run television ads about every 20 minutes telling Americans to be against anyone who would dare to support raising taxes on the wealthy and oil interests to help reduce the budget deficit. They use distortion (not just a right wing tactic, but heavily so nowadays) to scare Americans into believing tax increases being floated are for everybody, and not just for the rich. The whole process smells....badly! The budget process smells badly, too, as I would say average Americans are overwhelmed by the numbers, and how those numbers are used: "Senator What's His Name wants to raise taxes by a trillion dollars!" The statement is true, but what is lacking is the context that the senator's plan is for ten years and he wants only high earners to pay the tax. Let's see... a trillion dollars divided by ten years is....don't tell me now, I can figure this out, but I need more fingers and toes. Darn! Okay, a hundred billion a year. Hell some of the greediest among us have made a bundle just in the time I've been typing this. All the while the assault on average Americans' living standards continues.

More recently, essentially left wing groups have gradually mobilized in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. They have camped out in parks and held rallies throughout the country protesting the tremendous, and growing, income disparity in America, and the takeover of the political system, and thus the economic and income distribution system, by the top 1% on the income scale (it's more than the top 1%, in my opinion). They have managed to focus attention on these problems, and while I believe them to be on the right track, there seems to be no true agenda to remedy the ills they are protesting. You can carry signs all day, every day, until hell freezes over, and camp out all you want, and it won't change the system, although you may come down with pneumonia; in fact, support for the protests may well have peaked, as outbreaks of violence in some locations have marred the image of the movement. If middle class Americans are afraid of the movement, it will NEVER fly. If it appears that the "I don't want them to make a nickle off of me," totally anti-business people are seen as being too influential a part of the movement, it will NEVER fly. Many unions have linked up with the group, but the original organizers (from what I understand) are leery of union leaders. My experience with unions and union people, and indeed most "unrich" Americans, is that they understand the need for businesses to make a profit. They are not against businesses making money, but they don't want to be gouged and they also want that money shared with workers in those businesses, and not just with independently wealthy investors and their money managers, the "sit on their ass class," as I call them.

WORD HISTORY:
Hoist-It "seems" this verb originated in Low German as nautical talk in reference to "hoisting;" that is, "raising," the sails of a ship (later also applied to raising a flag); the assumption by some is that it came from the sound made by the men exhaling while straining to raise the sails..."hissssss." The word spread through High German, and also into Dutch. English borrowed the word either from Low German or Dutch in the late 1400s as "hysse," then "hoise," and its past tense form, "hoised," came to be pronounced and spelled "hoist." The noun, meaning "a pulley," was derived from the verb. German and Low German have "hissen," Dutch has "hijsen," Danish has both "hisse" (borrowed from Low German "hissen") and "hejse" (borrowed from Dutch "hijsen"), Norwegian has "heise" (probably from Dutch) and Swedish has "hissa" (hoist/raise), probably from Low German. All of these languages interacted with one another in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in trade and, at times, war. I could not find a form of the word in Frisian, which seems a bit odd, seeing that Low German and Dutch are geographically "right there" by Frisian, and the Frisians were seafarers, but it could have died out (let's face it, while not a totally obscure word in English, it's not exactly an every day word either). Also, I could not find a form in Icelandic, but "if" the word indeed originated in Low German, that is likely the reason... distance. It was borrowed into French and Italian, most likely from German, and even into Spanish, probably from Italian.