Simplistic rage and theatrics in Seattle
Commentary by PAT MURPHY
As an ill-tempered Hailey man discovered a few days ago, it’s not
easy picking out villains when in a rage.
This cranky citizen grabbed a phone directory, shouted about the
publisher "killing the trees," and hurled it at a woman he believed was is a
directory employee.
Alas, the victim who got bopped owns a dry cleaning establishment.
And so it was with the angry demonstrators swirling around Seattle
streets, clashing with police, trying to shut down the World Trade Organization conference
and spewing invectives about villainous, greedy corporate internationalists insensitively
globalizing commerce at the expense of environment and workers.
The Seattle street people revealed just how simplistic their rage at
the very least amounted to hollow and ill-aimed theatrics.
As they shrieked their anger at "globalization," the most
violent protestors forgot this—they’re beneficiaries and users of that evil
globalization. They network with each other throughout the United States and the rest of
the world on sophisticated e-mail or FAX communications systems built by corporations
using global space technology.
Demonstrators from abroad traveled to Seattle on globalized airlines
relying on globalized air traffic control and globalized satellite weather forecasting.
And my hunch is that the youngest of the shrieking, masked protestors
come from households whose livelihoods depend on corporate profits that pay salaries or
stock dividends to families who, in turn, subsidize their kids’ itinerant anarchism.
Mind you, I’m second to none in disgust at what some corporations
are doing to the human spirit and Mother Nature’s treasures without a scintilla of
social conscience. But smashing a Seattle fast food joint’s windows won’t spare
the environment from industrial ruin or rescue workers from Third World slave conditions
or change trade policies in Uganda.
There are other ways, pursued vigorously every day by activists with
the same passion for causes as the Seattle street mobs, but who understand the importance
of civility and have a clearer vision of their purpose. They sue in court, they lobby
powerbrokers, they get themselves named to corporate boards (a former Green Peace
executive is an environmental executive consultant with the DuPont corporation), they
promote classes for the young in schools.
Coincidentally, one of the exemplars of that civil approach was in the
Wood River Valley over the weekend, passionately laying out his own views on how to rescue
the globe from merciless abuse.
Professor Roderick Nash—teacher, outdoorsman extraordinaire and
one of the best friends nature has on its side—chooses to crusade with intelligence
rather than willful destruction. He’s written 10 books that are manuals for shaping
American political and corporate thought about man’s responsibility to the
environment.
But Professor Nash gets the job done without a mask, which, as the
worst of the Seattle mob showed, is the required uniform of low IQ anarchists getting a
high with the only idea they have of how to work for change—a crowbar in their fists.
Pat Murphy is the retired publisher of the Arizona Republic and a
former radio commentator.
