::::::::
We activists and our government have made an accommodation.
We allow them to do rotten stuff and they permit us to complain.
There are mutual benefits: they can persist in their treachery and we can continue to indulge and exhibit our moral superiority. We provide them a measure of public “proof” of their tolerance of dissent, while they provide us an opportunity for something to do.
There are limitations, an unspoken understanding, so to speak. We permit them to spy on us, divvy up our treasure among themselves and their masters, and indulge in wars of greed (as long as the slaughter is generally off-shore) while they permit us to hang out on the sidewalk with signs, do occasional parades (with, of course, the appropriate restrictive permits) and to publish items such as this – but never actually to do anything that would seriously interfere with their treachery after all these years.
I suppose this is what scholars call “symbiosis,” i.e. “a close association of animals or plants to their mutual benefit.” The neat part here is that we know who the animals are and who the plants are!
And can you imagine whatever would we do without each other?
