Occupy London – What would Jesus do?
I guess I felt like writing about this after being bored with all the news about the Occupy London crowd in front of St Pauls. First there was the Occupy Wall street lot in America and quite frankly they have a massive point. The USA has huge wealth inequality. Apparently the top 400 richest Americans have the same amount of dosh as the bottom 150 million. Real lords and peasants material. According to CIA rankings that is a worse situation than that suffered by say, Egypt. Who seemed pretty pissed off recently.
The majority of the protesters come across quite well. There’s the odd twat, there always is, who advocates bringing down capitalism or killing the rich, but on the whole the message is that wealth distribution needs to be more equal. There are even some quite decent suggestions on how to do this.
This campaign has spread across the world. Here in London the protest has made its point but feels like it is losing credibility. The message, which is a good one, is largely the same. Perhaps I’m just being a victim of biased selective press but our campaign seems to have a lot more pillocks being even more vague. I’ve seen a lot more interviews with protesters who are against capitalism itself. Others who just hate rich people – a common sentiment on this envy-ridden isle. I haven’t seen many coming up with any decent solutions, just pointless comments about how capitalism doesn’t work. What shall we replace it with then you idiots? We need solutions not vague whinging – we aren’t all students.
I’m not going to come up with a solution as I’m not a trained economist or someone who has even vaguely studied how the system works. So I won’t be so arrogant as to denounce the “system” because you know, people shouldn’t be so rich yeah? The decent and logical idea of supporting a capitalist system but one with more regulation and checks is thankfully present and supported by the intelligent organisers. I suspect they are the older and/or more educated. But I think they should stop now.
One reason is that the twats seem to be becoming more prevalent. People with signs like ‘What would Jesus Do?’ and ‘Rich beware your days are numbered.’ Their days aren’t numbered you moron. There will always be people better off than others and this has been the case since the dawn of time and in all societies. Getting rid of the rich will just mean that they move countries and we end up even poorer. London is one of the major financial capitals of the world and brings in billions into this country. It would be dumb to scare this money off as Britain will be poorer for it. What is needed is not redistribution of the wealth Robin Hood style, but tighter regulations and controls. I’ve fuck all idea how to do this myself but there are plenty of independant experts (some are among the Occupy London crew) who could certainly make an informed start.
Alas the morons are ruining it. Apart from mentals dressed as Jesus completely missing the point, and the anti capitalists and rich haters doing the same, there are other elements. Last night a 1000 protesters marched on Trafalgar square (a capitalist hotbed), presumably to complain about the nasty Lord Nelson stopping the lovable dictator Napoleon from invading and covering our streets in gold and socialist joy like he did to so many other parts of Europe. Another group split off and headed for Parliament where they starting fighting with police and smashing things. Amusingly they were wearing those Guy Fawkes masks the dude from V for Vendetta wore seemingly unaware that each mask bought creates more profit for the huge conglomerate Time Warner (who owns the image). Way to stick it to the man!
The final nail in the coffin for me is that the church are now chipping in. The Archbishop of York has started banging on about it. What the hell does it have to do with him? Does he not feel the slightest bit hypocritical that archbishops were the CEO equivalents across Europe for a millennium? The wealth gap was massively worse then. The upper echelons of the church in England during the middle ages, of which the Archbishop of York ranked second, lived in incredible unbelievable luxury when the vast majority of people literally lived in shit and starved. They made it worse by telling the superstitious peons to hand over cash or they would burn forever in hell. With that money they built things like hugely lavish cathedrals. Cathedrals that while admittedly spectacular seemed more to wow a medieval audience into parting with cash than anything Jesus probably wanted.
I remember a bit in the bible (I’ve read it and am an atheist – make of that what you will) a story where Jesus and his mates watched a rich man and a poor man give to charity. Jesus didn’t say, ‘Rich bastard’, he simply commented that percentage-wise the poor guy gave more to the pot.
To answer the question, what would Jesus do?
I suspect he would agree with lessening the wage inequality. I suspect he would be mildly exasperated that people still miss the point of nearly every point ever made. I also suspect he would marvel at the beauty and majesty of the building of St Pauls but would then be horrified when he found out what the building was for and how the church has been behaving in his name.
