Home Activism All I Want for Christmas Is… a Revolution

All I Want for Christmas Is… a Revolution

It’s Christmas time and nothing would stave off the cold and unemployment better than a revolution.  Lenin gave history one of its most famous revolutions, and as it happened, it did come just in time for Christmas. It was followed by years of social upheaval, backed by the devastation of World War I and a terrible famine, but it also brought about a new world order and …focus. For close to a century, Washington and Hollywood knew what to do.

Back in the USSR, Lenin gave his  mujiks or, as Wikipedia says, мужик, a life style not even Leo Tolstoy could have conjured up  — television without cable. That kept the Russians and their soviet acolytes out of (making) trouble for the same amount of time.

But perhaps among the most influential outcomes of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution has been the copycats it has inspired.

The African continent became the playground of mini revolutions orchestrated by the corporate interests of the day.  Following World War II, African land was divided among petty and big time crooks who paid respect to various Western godfathers.  When Africa became simply too dreadful for use as a corporate playground, the last ‘Man of the Century’, Mikhail Gorbachev, offered his empire to the lowest bidder, provided a show of legitimization came around Christmas so the Scrooge-like Soviet population would be placated by the savior’s birth.

Gorbachev’s seasonal scheme worked all over Eastern Europe and Russia. Romania’s Christmas show has been my all-time favorite for quite a while, though recently, I feel the Arabian revolutions are running a close second. Do you remember the young Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire?  He did it on December 17, 2010, and that memorable event brought us a year’s worth of North African news.

And now, another Christmas with another show time crisis: Syria.  As CNN tells us, thousands of people have died there within the last year, opposing and defending its current regime.  A few days ago, suicide bombings in Damascus came amid a surge of violence that claimed the lives of hundreds of people.  Way to go Syria!

But perhaps we are running out of venues. We have a new year approaching and there are not too many places left to stage a revolution.  I know, Kim Jong Il is gone and China, just like us, is eyeing North Korea.  But, North Korea is too far away and it is so not a Western candy story.  It has no oil and even worse, I cannot fathom anybody there buying our Cadillacs. Maybe our movies. That’s why I believe its revolution, or mere coup d’état, could never be enough to bring us solace in our economic solstice.

Otherwise, what?

We could return to Mother Russia and start this revolution cycle all over.  I hear the Ruskies are getting a little restless with winter, cold, their re-installed feudalism, and nothing to entertain them but the Putin-Medvedev power tango.

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