Democracy in action

Three weeks ago, commenting on this post at Annie Asks You blog, I said:

Also not surprising that the MSM and political leadership are mostly ignoring the grassroots resistance.  They think in top-down terms, with leaders setting their agendas and the people merely choosing between what competing leaders offer.  True grassroots activism makes them nervous -- there's no telling where it might go or what issues it might bring to the forefront.  But that’s precisely because it reflects the people's real concerns.

We're now seeing the explosive rise of a national movement that precisely embodies this principle -- the rebellion against data centers and surveillance cameras.  No one in the insider universe of politicians, activists, and pundits had any hand in starting this, or even foresaw it.  It wasn't on either party's agenda.  It welled up, leaderless and barely organized, from the masses themselves.

And it doesn't fit the model pushed by the activist fringes and extremists of both political "sides" -- the "hate and fight the other party at all times" model.  All across the country, ordinary people of different political views have been coming together to fight data centers.  Both right-wing and left-wing blogs and sites are cheering on the campaign against surveillance cameras, and that campaign is at work in both deep-red and deep-blue communities and everything in between.

(I emphasize the importance of using the term "surveillance cameras" rather than "Flock cameras".  There are multiple companies that make these things, and the problem is not just with one company.  In several cities, officials have pretended to bow to citizen pressure by canceling their contracts with Flock, only to turn around and contract with some other vendor for essentially the same thing.  Thus no improvement is achieved.  Don't fall for such tricks.)

The politicians and the billionaire-owned MSM have reacted with nervousness and confusion.  Practically every MSM story I found about the anti-data-center resistance early on, and to some extent even now, tried to frame it as a "controversy", something with two sides among the broad public rather than a mass uprising against tech-bro billionaire power and arrogance -- even though the only people they could ever find to quote in support of the data centers were business people and local politicians.  The elites want the political energy of the masses to be channeled into "safe" causes, causes they can frame and guide, aimed at the "opposite" political camp rather than explicitly at billionaire power and wealth, thus keeping the masses safely distracted from the class struggle.  This spontaneous uprising doesn't fit the script.

As the politicians started to understand the size and power of the movement, they tried to play things both ways, talking about limits and restrictions (that would mostly have ended up being meaningless) rather than outright bans, trying to appear to take the people's side while still in reality defending the interests of their billionaire donors.  Lately some have begun to take tougher stands, though most are still trying to fudge things a little rather than fully siding with the resistance.  Even governor Abbott of Texas, formerly an open supporter of data centers, has abruptly changed course, clearly recognizing the risk of political disaster if he stays too visibly on the wrong side.  Only Trump, notoriously insulated from public opinion by a thick layer of toadies who tell him only what he wants to hear, has continued to fully champion data centers, recently causing fury with an attempt to limit public input on them.

It's important to note what is happening here, and what is not happening.  No politician orchestrated the uprising against data centers and surveillance cameras.  There are no leaders or large-scale organizers (who, if they existed, could be bought off or neutralized by scandal).  There is no guy somewhere with some "vision" who "inspired" people to take action.  The impetus for all this came entirely from the masses themselves, spontaneously.  And now the damn politicians are falling over themselves to get in line because they are running scared of the people's anger and determination.  This is how democracy is supposed to work.  The politicians we elect should be carrying out our will, not trying to chivvy and "inspire" us in some direction of their choosing.

Warning to politicians -- the public is in no mood for you getting all nuance-y and yes-butty about data centers.  We want them stopped.  And it's increasingly looking like this will be a pivotal issue for this year's election.  We will not let you water down or turn aside our fury about this.  You will sit down, shut up, get to work, and do as you are told.  Or we will kick you out.

As for the tech-bros, they still don't understand what they're up against -- how deep the hatred of data centers and surveillance cameras runs.  "AI" CEOs are the most clueless of all.  The CEO of Flock is sounding a bit shell-shocked these days, but he believes there can be a "compromise".  Screw that.  We won't compromise on living in an Orwellian panopticon.

This rebellion is democracy in action, in the purest sense.  More of this, please.