By ListenReverb

It always starts with with an overreach. Throughout history, dictators and tyrants have run roughshod over the people until they overplay their hands. The powerful build bridges on top of the masses until the powerful go a bridge too far. The people can only take so much oppression and abuse by their government before they rise up and overthrow those who use authority to bleed the commoners. Endless repression eventually gives way to a reverb as the people say enough; the straws that broke the life of many eventually becomes the reed that breaks the backs of the few who bleed the people. By Listen Revera

Overreach has been the womb that gave birth to endless revolutions throughout history. America’s history is proof of this, the colonialists rose up against the British crown in part because they had enough of a king who was governing them without consent. Revolution after revolution can be traced back to dictators who pushed too much; not happy with taking a pound of flesh from the citizens, the gentry push their lucks by feeding on the hopes of the people and entombing the masses into the abyss of utter hopelessness. It usually takes a catalyst—what at first is dismissed as a meaningless gesture—to eventually capture the imagination of the masses and gives voice to the indignation that the public feels.

I mentioned the word reverb before, let me expound this notion. Let’s go back in time; not too long ago actually. The year is 1965 and a bit player by the name of Nicolae Ceaușescu took over in Romania during the height of the Cold War. Romania back then was part of the “iron curtain”, the nickname Winston Churchill gave to the client states of the USSR which served as division marker between NATO states and the red bear. Empowered by the USSR, Nicolae would go on to rule Romania with an iron fist and blood-soaked boots. For over two decades, this ghoulish tyrant Nicolae silenced dissent and butchered dissidents in ways that Nero would have been proud of. Through sheer barbarity, he cowed the people into submission  and acceptance of oppression as a norm. Few found the courage to question Nicolae and those who did mostly met final judgement by ways of bullets and torture chambers.

But as tyrants always do, Nicolae overplayed his hand. During the winter of 1989, the public started to agitate for freedom after being aggrieved for decades. The flareup and the eventual breaking point was caused by the most innocuous of moments compared to the heat Romanians faced for twenty years. After witnessing endless injustice and untold number of their fellow citizens disappear into thin air, injustice had become as common as the flu in Juneau. But then acceptance gives way to defiance inspired by the most random of moments. The random moment that awakened the masses was the attempted eviction of an ethnic Hungarian pastor from a town called Timișoara. The irony of it, Romanians were stirred into resistance by the persecution of someone who was not even Romanian. Goes to show, injustice does not know labels and the people will rise up not based on ethnicity, race, or isms but because they are galvanized by human suffering.

Nicolae did what he always did, he sent in his military police and security forces to crush the rebellion. And that is precisely what happened, the state police went in armed to the teeth and loosened hell on the demonstrators. Students had joined the protesters but to the security forces they saw students, priests and the people alike as a threat that had to be silenced. By the time the smoke cleared on the night of December 18th, 1989, dozens of men, women and children were strewn on the sidewalks of Timișoara and countless more were maimed and injured. This was just business as usual in Romania, no one thought twice of it at first—the sense and sensibilities of the people desensitized by two decades of repression.

Hubris when people are fed up is like exhaling benzene at a flickering matchstick—not a very smart move. But this is precisely what Nicolae did, instead of letting things simmer down and letting anger die down, he did the opposite and a few days after the vicious crackdown, Nicolae decided to give a public speech to show the people who the boss was. In the middle of a cold winter day, he held court on the balcony of the presidential palace overlooking a sea of people. This was normal for him, an imp with a Napoleon complex, he force Romanians on a regular basis to attend his public speeches forcing people to bow before him—except this time he was stacking up fire logs that would eventually incinerate him. He took to the microphone to assure the people that he was the man in charge and that nothing had changed.

All the sudden, the reverb started. The chant of Timișoara! Timișoara! Timișoara! started in the very back of the crowd. But as Nicolae kept talking, the chant grew stronger. Change started at the periphery and soon enough enveloped Nicolae in an ocean of defiant cadence. And it was at this exact time that Nicolae showed his cowardice. He did the one thing that revealed his inner gutlessness. When he heard the chant of Timișoara!, he froze and flinched. His wife Elena sensed the mortal threat the flinch represented to the rule of her husband—she rushed to his side to prop him up and to steel the spine of the monstrous dictator. Too late though, the people finally saw that Nicolae’s iron fist was made of clay; those who kill and destroy to perpetuate their power are craven swine after all. In short order, Nicolae was overthrown; after he and his wife were found cowering in a tank, both were summarily executed. Those who rule through the gun go away by the gun.

I cite the story of Nicolae in light of the political and social climate we now live in. Tyrants and oppressors have learned from the mistakes of previous despots. Instead of ruling with an iron fist, they have turned to a mix of duplicity, demagoguery and grievance peddling in order to fracture the people into islands of resentment as a means of pitting the people against each other. Politicians, pundits, and social actor-vists have been unleashed by their corporate patrons to whisper anger and outrage into our ears so that our eyes are ...continued

(Published at Daily kos 2017/01/26 at 10:33 pm)