There is an interesting development in China where economic inequality has also exploded in recent years, making a mockery of the country’s official egalitarian philosophy. Ordinary people, fed up with this hypocrisy and the high-life being lived especially by Communist party officials, have taken to crashing lavish private parties hosted by officials and taking photographs and videos of the expensive food and drink and posting them online, enraging the public.
The Guardian has a report of one such event which resulted in the embarrassed official pleading with the crowd to forgive him and not publicize his extravagances. His attempt failed and he was later sacked from his post. You can see the video of the party crashing here, where they sweep past the white-helmeted police into a hallway where many such parties are held.
I found it interesting that the police did not crack down harder and arrest people for trespassing, as would almost certainly have happened in the US. That may still happen if the protestors crash the parties of people whom the government really wants to protect.
I am wondering how bad things must get here before we see similar actions. The Occupy Wall Street movement and the cries of “We are the 99%” were the first rumblings of such discontent and that was suppressed, at least for a while. But that does not mean the discontent is no longer there.
Every revolution and overthrow of monarchs in China was preceded by greed, selfishness and waste by the powerful. It won’t surprise to see it happen again.
With the US surveillance state, it might be hard to get in. We saw with Zucotti park that the rich and powerful were literally standing arm in arm with the cops in the surveillance center.
Sadly, I think it’ll never happen here in the US. We make a fetish out of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” John McCain ran for president … while talking about the 7 (or more?) houses he owned.
Plus, there’s different mythologies (cultural lies):
China: egalitarian — “We are all equal!”
US : meritocratic — “Look at those rich folks! If you only work hard enough, some day you can be rich, too!”
If either of those strategies fail the US oligarchy, they’ll just fall back on the “one bad apple” scenario … and feed whichever unlucky politician gets caught flaunting their wealth to the masses. This strategy has worked surprisingly well for the Republican party when one of their “family values” politician gets caught with this gay lover.
I hope I’m wrong here.