Today I wore my newest, really nerdy obscure Star Trek reference translated into German, T-shirt for the first time. Widerstand ist zwecklos or Resistance is Futile. I like the fact that it is only a joke for German speaking Star Trek fans. But as I was walking out my door in the anarchy central neighborhood of Berlin today I was wondering if any of the anarchists next door would catch the Captain Picard reference. If not I could look forward to some new anti-state sayings spray painted on the door in the morning. But anyway as I was wearing this Tshirt today outside in the five minutes before the daily torrential downpour, I was thinking about the underground art resistance from the turn of the century in nyc, the complacent nation, the ransom corps, the hyperbolic destruction dance band, the wanderbus, waste0, blackkat, azoteus, orange line action, reclaim the streets, and critical mass.
Then as I was about to go to bed I came across this article on How the US crushed Youth Resistance and it reminded me about the generation gap between the people a couple years older than me and those a couple years younger than me in high school and college. Certainly amongst the older ones there were definitely more jerks. But there were also more people you could look up to as well, because they were not afraid to take a stand, have a voice, speak out, and be judged by what they say. There are also any number of younger people I look up to as well, but they tend to have a different more calculated collective resistance to them.
There is power in unbridled resistance... unless of course it really is futile.
