SACRAMENTO, CA - The quadrennial jock-fest is in full swing down under, with nine drug disqualifications by day two, recalling the dictum of Joseph Brodsky, the Russian who became the poet laureate of the United States, that athletics has become a branch of veterinary medicine. The solution might be to follow drag racing and have
separate classifications for “stock” and “modified.” Also calling for reflection is an event which took place just before the Olympics began.

Sydney was hosting a conclave of international bankers, who doubtless stayed on to watch the games. But their
presence drew protests from the same crowd that recently busted up Seattle. In a new version of the
back-door play, the United States’ basketball team had to be moved from their hotel.

The protesters call themselves “anarchists” and oppose something they call “globalization,” two examples of
false advertising which the prestige media seems incapable of challenging.

Anarchism was once a serious political philosophy, as exemplified by anarcho-syndicalists such as the POUM in
Spain, and even by George Orwell, who at one point thought that “tory anarchist” was the position that best fit him. Now the prevailing definition of an anarchist is someone who believes that smashing up a McDonalds is a serious political statement. As an Australian official calmly pointed out, these are people who want to restrain debate, not engage in it. They are a sort of Pepsi-Lite version of those Orwell described as thinking in slogans and talking in bullets. So perhaps the lug-bolts screwed through the tongues of some protesters have an actual function.

Those billing themselves as anarchists fit the classic definition of a fanatic: someone who is much more
certain of what he opposes that what he advocates. A useful question to such types would be: which social,
political, and economic arrangements best exemplify the kind of society you would like to see? At one time the
response would have been one of the 17th-rate Marxist gulags like Nicaragua or Cuba. But even these are out
of fashion, so anarchism really means utopianism. But before construction comes demolition.

The Pepsi-Lite anarchists protest something called “globalization,” which in a sense they exemplify by flying around the world on jumbo jets built by American corporations to stage their street theatre for the television cameras. “Globalization,” it turns out, is a half-baked regurgitation of the dreary anti-corporate demonology that reigned during the 1970s. It includes such ideas as free trade, and opening Western markets to goods from Third World countries. So these anarchists actually want more restrictions, not more freedom. Little wonder that they draw support from union bosses seeking to guard a monopoly of labor.

If they really want a story, journalists covering this crowd should see how many of them are on the dole in
some form. It is a very strange anarchist who accepts money from the government for their personal use.
Someone who does that, calls for more government programs, and supports restraints on trade, regardless
of how many nose rings they wear or how many McDonalds they smash up, is really a supporter of the
establishment.

Another scoop for an eager reporter would be how many of the Sydney anarcho-establishmentarians stayed on to watch the Olympics and party, just like the upscale bankers they protested. Call it the case of the
affluent anarchist. The games continue.

- K. Lloyd Billingsley