AMERICAN SPRING?

Carthage, Tunisia. 

The ruins here have a personal significance for me, as this is where Hannibal (247-181 BC) was born and raised.  He grew up to be one of the greatest military geniuses in history.  Everyone knows of his leading his army over the Alps with war elephants to attack Rome.  That was in 218 BC. 

It would be 2,197 years until elephants crossed the Alps again over the actual pass used by Hannibal – the Col du Clapier – when I led the expedition that did it in 1979.

The view from Byrsa Hill, upon which the main citadel of Carthage was built, is spectacular.  The Mediterranean shimmers in cobalt blue, while the capital city of Tunisia, Tunis, rises in the distance.  The extraordinary events that took place there three years ago launched what became known as the Arab Spring.

It was 190 miles to the south, however, in the obscure rural town of Sidi Bouzaid, where the initial spark occurred.  As I gazed out into the distance, I thought of the connection between an impoverished street vendor in Sidi Bouzaid named Mohamed Bouazizi and a cattle rancher in Bunkerville, Nevada named Cliven Bundy.

Bouazizi was a popular 26 year-old kid nicknamed "Basboosa," who eked out a living selling fruit and vegetables from his wheelbarrow on the town streets.  The town police were always harassing him and demanding bribes.  On December 17, 2010, a corrupt local official named Faida Hamdi became enraged with Bouazizi when he didn’t have any bribe money.  Hamdi ordered the cops to confiscate his produce-laden wheelbarrow, slapped him around, and hurled insults at him and his family.

Something inside Basboosa snapped.  He ran to the mayor’s office to complain.  When the mayor refused to see him, he got a can of gasoline at a nearby gas station, stood in the street in front of the mayor’s office, yelled, "How do you expect me to make a living?" – then poured the gasoline over himself and lit a match.  The match lit a revolution.

As Bouazizi lay in a coma dying from his burns, protests against government corruption and thuggery erupted in Sidi Bouzaid – to which Faida Hamdi and the police responded with tear gas.  The protests grew and spread to other towns – to which the police responded with more brutality.  By the end of December, the protests had reached Tunis.

When Bouazizi died on January 4, 2011 the protests became a full-on revolution.  Tunisia had been run by a totally corrupt autocrat named Ben Ali since 1987.  The only person Tunisians hated more than Ben Ali was his wife, Leila Trabelssi – an illiterate hairdresser whose beauty led Ben Ali with a ring through his nose.  Leila and her brothers ended up controlling most of the major business in Tunisia.  Her greed and ostentatious avarice was pathological.

It only took 10 days of uncontrollable mass protests in Tunis after Bouazizi’s death for Ben Ali to resign.  On January 14, he and Leila fled the country for Saudi Arabia, where they continue to live in exile in the town of Abha.  The protestors were not satisfied.  They wanted the entire ruling elite removed from power. 

By January 23, the police and military had joined the revolution.  Little more than a month later, the entire ruling party as well as Ben Ali’s secret police were both dissolved.  The first revolution of the Arab Spring had triumphed.

You never know what can spark or trigger a revolution that removes a ruling elite from power.  It’s way too soon to see if Cliven Bundy’s refusal to kowtow to BLM fascism will be that trigger in America – but we can be thankful he didn’t have to immolate himself to do so. 

What enabled Bouazizi’s match to light Tunisia afire was the frustration and rage Tunisians had over monumentally blatant government corruption and abuse of power.  The level of government corruption and abuse of power in America far exceeds that of Ben Ali’s Tunisia.  But have Americans reached a concomitant level of frustration and rage?

Certainly it has among Bundy’s armed supporters, whom BLM thugs threatened to gun down in cold blood, and who had the guts to stand their ground, forcing the Federalies to stand down instead.

And it is rapidly spreading beyond Bunkerville, Nevada.  Gov. Rick Perry is publicly warning the BLM not to mess with Texas.  Elected officials from nine Western states are meeting to plan how to regain the vast amount of land the Federal Government stole from them and unconstitutionally possesses.

It – American frustration and rage regarding government corruption and thuggery – is spreading beyond the BLM.  The most corrupt Attorney General in US history, Eric Holder, had to cancel his speech at the Oklahoma City Police Department cadet graduation today (4/24).  Mrs. Zero is cancelling her speechifying extravaganza for Topeka kids due to parents’ protests.

Maybe this will catch fire, maybe it will flame out.  The Enemedia is already deploying the flame-throwers torching Bundy for his "racist" remarks about "the Negro," comparing Democrat-created government dependency to slavery.  They are masters at deploying Saul Alinsky’s Rule #12:

"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works."

The response should be to apply Rule 12 to a corrupt Dem ripe for targeting.  That would be Harry Reid.  He’s not only a thug and a fascist, he’s a corrupt crook who has used his power and office to enrich himself and his family.  Today (4/24), Jack Kelly answers the question,How Big A Crook Is Harry Reid?

Unlike Zero, he’s a completely unsympathetic character, an ugly wizened old crank with absolutely no charm or charisma – and he’s white, so no chance of being called a racist if you criticize him.

He’s such a perfect target that RNC chair Reince Priebus can denounce him as "dirty" and "unethical" and get away with it.  So perfect that "Fire Harry Reid" is now the GOP battle cry for 2014.

Will this be enough?  Not hardly.  Most revolutions die in the crib.  Those that don’t almost never succeed.  The French Revolution became the Reign of Terror.  Tunisia’s just might make it.  An Islamist party gained power in the revolution’s aftermath and infuriated almost everyone with their demands for Sharia law.  With an Islamist takeover no longer in the cards, Tunisia’s future looks pretty good.

So it is springtime in Tunisia.  Is it in America?  I can’t tell from here.  It might be, it could be, it certainly ought to be – but then again, it’s mystifying enough that Americans’ frustration and rage at federalie corruption and thuggery under Zero hasn’t boiled over long ago.  All we have is some inklings, like the showdown in Bunkerville. 

Inklings do not a revolution make.  But the more inklings, the better.  Enough of them could coalesce into something real, an American Spring.  It can’t come too quickly.

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