By Mr. Curmudgeon
Hey, it was all about love. At least that is how it was billed. Instead, at least 18 people are dead and hundreds injured. It happened at the Love Parade held this year in Duisburg, Germany. The music/dance festival has been an eagerly anticipated occurrence among European youth since 1989, though some cities have refused to host the affair due to their meager police forces and Love Parade’s large crowds. The deaths and injuries were the result of an out-of-control stampede.
“Out of respect for the victims,” said event organizer Rainer Schaller, “… we are going to discontinue the event in the future, and that means the end of Love Parade.” Love, it appears, does not conquer all. And so it seems with all mass movements.
Eric Hoffer, the dock-working stevedore and American philosopher, said in his book “The True Believer”:
“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence.”
In other words, mass movements, even those built around something as empty as bumping heads in a rhythmic musical ritual, appeals to those without a strong sense of self.
The Website over at Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, claims it is “building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering communities across the country to bring about our agenda of change…Now it's time for our movement to rise again, stand with President Obama, and make that promise a reality.”
And like the Love Parade, hope and change has been catastrophic: the national debt now stands at $13-trillion; the annual deficit stands at $1-trillion; the cancer of ObamaCare shortly begins to eat away at our freedom, economy and health; and we have no idea what a lame-duck hope-and-change Congress will do to the country before sailing off into the sunset. All because Americans lost their sense of self, sought refuge in a shiny mass movement and, instead, got stampeded.
But, hey, it was all about love.
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