Worshipping the Lares Folly

The Jenius got raked--raked I tell you!--over the use of the word "cretins" in a recent post.

Like that's never happened before...

The post, picked up by Global Voices (thank you again, Mr. Ethan Zuckerman) mentiond at one point that those who believe that El Grito de Lares actually meant something are "cretins."

Now The Jenius has already covered that topic, but is willing to revisit it, especially when someone who knows a neighbor of a relative of mine who just happens to be an independentista firebrand ignores the entire post to focus on just one word.

Sigh. I don't know if I'm bored or riddled with ennui at this point.

It is My opinion that people who believe El Grito de Lares was important are cretins. So buzz off. But on the other hand, it is an implicit judgement of someone else's judgement--or opinion--concerning this (non)event, so maybe I should buzz off. Stalemate.

My problem with the independence illusion that something of great importance happened in Lares 137 years ago is that it is both an isolated and ineffectual event on which to base a movement.

--Isolated: This was no dumping of tea in a major harbor to protest unfair taxes or the storming in the capital city of the primary jailhouse to overcome abusive policies; this was basically a ragged mob expressing itself with the lowest possible IQ in the face of zero resistance. Woo-hoo! I can feel the heroism!

--Ineffectual: Movements, both good and bad, suffer early setbacks. But movements move forward, make progress, create ripples that change the course of history's river downstream. What happened in Lares changed nothing, except the vocabulary of independentistas. Hell, "Wayne's World" did that, too, and they are certainly a major historical reference. Not!

Those who commemorate El Grito de Lares as some heroic struggle against oppressive forces in a clarion cry for freedom are the cretins. There was no heroism, no struggle, no cry for freedom aside from acting like a pissy mob that wilted the next day when a handful of soldiers marched in.

To remember that day as an expression of a desire for independence is fine; that's what it was. But if that's all your movement has, the palest shadow of an attempt, then you don't have a movement: what you have is the worship of folly.

And what does The Jenius call people who worship folly?

Cretins.


The Jenius Has Spoken.