The protests can end constructively for Hong Kong and Beijing, but neither side is showing the courage required
- Hong Kong’s protesters should stop the violence and all sides should start planning for a more representative government
- And both Hongkongers and Americans should forget about US involvement, which can only hold the democracy movement back
Not every “pro-democracy/anti-government” protester is alike; not all are actors, and the violent ones are violently beyond compassion or support. But all of them – brave or brutal alike – share one thing: They feel they have no voice in how they are governed.
How to give hope to the Protester Generation? The answer will determine nothing less than the future of Hong Kong. Inside the claustrophobic cocoon of the special administrative region, the atmosphere is all poison and few can see past the latest street spasm; seen from almost anywhere else, it would appear no side in the battle is doing the one thing that can bring back the fresh air, bring back hope – and fit Hong Kong back into one piece. And that is to begin to talk to one another in a civil manner befitting a society that believes it deserves a system uniquely its own – and not the mainland’s.
As John F. Kennedy famously wrote in Profiles in Courage: “We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves … Compromise does not mean cowardice. Indeed, it is frequently the compromisers and conciliators who are faced with the severest tests of political courage as they oppose the extremist views of their constituents.”
It is past time for all sides to accept that everyone has made their point, and therefore it is utterly pointless, perhaps even degrading and evil, to go on like this. But crowds – anywhere, everywhere – are not renowned for high-level thinking; surging protesters and anti-crowd forces, such as the police, rarely improve the dialogue.
The well-known author Douglas Murray (The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity) is not speaking specifically to Hong Kong but to a global commons when he decries the qualitative decay of the public space: “Today nearly all public discussion has become impossible. Which is why nearly all public thinking has become impossible. Which is why the thinking has gone bad on nearly every major issue facing us.”