When the rulers of the world cloister themselves behind the fences of Seattle and Genoa, or ascend into the inaccessible eyries of Doha and Kananaskis, they leave the rest of us shut out of their deliberations. We are left to shout abuse, hurl ourselves against the lines of police, to seek to smash the fences which stand between us and the decisions being made on our behalf. They reduce us, in other words, to the mob, and then revile the thing they have created. When, like cardinals who have elected a new pope, they emerge, clothed in the serenity of power, to announce that it is done, our howls of execration serve only to enhance the graciousness of their detachment. They are the actors, we the audience, and for all our calls and imprecations, we can no more change the script of the play than the patrons of a cinema can change the course of the film they watch. They, the tiniest and most unrepresentative of the world's minorities, assert a popular mandate that they do not possess, then accuse us of illegitimacy. Their rule, unauthorized and untested, is sovereign.
George Monbiot, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order (London: Flamingo, 2003), 84.
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