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defrogWall Street is occupied, if you haven’t heard. And it may be a point of frustration for the occupiers that no one has been taking them seriously – not even the media. Hell, it took close to two weeks for even Michael Moore to decide it was worth checking out, and that was only after some unions threw in their support.
I confess, I was ambivalent about it myself, if only because on the surface, OWS didn’t look all that different from any other left-leaning protest I’ve seen in the last decade – the same wide spectrum of perennial liberal grievances, with little in the way of actual demands apart from “Eat the rich” (which isn’t a demand so much as an 80s hair metal song) and “stop being evil”.
But the fact that it’s been going on for close to three weeks now, and is popping up in other cities around the country, has caught my attention, as has the fact that all this is happening within the context of a crap economy, the country deep in debt, unemployment and foreclosures on the rise, moves by state govts to disenfranchise unions, etc.
Which is why I think the OWS should be taken more seriously than it is.
I wouldn't go so far as to compare them with the Tea Party movement or the Arab Spring movements, mind. Not yet, anyway. For a start, the Tea Party has structure, unlimited funding and its own cable TV news channel. Also, the Arab Spring protesters have generally been fighting for far higher stakes and with far less to lose by doing so.
But dismissing the protesters as bongo-beating hippies with naïve, unrealistic demands is too simplistic (as well as wishful thinking by the Fox News crowd). The fact that they’re willing to take to the streets and camp out for longer than the average weekend rock festival is symptomatic of serious discontent with the economic status quo as currently maintained by the US govt and Wall Street, and the sinking feeling that they’re running out of options to deal with it.
And why not, Jim? Young Americans who have grown up with the age-old myth that America is the land of opportunity and a level playing field where anyone can make it as long as they work hard are being confronted by the reality that all a college education will probably get them is a lifetime of debt to pay off (unless perhaps you know The Right People, or unless you can play a team sport really well), and the best job opportunities are either in the service industry or the military.
Meanwhile, the rich are getting demonstrably richer – something like 10% of the population owns over 70% of the country’s wealth – and the rest of the country is either getting poorer or stagnating. (Guess which group has more influence over govt fiscal policy.) And then there’s the 2008 economic meltdown, the blatant and well-documented malfeasance of the wealthy bankers and financial institutions responsible for it, their corporate welfare bailouts followed by indignant outrage at being expected to pay more in taxes, and the general lack of accountability by anyone involved.
Given all that, the OWS protesters can be forgiven for concluding that the system is rigged in favor of a small percentage of the population that consequently wields considerable power over the rest of the country, and that the traditional conservative ideals of the Free Market and the Invisible Hand of rational self-interest creating a win-win scenario for everyone involved – hence the justification for entrusting most of the nation’s wealth to the top percentile and letting them keep even more of it for the benefit of everyone – is, frankly, horseshit.
Whether you agree with that conclusion is beside the point. The point is that the ones who have drawn that conclusion are starting to take to the street not just because of the usual ideological differences, but because the current situation has convinced them that the system no longer works for the bottom 99% of the country (or whatever the figure actually is) and they no longer have a stake in keeping that system going as is.
For all that, the Big Question is: will OWS actually accomplish anything?
Personally, I doubt it. The OWS may be great symbolism for the disenfranchised, but the Wall Street bigwigs and the wealthy in general don’t give a rat’s ass about symbolism simply because they don't have to. They have no incentive to reform a system that works in their favor, and – as long as enough of that money is funneled into the right campaign donations and lobbyist slush funds – neither does the US govt. The only way that will change is if the OWS people can come up with a way to show both the 1% and the govt that they have more to gain financially by reforming the system than by keeping it as it is.
Until that happens – or until the turnout numbers start hitting the tens-of-millions mark for at least a month – all the OWS people can really expect in terms of results is exactly what they’re getting: Wall Street playas standing on the balconies drinking champagne and laughing at the hippies.
Desperate but not serious,
This is dF
I confess, I was ambivalent about it myself, if only because on the surface, OWS didn’t look all that different from any other left-leaning protest I’ve seen in the last decade – the same wide spectrum of perennial liberal grievances, with little in the way of actual demands apart from “Eat the rich” (which isn’t a demand so much as an 80s hair metal song) and “stop being evil”.
But the fact that it’s been going on for close to three weeks now, and is popping up in other cities around the country, has caught my attention, as has the fact that all this is happening within the context of a crap economy, the country deep in debt, unemployment and foreclosures on the rise, moves by state govts to disenfranchise unions, etc.
Which is why I think the OWS should be taken more seriously than it is.
I wouldn't go so far as to compare them with the Tea Party movement or the Arab Spring movements, mind. Not yet, anyway. For a start, the Tea Party has structure, unlimited funding and its own cable TV news channel. Also, the Arab Spring protesters have generally been fighting for far higher stakes and with far less to lose by doing so.
But dismissing the protesters as bongo-beating hippies with naïve, unrealistic demands is too simplistic (as well as wishful thinking by the Fox News crowd). The fact that they’re willing to take to the streets and camp out for longer than the average weekend rock festival is symptomatic of serious discontent with the economic status quo as currently maintained by the US govt and Wall Street, and the sinking feeling that they’re running out of options to deal with it.
And why not, Jim? Young Americans who have grown up with the age-old myth that America is the land of opportunity and a level playing field where anyone can make it as long as they work hard are being confronted by the reality that all a college education will probably get them is a lifetime of debt to pay off (unless perhaps you know The Right People, or unless you can play a team sport really well), and the best job opportunities are either in the service industry or the military.
Meanwhile, the rich are getting demonstrably richer – something like 10% of the population owns over 70% of the country’s wealth – and the rest of the country is either getting poorer or stagnating. (Guess which group has more influence over govt fiscal policy.) And then there’s the 2008 economic meltdown, the blatant and well-documented malfeasance of the wealthy bankers and financial institutions responsible for it, their corporate welfare bailouts followed by indignant outrage at being expected to pay more in taxes, and the general lack of accountability by anyone involved.
Given all that, the OWS protesters can be forgiven for concluding that the system is rigged in favor of a small percentage of the population that consequently wields considerable power over the rest of the country, and that the traditional conservative ideals of the Free Market and the Invisible Hand of rational self-interest creating a win-win scenario for everyone involved – hence the justification for entrusting most of the nation’s wealth to the top percentile and letting them keep even more of it for the benefit of everyone – is, frankly, horseshit.
Whether you agree with that conclusion is beside the point. The point is that the ones who have drawn that conclusion are starting to take to the street not just because of the usual ideological differences, but because the current situation has convinced them that the system no longer works for the bottom 99% of the country (or whatever the figure actually is) and they no longer have a stake in keeping that system going as is.
For all that, the Big Question is: will OWS actually accomplish anything?
Personally, I doubt it. The OWS may be great symbolism for the disenfranchised, but the Wall Street bigwigs and the wealthy in general don’t give a rat’s ass about symbolism simply because they don't have to. They have no incentive to reform a system that works in their favor, and – as long as enough of that money is funneled into the right campaign donations and lobbyist slush funds – neither does the US govt. The only way that will change is if the OWS people can come up with a way to show both the 1% and the govt that they have more to gain financially by reforming the system than by keeping it as it is.
Until that happens – or until the turnout numbers start hitting the tens-of-millions mark for at least a month – all the OWS people can really expect in terms of results is exactly what they’re getting: Wall Street playas standing on the balconies drinking champagne and laughing at the hippies.
Desperate but not serious,
This is dF
