The Occupy Wall Street movement is quite romantic: thousands of disenchanted citizens
fed up with a top 1% not paying their fair share. It evokes images of Tunisia or Egypt
from the Arab Spring. Hell, some might call this our Vietnam.
But Liberty Park is not Tahrir Square, and Wall Street isn’t even on Wall Street anymore
(someone should tell them that…). The “Occupants” are not the peace-seekers of the late
60s, mainly because they aren’t really “seekers” of anything. The movement’s followers
openly admit they don’t exactly know how Wall Street works. In fact, this movement and
its lack of leadership, direction, and clear demands or goals poses no real threat to the
“system” they rail against. The best thing Occupy Wall Street has going for it has been an
unusually warm couple of weeks for October.
But it’s going to get colder. And, without goals, progress can’t be measured. If this
movement has any chance of sticking, it needs to figure out what it’s for, and not just
what it’s against.
Reporter Bob Braun observes that the protesters are there to demand economic justice,
jobs, and just flat-out recognition of their economic pain. Okay, you’ve got everyone’s
sympathy. It’s not right that the 99% bear burdens imposed by the top 1%. It’s not fair
that the banking collapse on Wall Street has hurt people on Main, Maple, and Walnut.
But what’s next?
The danger in Occupy Wall Street is the same danger presented by the Tea Party: a large,
loosely-defined organization whose members don’t know much, but know they’re pissed.
And when those people who are willing to take everything to the brink get their way, our
country doesn’t work. When the American people voted in Tea Party members, they got
exactly what they asked for when the debt crisis happened this summer: no compromise,
no better ideas, just a stalwart denial of all that is.
If the Occupiers can’t steer their ship, they’ll be done in a couple of weeks. If they
continue along the path of radicalism, they’ll be labeled as the Glenn Becks of the left.
Am I happy that members of my generation have found their voices? Absolutely. I didn’t
know they really cared. Does our economic system need reforms? Many, and they need
to come quickly.
Is capitalism as a system at fault? Nope, and to assert this proves that one is unwilling or
incapable of grappling with more complex ideas. The founders of this country
undoubtedly knew the benefits of a regulated financial sector, having just seen the effects
of the South Sea Bubble. They knew that capitalism and regulation were not mortal
enemies, and that a free market can be regulated, just enough so that the little guys don’t
get stomped on in the process. That’s why their Revolution has lived for over 230 years,
and is why this one won’t go past Thanksgiving.
Thoughts of the above post are the sole views of Mr. Mann.
The threat to Wall Street and to the system in general is the spread of awareness that the way capitalism is used in our country causes misery inside and outside of it, and is a form of dehumanization.
ReplyDeleteProgress in a revolution isn't measured with coordinate geometry. It's measured purely with the spread of awareness and the human element. A movement whose ultimate goal is change doesn't measure progress with one or another specific victory. The movement is its own goal, and the greater the movement, the greater the fulfillment of the goal, hence the new goal becomes greater than the first one, on into infinity.
The difference between OWS and the Tea Party is the the OWS is actually grassroots and not an astroturf group. That difference is where similarities end. The awareness is completely different, the implementation is different, and the desired outcomes are different. Most importantly, the tea Party's preference for divisiveness (Grady Warren on race, Michele Bachmann on homosexuality) is the complete opposite of OWS's unity movement, which rejects the restrictions and negations inherent in any single absolutist belief system.
Occupiers may lose control of their ship, but not by remaining so-called radical. They'd lose it by LOSING their radicalness and conforming to a system, all of whose parts contributed to the corrupt, morally enervating plutocracy we have today.
There is no single ideology in OWS, therefore there is no single adversary, i.e. capitalism. The adversary is evil, that part of man's soul which corrupts and degenerates all systems into sick dogs that need to be put down so they can be born again into something new. Was the Constitution at fault because we had slavery? No. It was the human element. OWS is an attempt to spread awareness about the impact of that human element and give people an understanding that human elements decide everything. Hence, they control their own future, and together, we control our country's future, not the scumbags who have money. The real America will decide her own future because America truly is of the people, by the people, and for the People to anyone who believes in the value of questioning the status quo.
I appreciate your views. I just don't agree with them. I mean no disrespect to you personally. I'm sure we actually agree on most things, it's just the framing of an idea that complicates matters. I hope we can, at some point, consider these questions in person. I understand that my view represents the OWS in its ideal form which may or may not be the eventual reality but it makes no sense to argue with versions of reality altered to conveniently (and fatalistically) suit our pessimistic or bitter static worldviews. The reality of the OWS is consistent with its evolving worldview, hence it is fair to say that arguing the ideals is the same as arguing the reality.