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Occupy Wall Street Has Jumped the Shark

It only took them two weeks to change my mind.

There’s been a surprising number of people that on the right that have actually issued limited support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, myself included.  I even wrote an entire article announcing my support of the movement, not because I agreed with their politics or their odd sense of community, but rather because I hoped this movement would move to push the Democrat party closer to its core ideology as the Tea Party has been working on doing with Republicans.

I was not alone in this extension of good will.  John Sexton at Verum Serum was also ready to extend them the benefit of the doubt:

Already there are signs that OWS is starting to mature. I saw a video recently of a speaker at one event (I don’t recall where) who gave a fairly good political sermon on bondage in Egypt and freedom under Moses. It was a bit forced for my taste, but it was also fairly coherent by OWS standards. I don’t think OWS is there yet, but I think they’ll get there if they don’t self-destruct by starting a riot.

Even Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks saw a glimmer of hope that these protestors might not be idiots:

My first instinct was to sympathize with Occupy Wall Street (OWS). At the time of the initial protests, I was in Italy giving a lecture on the tea party ethos to graduate students participating in the Istituto Bruno Leoni’s annual Mises Seminar. I was getting reports of OWS signs that I had often see at Tea Party protests, such as “End the Fed” and “Stop Crony Capitalism.”

And, much like Sexton, Kibbe warned that the path OWS could lay out, would be destructive to their cause.

In contrast OWS, whose ranks represent a small fraction of total tea party protestors, has struggled to maintain civility or to even identify a unifying sense of purpose in their uprising.

At Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, there is stealing, property damage and arrests often provoked by protestors wanting conflict with the police. Real people—not members of the so-called 1%—are being hurt as their small businesses are impacted and their property destroyed.

So, it appears that all of our hopes have been dashed.  From threatening to stab reporters in the neck, to blatant anti-semitism, to very odd group chanting, Occupy Wall Street appears more and more to be devoid of the ideological passion I’d hoped they’d have, and leans more towards the childish, tantrum throwing, entitlement expecting rioters that we had become familiar with through the protests in Europe these last few years.

As Sexton warned above, rioting would be the quickest way to derail any legitimacy, and the OWS crowd has decided that’s precisely the path they will take.

Of course the narrative that the OWS crowd might has some control issues will be heard almost exclusively on the right.  The national media will exist primarily to defend against that concept.

But I think it’s safe to say that this is not the movement we’ve been waiting for. This is not the movement that will push the left further left as we push further right to help differentiate the parties in a way that might actually cause moderates to make a real decision for once.

I patiently wait for worthy adversaries in the arena of ideas.  This movement is not them.

 

COMMENTS

  • jaykali

    It’s beyond annoying that the Tea party gets attacked and here we have a movement with a lot of problems and they are glorified by the media.

  • goformitt

    There are tens of thousands of OWS folks all around the country. Painting them all with the same brush is as bad as painting the Tea Party folks with the racist brush of a few.

    It is not an Us VS Them scenario. They have a point of view that I agree with in part, just as the Tea Party people do. Both are grass roots and unorganized. Neither are wholly good or bad.

    What both groups are expressing is a frustration with lack of self determination. It used to be we were a free people – now we are too often slaves to an oppressive government and an oppressive corporate plutocracy.

    Corporate America has become a predator and we have become its prey. I myself feel the urge to fight back.

    • gekster

      It was orginised by an antsemetic blog in Canada.

      from:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street

      excerpt:
      Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is an ongoing series of demonstrations in New York City based in Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district. The protests were initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters.[5] They are mainly protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, corruption and influence over government?particularly from the financial services sector?and lobbyists. The protesters’ slogan, “We are the 99%”, refers to the difference in wealth in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.

      and:
      According to Fordham University communications professor Paul Levinson, “Occupy Wall Street” and similar movements, symbolize another rise of direct democracy that has not actually been seen since ancient times.[56] Sociologist Heather Gautney, also from Fordham University has said, while the organization calls itself leaderless, the protest in Zuccotti Park has discernible “organizers”,[57] or emerging public faces such as blogger Jesse LaGreca.[58]

    • DerKrieger

      The OWSers aren’t protesting an oppressive government, they’re demanding even more government.

      They’re mind blowingly uninformed as most of them, if not all of them, believe the banks and not the government are responsible for the housing bubble and collapse. Many banks behaved badly but I like to compare it to a dog who steals a steak off a plate that’s been placed on the floor in front of him.

      List one bad thing about the TEA party and one good thing about the pathetic, whiny, self-absorbed adult children camping on public and private property across the country.

      The TEA party by and large can be summed up as “leave me alone” whereas the OWS people can be summed up as “give me something for free”

      There is NO comparison that can be logically made.

      Both sides do want an end to crony capitalism but for completely different reasons. The OWSers likely don’t understand that it is government tax and regulatory policy that is the root cause of crony capitalism.

      I hope you’re not representative of the average Mitt Squishy supporter.

      • DerKrieger

        …second

    • runner12

      It is us versus them. They have set it up that way. Every talking point, every diatribe that has arisen out of the OWS crowd is Socialist/Marxist in nature. Are all violent? No. But that does not mean that their idealogy is not dangerous to our country.

      OWS = Socialist/Marxist idealogy. Some know what they are saying is Socialist, others are “useful idiots”, unfortunately.

      Tea Party = Limited government, fiscal responsibility, and support for the republican form of government.

      There may be a few bad apples in the Tea Party, but they do not represent the movement and Tea Party people are good at policing their own. OWS is proud of their Socialist message, it is the core of what they represent. They are all about wealth redistribution.

  • Carson

    Watching this thing unfold in Greece on the news something came to mind. I saw people facing their police and throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails. It seemed odd because they are in reality on the same side. Law enforcement is getting ripped off the same as all of the rest of us. Then if you kick it up to a global scale if we don’t regain control of our military, which seem to think they are the global police, someone is going to have to come and regain control of them for us.

    I think the corruption of our fiat money is the root reason for the, “Occupy er’s” and the “99% er’s”.
    Maybe this will help make the danger of fiat money clear. Imagine you and me are setting across from each other. We create enough money to represent all of the world’s wealth. Each one of us has one SUPER Dollar in front of him. You own half of everything and so do I. I’m the government though. I get bribed into creating a Central Bank. You’re not doing what I want you to be doing so I print up myself eight more SUPER Dollars to manipulate you with. All of a sudden your SUPER Dollar only represents one tenth of the wealth of the world! That isn’t the only thing though. You need to get busy and get to work because YOU’VE BEEN STIFFED with the bill for the money I PRINTED UP to get YOU TO DO what I WANTED.

    That to me represents what has been happening to the economy, and us, and why so many of our occupations just can’t keep up with the fake money presses.

  • http://wadingacross.wordpress.com logus

    Those rioters, they’re not representative of even a substantive portion of those taking part in the OWS movement. Yeah, that’s the ticket – they don’t represent!

    … Except when you see the plethora of video, websites, articles, interviews, etc. showing that many of the people who consider themselves part of the OWS movement aren’t merely “socialists”, but marxist and worse, anarchists just looking for a fight.

    It may well be that only a small minority of those taking part in the OWS protest are rioting, but they reflect on the whole because they’ve been accepted into the fold from the beginning, like a bad vinegarette… these socialists, marxists and anarchists trying to mix together and find a cohesive, common path with the others who’re just angry leftists and supposed moderates or libertarians… eventually the oil and vinegar seperates out. Anarchists left to their own devices are purposefully destructive, and history has shown that marxists don’t mind using violence for their own ends either when it suits their need.

    I am a little sad to see everything kind of fall apart so quickly and so destructively, if only because I thought it would just go away with a whimper as winter set in. The silent withdrawl would be more amusing. Instead, what’s occuring doesn’t surprise at all, and instead galvanizes both sides. Mark my words, just as with the hard left movements that began in the 60′s, we’re going to see some of these people pop up in the next couple of years in other far left movements, organizations and the Democrat party in positions of leadership, opinion-shaping and voice.

    As for the weird mantra/repetitions of what speakers say, it certainly hasn’t done them any favors as far as image building, but to be fair, there is a rather mundane, non-propaganda/conspiritorial reason behind it. According to one source I cam across, the reason why the OWS crowd repeats what a speaker says is so that the message can get relayed to those listening at the back of a crowd, especially if it’s a very large crowd. Many of the speakers have not had access to, or at least haven’t used bullhorns or microphones, so their voices don’t travel far. Never-the-less, regardless of their innocent, mundane reason for doing it, they come off as mindless, taking part in mindwashing groupspeak… veritable Borg.

  • goformitt

    You guys are getting all “Rush Limbaugh” on us. No need to get hysterical. Many of us are just sick of the laws protecting corporations – banks especially. Student debt is a huge issue for many of us. The middle class is going away while the corporate elite is getting richer by the day. It is hard to say just what is wrong, but something surely is. We work hard and we get poorer, and the life of our children gets bleaker.

    • http://wadingacross.wordpress.com logus

      and there will always be the rich. There will always be an inequality of some sort on this earth and it will – as it has – wax and wane with the gap narrowing or increasing.

      You are not gauranteed tomorrow. We are not gauranteed even a decent income compared to our resume and efforts… no one ever has been, even when times were supposedly great. In the march of time the concept and reality of the middle class is a recent phenomena and relative at the same time. The poorest in our nation are still effectively richer than 90+% of the world’s population.

      As for student debt… what kind of assumptions did you walk into college with? That you’d get a job? That your debt would be manageable?

      Debt is a two-edged sword, and a life and budget lived on assumptions is asking for trouble.

      I say this having plenty of debt myself as we struggle to keep ourselves in the black, but I’m not complaining nor casting blame or looking for heads to roll.

      The future that my children face may well be bleak in many ways, but at the same time it will be what they make of it. They might be able to rise above it, they might be able to slog through it or they might be crushed by it. What I pray however is that their focus isn’t on the demands of this world, which are fleeting and inconsequential, but on the things not of this world, which are everlasting and far more important.

      To that end, I do not see a bleak future for myself or my children if we continue to lean on Christ.

      The ball is in your court as far as where your priorities and concerns lie. What is more important to you, your money or your soul?

      Sorry, I’ll get off the pulpit now, but I hope I give you a different perspective and something to consider.

    • dajeeps

      You can’t blame us for that, and if you don’t want to be painted with that brush you should find other organizations to with which to associate; there are plenty out there that are like minded and well worth your time. That’s pretty much a way of life for someone like me, a classical liberal, having to distance myself from groups that I share some things in common from time to time because they go off on things that I don’t really agree with. I would think rioting, vandalism, and covering up of other crimes would top of the list of things people do that would alienate folks who do not believe that is an appropriate way to get one’s point across.

    • bs61

      You never reply!

    • Martin Knight

      The only reason you’re in so much student debt is because of the amount being charged to you by your colleges. Why don’t you occupy the President’s office or the faculty lounge?

      The truth is there’s no need to get hysterical about you people. In fact, most of us are pretty amused by your antics – at least, until it comes to sexual assaults, defecating on people’s doorsteps and rioting and destroying property that does not belong to you.

      We work hard and we get poorer …

      Honestly, how many of the people in the so-called Occupy “movement” actually work? Much less work hard?

      You’re here squealing about the “corporate elite” making money as if it’s drawn out of your pocket by force. Did you willingly shell out money for that iPod? Yes? That’s how they’re getting rich. Did you willingly take that student loan? Yes? That’s how they’re getting rich.

      Income inequality is not some conspiracy of rich versus poor but the end result of choices people make. If we’re paid per pound of strawberries picked and I pick twice as much as you because I wake up earlier, stay later and develop a rhythm that makes me more efficient, our income is certainly not going to be equal. That’s life.

      What’s actually hysterical is that a 23 year old Ivy League graduate with a degree in Gender Studies thinks something is wrong because his income is not equal to that of a 45 year old Engineer with twenty years on the job.

  • http://lukos.com Ed54

    Occupy: To take and hold possession of, as if by conquest.

    The entire movement is based on the premise that force is justified. We don’t want to hear what they have to say, so they will seize public property and MAKE us listen. The goal of the Occupy Oakland march was to shut down the Port. Again, the language of force..

    Now they are discovering that you cannot finely calibrate violence. Once you start down the road of using physical acton to force your target to comply with your wishes, you open the door to anyone who thinks their cause is righteous and is willing to use violence to further it. It is a straight path from tents in the park to firebombs in the streets.

    We need to stop mocking the style of the OWS movement, and start directly challenging their message and methods. It’s fun to make jokes about unemployed hippies, but ultimately we are going to have to provide a coherent argument why they are wrong in their goals and wrong in the means they employ to pursue them.

  • rsjt

    The democrat party has no “core ideology” to be driven to. The party is held together with lies, propaganda and loads of cash. Much of it from overseas.

    So when you say “our hopes have been dashed”, please do not include me. There is nothing good on the left and I have never voted for a democrat. The OWS movement IS the evidence of how the left “differentiates” itself from the right. I am not sure how or why you seem to expect a different outcome. It is the inevitable culmination of modern leftism. Welcome to reality.

  • spinoneone

    is to create another “Kent State” moment to use as a cudgel against “the man.” If they keep this up they may succeed, at least in their own minds. As for the rest of us, “ye reap as ye sow.”

  • tailfins1959

    I hear Rush Limbaugh speculate that Charlotte 2012 could resemble 1968 Chicago. I experience the “Chris Matthews tingle” every time I think about it!