Spanning nearly every ideological boundary, the “Occupy” movement includes social democrats, democratic socialists, Goldwater-conservatives, tea partiers, Libertarians with a capital “L”, libertarians with a lower-case “l”, peaceniks, veterans, conspiracy theorists, Marxists, punk rock vegans, hipsters, black-bloc anarchists, and everyone in between. And it’s popping up everywhere.
I desperately want to be optimistic. Like, “Fuck. Yes. This is a mass awakening. People are waking up from the ‘American Dream‘ (no, not the storybook version that you probably know word-for-word, but George Carlin’s version).”
But although I see fleeting signs of solidarity, there are some apparently unbridgeable chasms between the competing ideologies.
For example, among the asinine demands are:
- Restricting “free” trade and imposition of restrictive tariffs in order to favor domestic production. It should be obvious that any measure designed explicitly to restrict or violate people’s ability to peaceably interact with one another is not in the interest of “the 99%”.
- Raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour. This is as retarded as a football bat. Please, don’t make me explain it.
- Complete socialization (single-payer) health care system, banning any private mechanisms to provide for same. Let’s just say I’m not a fan of further consolidating power over who lives and dies, and every state-socialized scheme ultimately results in slavery.
Some demands, I can get behind:
- Abolish the Federal Reserve. Although I’m not sure if this is on the “official” list, the Fed is essentially pure evil, contrary to the interests of all but the power elite, protecting a credit monopoly and enabling seignorage by debasement of currency, etc.
- Open borders. I’ve talked about this one at length(here, here, here and here). However, many people think this is just an illuminati/globalist plot to further depress wages, etc.
And some demands are kind of a mixed bag, like:
- Debt forgiveness for everyone. OK. I mean, the entire system is pretty much a fraud and I’m inclined to sympathy with this movement, but you can’t deny that it is going to absolutely fuck a lot of very good people, there is no way to do this equitably.
There’s a lot of reactionary and poorly-thought-out goals in conflict with one another, and probably too few people really trying to strike the root. And not enough public support; a large part of the population is pretty much ignorant of the movement.
These cops don't even realize they're on the wrong side of the fence... Photo credit Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
For that, you can thank the dismal education that most of the 99% have received through their state-funded schools. And also, the mainstream media, who have done a pretty good job of just ignoring it and even though the movement shows no signs of giving up ground, it’s possible that the 1% can win an old-fashioned war of attrition through censorship by omission: If the news doesn’t report it, is it really happening?
The 1% are clearly experts in manipulating governments to their unique advantage (at our expense) as well as “instigat[ing] class warfare, pitting individual members of society against one another, communities against communities, interests against interests.” And up until now, they’ve been winning. Half the time, they don’t even need to fight the war because we’re so busy fighting amongst ourselves.
So what’s the next move?
Does “Occupy” reach critical mass and turn the tables? Or does the 1% (and the media they control) strike back?
