no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Category Archives: Left Libertarian

Occupy Protests: Responding to Tea Party Smear Campaign

November 20th, 2011

Responding to some of the attempts to smear the Occupy movement by making ridiculous comparisons to the Tea Party…

It is unfair and intellectually lazy post hoc ergo propter hoc to conclude that all crimes occurring in the vicinity of a protest are inextricably linked to the protest, or ideologically the protesters do not oppose these crimes, or all protesters are criminals like this, etc. Some are crimes of opportunity. I’m not trying to suggest they are excusable, but whenever you have large numbers of people congregating, it presents an opportunity that miscreants may take advantage of (e.g., indecent exposure, theft, etc.).

As for the more serious claims like the 4,000 arrests, the “white house shooter”, $10M worth of damage, and murder, need a little more information. You will have to go through the trouble of manually typing the URLs because the source does not embed them.

  1. Reports on the shooting death of Berkely student say “University police said there is no indication that the incident was related to a day of rallies at Berkeley linked to anti-Wall Street protests.”
  2. The white house shooting article cited in this source indicates that “Police believe Ortega-Hernandez is mentally ill. ” and only that he “may have spent time with” the protesters.
  3. The cited story for the claimed “10 million dollars” damage due to arson says this: Arrest papers available to the public do not connect Occupy Fort Collins to the arson fires, and police made no connection between the group’s protest and Gilmore’s arrest. Organizers could not immediately be reached for comment on Gilmore.
  4. And as for the 4,000 arrests… as I’ve noted before it is not uncommon where large groups congregate in protest for people to be arrested en masse. I theorized why the Tea Party has not been subject to the same sort of scrutiny, but in any event it should be noted that “arrests” are a fake statistic. Pay attention over the weeks and months to come, how many of these 4,000 are actually going to be prosecuted? How many of them will actually be found guilty? The number will be considerably smaller than 4,000.

Further, even if some of these incidents can be pinned on an individual who is supportive of OWS, it is neither fair or accurate to suggest or imply that these outliers are representative of the total OWS population.

The link also suggests that exactly zero tea partiers have committed such crimes. Although it may be verifiable that no protesters (in the act of protest) have committed any such crimes, it is statistically improbably to suggest that no tea partiers, anywhere, ever, have been involved in any criminal act up to and including murder, rape, arson, theft, etc.

And for some additional context, the Tea Party is essentially for preserving existing property relations up to and including gross inequality under (what I believe to be ) a mistaken or incomplete understanding of free market fundamentals. The Tea Party idea that “We just want to keep what we have earned whereas the Occupy protesters want government handouts” is a made-for-TV-pundits talking point, in other words, it is a false dichotomy and demonstrably untrue for many of the people involved in the OWS protests.

And their form of political protest is different – if you can even call it protest. They are not a threat, so the media and the establishment has no need to vilify them by propaganda or provoke them in to making tactical mistakes.

 

Why Are So Many Occupy Protesters Being Arrested?

November 7th, 2011

Several times in the last week I have seen people compare the OWS protesters (unfavorably) to the Tea Party.  The argument is something like, “How come none of the Tea Partiers ever get arrested even when a guy shows up with a rifle on the Capitol steps? Compare this to OWS where the protesters are being arrested everywhere and in large numbers!”

I don’t know how many Tea Partiers have been arrested. Maybe it is zero. So what?

Protesters being arrested in Atlanta

Protesters being arrested in Atlanta

It is an unsubstantiated question-begging attempt to vilify OWS:  they are criminals because they have been arrested, therefore, disassociate. Notice the blind deference to prevailing ruling class attitudes, questioning neither the legitimacy of the arrests, nor the merits of the protests (I would expect any group seeking real change to consider these factors).

I’ll leave the merits of the protests, these have been covered amply by others. As for the arrests, there are two main reasons why the State arrests people.

  • They are a threat to others (rapists, murderers, robbers, and a great deal of victimless crimes which the state lumps in this category)
  • They are a threat to the State’s existing power relations

First and foremost, as long as OWS remains a dynamic grass-roots movement, and as long as they challenge the very legitimacy of the status quo, they remain a political threat, and so they will continue to be persecuted for trying to bring their dissenting opinions to fruition.

Additionally, OWS’s siege-like tactics present the ruling class with a more sustained problem than other political activists like the Tea Party, who’s strategy thus far has been simply to show up, complain for a few hours, and then go back home to the suburbs. The authorities can’t just wait for the protesters to go home at the end of the day because at the end of the day the protesters are not going home! Because the Tea Party is not waging a sustained protest, they don’t require the attention or scrutiny reserved for larger demonstrations like Occupy; as a result there are far fewer opportunities for the police to intervene.

Aside from the question of strategy, at the end of the day most of the Tea Partiers are still essentially pro-establishment and so they are not being arrested because they don’t matter and they don’t matter because the ruling class knows how to exploit and appease an organized political front.

On the other hand, the ruling class does not know how to handle a Hydra like the Occupy movement. If you want things to change, you’d better pray it remains that way.

The Tea Party Does Not Understand Inflation

November 5th, 2011

I saw this picture on Facebook today. It is a very simple explanation of a very complicated problem: how inflation robs all of us, predominately by destroying the purchasing power of accumulated savings and fueling an unsustainable debt-cycle.  The other side of this is Malinvestment, which when coupled with the effects of inflation, destroy an economy from the inside-out.

Unfortunately, the comments were full of fail: Once you buy in to the propaganda known as the American Dream, there is virtually no limit to the bullshit you’ll apologize for.  I hate to paint with a broad brush, but it seems like people apologize for capitalism because they’ve bought in to the propaganda and they honestly do believe that one day if they just work hard enough they will also succeed. And although some people do succeed, these are exceptions rather than the rule.

Oh, the lulz. Except they're serious.

John: Good for you. You took an opportunity that most people don’t have. Maybe you had a good idea that others didn’t think of. Maybe you had some capital saved up that many people don’t have. Maybe you just got lucky. Just because you were raised to believe something doesn’t make it true. Lots of people work their asses of and still struggle to make ends meet. A generation ago families could (and often did) live comfortably middle-class lifestyles on a single income whereas today it takes 2 parents working full time to scrape by. The most important part about a free market is the freedom. If you’re working 80 hours a week to get by, you’re not free, you’re indebted to an exploitative system.

You are working 80 hours a week non-stop just to “do alright”.  Is this the sort of world you want for future generations? Should it be this hard to put food on the table and a roof over your children’s heads?

Ruth: Try to read your words with someone else’s brain, preferably not John’s because you’re making the same mistakes. You believe that the 1% normally acquire their wealth through honest hard work, frugality and ingenuity, the fruits of which labor is passed from generation to generation. This ignores a great many people who succeed only insofar as they can exploit a system of privilege to their advantage. It is not a level playing field and success is not determined predominately by merit.

There are a million fucking reasons why we’re not free and we don’t have a free market, and each of these distortions has a ripple-effect of consequences that further distort the array of opportunities available, the choices we are presented. You’re forget that most of the people who play in to this game will never make it, most will fail somewhere along the way, thus the “1%”. Is this the sort of world that you want?

Bill: You’re making a common mistake. Maybe you believe that the bastardized “market” that we have is a near-enough approximation of what a really free market would look like just because we get the illusion of choice in some areas of our lives. The rich are rich because they work hard and the poor are poor because they’re dumb and lazy. Way to blame the victims. Do you really believe that Goldman Sachs isn’t rigging the game? Is this the sort of world that you want?

Donald: You are a beacon of light in an otherwise regrettable thread.

The rest of you, you need to pull your heads out of the fucking sand and understand the problems we face for what they are. People are protesting because they want to work and can’t find jobs. They’re protesting because at every level, their governments and elected “leaders” have let them down. They’re protesting because they’ve realized that the illusion of meritocracy is just an illusion, we don’t live in a free market or anything remotely resembling one, success is an exception rather than the rule, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get by and to plan and save for the future.

These people aren’t lazy, they’re fucking fed up.

no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics