This morning I overheard a couple of twenty-somethings discussing the Occupy Wall Street protests in a D.C. coffee shop. One of them seemed totally “stoked” about the whole thing, and wanted to know what is was all about. His companion explained, as follows:
Basically they’re protesting… well… uh… capitalism… basically. It’s to protest capitalism. The movement itself is more focused on what the… uh… systemic problem is, which they see as capitalism, and everything that emanates from that — income inequality, greed, corruption, lobbying. They basically want to get rid of capitalism and replace it with a socialist government, which I support.
Sure. Because we all know how splendidly greed- and corruption-free socialist government is, and how “the 99 percent” of Americans are just clamoring for it. Certainly, this one fellow doesn’t speak for “the movement,” but being familiar with how a (frighteningly) large portion of my generation thinks — and in many cases, has been taught to think — this seems like a fairly accurate distillation of the protesters’ collective mindset: vague, incoherent, idiotic. I might have told him that if he really wanted to “protest capitalism,” he could start by ditching his $2,000 MacBook Pro, which is produced by one of the largest corporations on the planet — Apple (AAPL) — currently trading at more than $370 a share, on Wall Street.
To your point about the 99%, from Harold Meyerson's column this morning:
"On Wednesday, the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street encampment will swell as MoveOn.org members, union activists and ordinary disgruntled citizens join the demonstration against our financial sector’s misrule of the American economy."
So, did Meyerson mean to concede that MoveOn and union activitsts are not "ordinary disgruntled citizens"? Maybe he meant that they are "extraordinary disgruntled citizens."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, that certainly was an in depth, objective, analysis of the demonstrations going on. Cleared it up for me - just bunch of idiotic, incoherent, socialists... got it. Nothing to see here... move along.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse" just bunch of idiotic, incoherent, socialists"
Aren't you being just a tad redundant?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood summary of what the OWS is all about. Thanks. Although I would have added "Obama-voting dopes living in their parents' basements." Just a preference.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey are Soft America on Parade!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThats the point that there is nothing to see here more than some idle youths searching for something to keep them busy and feel engaged. I would bet if Goldman Sachs opened up a job fair in Zucotti Park, 50% of those kids would run home, take a bath, put on their interview suit and run right back. Its not about capitalism, greed, hedge funds, or corporate jets. Its simply that these kids need jobs and there aren't many out there now to be had. Nothing like a nice corporate job offer to turn a radical socialist into a responsible citizen.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo savor the joys of socialism, all these clowns need do is to move 90 miles south of Key West in that gloriously egalitarian garden of Eden, Cuba!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet's offer them a one-way ticket to Cuba if they give up their American Citizenship (Of course assuming they're not illegals!).
Captcha: Basket Case
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs it any less dumb than "Government: Hands off my Medicare"?
It's easy to mock young people, but I recall a fair share of anti-Wall Street sentiment at Tea Party rallies.
Maybe the difference is it's harder to get those Medicaid scooters on and off the subway downtown.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStill beating that drum for them?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHis parents, that he is living off of, bought that Apple for him. Presumably from the money supplied to them from their evil capitalist corporation paymasters.
Not many of the protesters are living on their own. Most are college aged and living off their parents, or with their parents, or off the taxpayers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...and everything that emanates from that..."
Income inequality - Some people have more than other people. Some people earn more money than other people. Some people save more money than other people. If a CEO earning $500,000 a year and an employee earning $50,000 both get a 10% raise, the gap in their incomes has increased. Both people are better off, but the gap widens.
Greed - Some people are selfish. Some people are never satisfied with what they already have, and constantly need more and more and more. Some people feed that need by working harder. Some people feed that need by criminal or immoral activity. Some people feed that need by demanding other people pay for it.
Corruption - Some people use the resources at their disposal to make things happen in their favor. Sometimes, this crosses the line into criminal behavior. Often, it is someone doing something with their money that someone else does not like.
Lobbying - Some people come together in a large group, in order to influence elected officials to make changes to social policies that they believe would be of benefit to them specifically, or to the country as a whole. A private 'protest' against the status quo, if you will.
I'm sure a socialist government in the U.S. would completely eliminate all of these 'emanations'. I'm sure they're not offshoots of human nature, but byproducts of an evil capitalist empire.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe are now entering the time when kids who were not even alive when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated are graduating from college and entering the work force. Can we please require a little Solzhenitsyn, or some Robert Conquest, Orlando Figes, or Robert Service in the History of Civ survey courses being offered at our great universities? Just a smidgeon? It's one thing for students to compare Marx's writings against Adam Smith's in a classroom, it's another thing to know about what really happens to ordinary people in a socialist state. Read The Whisperers by Orlando Figes. You won't be able to sleep for a week afterwards thinking you hear the NKVD coming up your front porch steps.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's been my thought all along. We grew up with a solid fear of communism, these kids are being taught at college how much better it is than evil capitalism. The old saying about those who do not learn history being doomed to repeat it rings very true. The high school/college generation needs to learn about Mao and Stalin and the truths of communism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAndrew, the nation survived my generation's idiocy--it is to cringe at the memory--in the 60s, so I have every confidence we will survive this one too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou mean the one's that thought we should get out of Viet Nam? that women should have equal rights? that we should end segregation ? That idiocy? Gotcha.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe one that helped lose the Vietnam war and gave us the sex and drug culture and that is accountable for much of today's current social pathologies.
Well done!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSlide, you mean the '60's idiots that ruined education for a generation? That ratcheted up an already bloated government bureaucracy and destroyed families? That told kids that taking drugs and dropping out of school was a legitimate life choice? Idiots that sat on NVA guns, visited POW camps, smiled for pictures and made propaganda tapes for the enemy while Americans were being beaten and tortured? Yeah,I think she means *that* idiocy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, she meant the idiots who thought we had no right to fight for the freedom of non-whites outside the continent of Europe, while piggy-backing onto a movement to end Jim Crow that started well before any Boomer was born.
To be sure, the Beatniks beat you to that one.
She meant the idiots who, in keeping with their infatuation with malevolent dictators, rooted for Ho Chi Minh to stamp out the freedom of southern Vietnamese, just so they could root for the nation they despise -- their own -- to lose with the world watching.
She meant the idiots who thought -- and still do -- that it's a good idea to make people's poverty more comfy, and to encourage endless generations of the same family to stay locked into poverty -- with the assistance of other people's money, instead of assisting those in poverty to rely upon their considerable abilities to provide for themselves and actually get out of poverty.
And they didn't think simply that women should have equal rights. They thought that everyone's incomes should be exactly the same, regardless of circumstances that make particular employees less valuable, such as the likelihood of leaving the workforce after considerable investment in them was made.
You proved her point. We all thank you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah? You could stay mum and not jinx us all, of course.
You see,the jury is still out as to whether this country -- in the form of a representative republic with a general authority of limited power -- has indeed survived the utter abomination of your generation.
In fact, all freedom everywhere on Earth -- as limited as it was before the 1960s -- might have met its maker when your generation ditched the diapers.
In short, don't jump to conclusions just yet on how utterly and permanently destructive your generation has been to this planet and its environment.
No amount of carbon trading could compensate for it. (That might indeed make it worse.)
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