Occupy My Mind

Gotta join the rest of the blogosphere and opine on the Occupy Wall Street et. al. movement.

Take a bunch of unemployed people, mix in a frustrated electorate, and add a dash of disaffected youth, and you've got the ingredients of the Occupy movement.  I get it, but I don't get it.  Blaming financial institutions for not regulating their actions to a greater extent than the goverment allows, in a capitalistic society, is frankly not a legitimate expectation.  People could have said no to the easy credit that banks offered years ago, but many chose to say yes.  Whose fault is that?

But there are two other things I want to point out.  The first is, as radical movements go, this hardly qualifies as one.  Here's an excerpt from an on-line article written by John Carney of cnbc.com:

"The [Occupy Wall Street] population changes from day to day, and week to week.  Many more people visit during the day, and leave once the park settles down at night.  Some residents are hardcore political activists.  Others are college students.  Some are people who have found themselves in dire economic strits.  The camp has many has many of the features of a village, or even a household.  Various people in the park perform chores—such as cooking, cleaning, and ensuring that disputes are peacefully resolved.  There is what appears to be the inner circle of Occupy Wall Street.  Several people, many working on laptops powered by a portable generator, sit in an area closed off by tables.  Most people—including protesters—are kept out by beefy people whose blue arm bands mark them as members of the security group.  Exactly what this secretive group is doing is not clear.  And so, ironically, there’s a no trespassing policy enforced at Occupy Wall Street."

Sounds like a weak commune to me.  The radical protestesters of the 60s and 70s would laugh at this attempt to affect change.

Which brings me to my other point:  How is it that the some of the same people want to vilify this movement, said not a word about the efforts of organized groups (Tea Party-ers?) to shout down legislators at town hall meetings in the summer of 2009 to complain about Obamacare?  Isn't this the same deal - complaining about government?  The only difference is, that group complained about too much government (of health care), and this group is complaining about not enough government (of the financial industry).

Americans have such short-term attention spans and conviction that I believe we'll soon see the Occupy movement die out.  Unlike the oppressed people of the Arab Spring, not having a job doesn't mean soft Americans will stay outside for the winter.  Still, it's kind of fund to watch, and you never know, social media could manage to keep this thing going for a while.