There is a shortage of true populist protests and activism over what this country has endured at the hands of Wall Street and the way in which government has aided and abetted the banksters in shielding them from any accountability. Obama famously told top bankster CEOs that "I'm the only one standing in between you and the pitchforks." Well, we need to see more pitchforks. Sure people are pissed, but really only in rhetoric and not in action.
At the time, I assumed (but certainly hope I would be wrong) that the protests would eventually become more than a fringe movement, and a much needed one at that. Needless to say I have been encouraged and elated to see that this has erupted into a nationwide protest over the grotesque income inequality and the economic and social injustice of both the financial crisis and the last three to four decades.
There's a couple of general notes that I want to make about OWS. First off, it should come as no surprise that those among us with legitimate grievances against moneyed elites would be met with widespread derision and sneering by the very people (the media included) that benefit richly from the status quo. See this Glenn Greenwald piece for a definitive takedown of all the media outlets heaping contempt upon the unwashed masses. Or this one, where he covers the NYT's financial columnist's fealty to an anonymous "top bankster CEO," courageously investigating the OWS protests at his behest. I am sure the Fox News fair and balanced approach to these protests will surprise you very little. When the media isn't busy openly shitting on these folks for having the audacity to be pissed off about having their livelihoods vanquished by the financial crisis while the crooks that caused the same crisis got their asses saved by trillions in tax payer funded bailouts, they are waxing breathless about what is it exactly that OWS wants? They are a bunch of dirty hippies with an incoherent message! What are their demands?! They are irrelevant until they settle on a unified message! And when that isn't the prevailing themes, you have assholes like Mitt Romney calling the "class warfare" being waged by these protesters, "dangerous."
Does anyone recall the tea baggers being subjected to this sort of derision and scrutiny? Certainly they were widely mocked by people like myself and other progressive bloggers, but they were the absolute darlings of the establishment media. There was no chastising of the tea baggers for having a rambling or incoherent message. At its core, the very crux of the tea bagger message was inherently rambling and incoherent, but the establishment media got the vapors over these Very Serious real murkins WANTING THEIR COUNTRY BACK. Here you had a group of mostly educated, older, white dipshits caterwauling about the tyranny of the lowest federal tax burden since the Eisenhower era, a socialistic takeover of government healthcare that was laughably divorced from socialized healthcare or single payer systems, and their collective aversion to government fiscal profligacy despite eight years in which trillions of dollars were spent on tax cuts and foreign wars by the Bush administration, all of this newly and conveniently discovered after the election of a black Democrat. This is the group of people that the media venerated, treated Very Seriously, never questioning their message, their methods, or integrity despite an abiding number of reasons to do so. After all, they were just concerned citizens! A "wholly organic" grassroots movement that were sick of their government making them pay really low taxes and barring insurance companies from discriminating against pre-existing conditions, and trying to spend much needed tax dollars to pull the economy out of an immensely deep crater. They lavished praise and adulation on the group that hoisted grotesquely racist signs bearing all manner of epithets against our President, comparing him to Hitler, proclaiming that they came unarmed (this time), wearing tri-pointed hats adorned with tea bags, and packing pistols and AR-15s at their rallies. They even went so far as to gleefully use their brand to co-sponsor Republican presidential debates. I will let you tell me when you think you will see a CNN/MoveOn debate, a CNN/Daily Kos, or a CNN/Occupy Wall Street debate.
The Occupy Wall Street protests on the other hand? I've already detailed how they have been treated by the media and most of those otherwise unencumbered by petty things like foreclosed homes, unemployment, or the complete economic collapse of their household in general, so consider for a moment the difference between the claims of the tea baggers and those of OWS. Occupy Wall Street seeks to capture the long dormant populist outrage stirred up by decades of tax cuts for the wealthy and financial deregulation being sold to the masses as the panacea for economic prosperity for all, when in fact they have lead to income inequality the likes of which makes third world nations and banana republics blush, a financial crisis that has devastated the already embattled middle class while simultaneously adding millions to the rolls of foreclosures, unemployed, savaged retirement savings, flatlining and stagnant wages, and otherwise economically destitute or unstable. And none of this is conjecture, ideology, or exaggeration. These are facts. The supply side, plutocrat and bankster coddling, wealthy fellating policies of the last three decades have been absolutely devastating for the poor and middle classes, and the financial crisis, catalyzed by rampant fraud and speculation and money whoring on Wall Street, has only exacerbated and compounded the issue. These policies have been an absolute failure for this country. That is, unless you're in the top 1% that controls 40% of the nation's wealth.
It will be very interesting to see where these protests go from here. I am hoping that they can avoid the same fate as the tea baggers by avoiding being co-opted into the larger party establishment that serves little other than the party's electoral interests. They need to maintain their populist autonomy and independence to truly thrive and have an impact. And they must continue to grow. I'll say it again: it's long overdue, and this is possibly the first opportunity in a long time for much needed progressive change, and a much needed national conversation about the values and policies that we have espoused in this country for so long, and what those policies have wrought for 99% of us.
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