It would seem the great occupation of the hated Wall Street by freedom loving anarchists has been less than successful. By all accounts, instead of the hoped for 20,000 protestors the group seems more likely numbered at around 200.
The NYPD effectively blocked off Wall Street long before the protestors began arriving and used a conspicuous display of polite force to imply that no shenanegans would be tolerated.
The hipster doofus anarchist movement always makes me laugh. I don't have anything against being fired up for you principles. We should all be motivated to take a hand in our own governing. But have some idea what you support and/or oppose, ya know?
These guys are all over the place:
"Shall we demand that President Obama reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act; outlaw flash trading; impose a 1% tax on all financial transactions?"
"We could demand Obama set up an American Democracy Reform Commission tasked with ending the monied corruption in Washington? Or perhaps a Presidential Commission to rethink the American banking system?"
Really?! You're railing against what you consider organized financial improprieties, and your solution is more government interference? Been watching much tv there dude? How's that big government thing working out so far?
But on and on they go throwing everything against the wall in the hopes that something sticks that they can hang their hat on. Though on some level they seem to realize that nothing's really going to happen:
"A reform project like this requires a constitutional amendment that would take a few years and a whole movement to achieve."
Damn that pesky government. If only we could do away with it, right? Kinda sounds like our current President in a way -- "If I could only go around Congress somehow, you know?"
There's a quote from their occupy Wall Street website that cracks me up on a couple of levels:
"Be prepared. We need to be a mobile force. A modern army of nonviolent protest. They will bring tear gas, riot shields, undercovers, and rubber bullets. I’m sure they’ll have choppers a waiting too."
Every see V for Vendetta? Doesn't that sound a bit like the penultimate showdown in the underground railway? Where V reminds the chancellor's tough that they don't have guns, they have bullets . . . and the hopes that when they've fired them all, he's not still standing.
I mean, when you have to crib your cool sounding rhetoric from a movie, maybe you just don't have any original ideas of your own.
There's another part where they refer to themselves as "legion." In the objective, not "a legion" but simply "legion."
That phrasing gets thrown around a lot these days, but plenty don't really know where it comes from. In the Bible, in the book of Mark, Jesus and the disciples take a boat to Gadarenes. Upon disembarking they are approached by a man possessed by Satan.
When Jesus asks the man's name, he replies "My name is Legion; for we are many."
Now the last way you're going to earn my sympathies as an activist, is to start acting as though Satan has all the cool phrases and stuff.
Look, I like horror movies, I like Black Sabbath and BOC, but I still understand that the devil isn't the one to emulate in life. And that's kind of where I really wonder about these guys. They all want the government or the financial sector to collapse. Well then, who runs things when these entities collapse?
The guys with the guns or the clout to be the most powerful would end up in charge. It's a pity these so-called intelligent protestors don't know any history. Do they really want to go back to the days of barons and serfs? Of monarchs? Of a societal schematic that resembles a pea on a flat board?
The weakest, frailest amoung us can take the richest person in the country to court. We have rights that cannot be denied. The system is twisted, there is no doubt of that, but it is still in place and can work if we try.
And the alternative would be a chaotic mess. Pity these guys are all show and no go. At least in the 60s, protestors had an idea of what they wanted to replace the government they so despised. But back then, the protestors were all from colleges where they actually learned something, not just sit around whining and get grades for showing up.
