OccupyWallStreet Rant

It’s illustrative to look at how the media has covered the origin and growth of the tea party movement with the OccupyWallStreet protests. Even a handful of self-identified tea party activists, with tea bags stapled to their tricorn hats and misspelled signs, were covered breathlessly as the birth of this new populist movement, angry with the direction of the country, and rising influence.
That, of course, was all completely untrue. The tea party movement was an astroturfed movement from the beginning, funded and organized by conservative organizations under jingoistic and quasi-populist names like “Americans for Prosperity” and "FreedomWorks".
Compare that to the OccupyWallStreet protesters. Truly grassroots, the media—when they do pay attention—deride them for not having a clear, unified goal (as if the tea party could be more precise than “take our country back”), for being disorganized (which is what happens when Dick Armey isn’t ordering up the signs) and for their inability to effect change (because it’s completely reasonable to expect 10 days of protests to change the status quo of 30 years of Reaganomics on Wall St). Moreover, the truly populist concerns are largely ignored by the media, who are almost monolithically more interested in what’s happening to the privileged few inside the Washington Beltway than the 99% of people who live outside it.

[Source]

        I'll never forget something one of my more radical professors back in college said to me, "the reason people tolerate extreme wealth in this nation is because they all want their turn.  No matter how unlikely it is, they all believe they too can one day be one of those on top looking down on the rest of their countrymen."  Those words proved themselves to be true a million times over since he said them to me.  

People never see something as a problem until it effects them personally, and then when it does they wonder why no one did something about it sooner.  They look down on the people trying to address something they don't see as a problem.  Millions of people may be effected by something but until you become one of those millions chances are you don't care about it.  Right now you have a group of people trying to do something about a problem that effects the entire country.  You would think we all would be on board with this. 


78% of us still have our jobs, so we don't feel anything for the 22% who don't have work.  "It's not my problem", is the mantra.  Never mind that that 78% had their 401k's go down the toilet, or have mortgages that are worth more than the homes they live in but the very banks we bailed out won't refinance to the true value of the home, God forbid a bank ever loses money.  Inflation is rising even though the talking heads assure us it's not, remember when a loaf of bread cost less than a dollar?  Remember when you could by a gallon of milk for less than 3 bucks?  Remember when you could fill up your gas tank for 20 some odd bucks? 

We just keep plodding along hoping things will get better, hoping we will be the ones to defy the overwhelming odds and come out on top, or hoping someone else saves the day.  When someone comes along and points out "The Emperor has no clothes!" we ignore them because we want to be The Emperor one day.  Forget about addressing what's wrong with our system, lets just hope we can win the lottery even if you have a better chance of being struck by lightening.  There are 400 families that control most of the wealth in this nation of 300+ million, and what do we do?  Put them on a pedestal and hope one day we can become one of the few.  People always asking "Where are the leaders?"  I think a better question is "Where are the followers?"

But enough of my ranting for one day, shout out to every and anyone who took even a minute of their time to support what's going on down on Wall Street.