Hold on a minute, everyone. Something amazing happened to me just now. I think magellan01 might be on to something. I was walking along the sidewalk when a car drove past and splashed mud all over me. In an instant, I suddenly realized the inherent wisdom in higher capital gains taxes and single-payer health care.
I took a shower and it all washed off, but still, quite an experience.
So, you were for Dodd Frank?
I’m not so down with the protests, but I don’t understand the whole Stockholm Syndrome attitude that non-wealthy conservatives have towards the 1%-ers. People without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of so completely bought into the status quo just doesn’t compute. You think you’re all badass because you suck NRA dick and pretend to love Jesus, but you’re taking it up the ass from the wealth-hoarding overlords like utterly submissive twinks.
The sad delusion of non-rich conservatives. Here’s a pertinent quote from “Cool, Considerate Men,” in the musical 1776 (from 1969)
Name calling is an old right wing trick. You identify the people you don’t like as "unwashed or "hippies’ or pretend they wont take all the jobs that are out there, and everyone has to agree that they are not likable hard working types who have a right to complain.
One in 5 kids is in need of food. There are about one million foreclosures a year since our fine upstanding and very clean bankers crashed the world economy. One in 8 people are getting food stamps .
What do they have to complain about?
The unemployment rate is over 9 percent. Millions more have given up looking for work due to endless frustration and rejection. There are more than 5 people after every job opening.
I suppose all them are just so annoying to the rightys.
I’m pleasantly surprised. After reading half the thread, I did not expect this level of coherency from you. Good work.
Not how they’ll play it. They’ll play to the frightened middle class, the ones who haven’t lost their livlihoods, but are scared to death that they might. They’ll tell those people that the left will take all their money, and give it to the poor. Then they will be poor as well, thus making us all equal.
They’ll throw in some conscience salve. Poor are lazy and made bad choices, tough noogies for them, but the deserving must soldier on. Austerity. Austerity will fix everything.
That’s the thing about the Forces of Darkness. Finally, in the end, it all boils down to fear.
Except for the part about Obama-as-Savior. I have seen no evidence from the Ocupado crowd that they have any particular allegiance to Obama. But to Maggie, anything to the left of Sarah Palin just swirls together in a filthy liberal melange.
Reminds me of one of the better political jokes from recent times: A Tea Partier, a billionaire, and a public sector union guy are sitting around a table with a dozen cookies. The billionaire takes eleven cookies and tells the Tea Partier “You’d better watch out for that union guy, he’s got his eyes on your cookie.”
Seriously, *au contraire *- I think most think Obama isn’t leaning nearly far enough to the left.
Exactly.
Ha ha! It’s funny because they’re getting away with it.
So, the only difference between the two groups is that the Tea Partiers bathe more?
I wouldn’t worry magellan01, nothing will come of it. The Democrats have started their moves to usurp the movement and turn it into a tool to reelect Obama. Kind of like they did with the Iraq war protests last time around. Notice how they stopped, but the wars didn’t, after Obama was elected.
Pretty funny that they can now pretend to be onside with the protesters. Obama’s last campaign fund received the most Wall Street cash ever, it is his policies that propped up Wall Street, and he already has declared his second term agenda of cuts to services for the most needy.
No you can rest easy. The Democratic Party is where social protest movements go to die.
I almost certain that you, and most of those “fuck the rich” in these marches, are comfortably in the “rich” category by most of the world’s standards.
100k of debt is crippling you after you got top-notch education? How about 1k of debt makes you kids go hungry for a year. Then talk to me about “the rich” and what they deserve.
Obliquely, you touch on a point I’m wondering about. The “kids” who are pissed about being so far in debt. I’m wondering if that is a more significant development than we have realized. In a ghastly way, their young lives are much like one of those mortgage security phantoms.
They have mortgaged their projected future earnings in order to position themselves to achieve such earnings. And face the prospect of those earnings no longer being feasible, for the foreseeable future.
Another dot to connect. Used to be, for college kids, the golden road was the law. Then it was medicine. Then it was comp sci, and then it was business. How many MBA’s are we graduating this year? How much does a business school cost, one that will make the recipient of your resume eager to recruit you?
Well, its an investment, isn’t it? In fact, thats just about all it is, paying the dues required to join the club, majoring in the White Studies Program. Big investment houses collapse, thousands upon thousands of equally well educated and experienced! personnel are suddenly available at dollar store prices.
These kids are in hock up to their shell-like ears, and they just got their ticket to the good life, but there’s been a mistake, the ticket says barista, it says pizza delivery. But the loan papers still reflect a first-class ticket to capitalist Heaven.
So that’s different. Most of the occupying army are pissed at the guys in the Club, these kids are pissed because they spent years of their young lives trying to get into the Club, only to find membership lists are closed.
Now, here is a small spot of good news for them. Maybe. With the kind of regulation we are going to need, we will need quite a lot of investigators, inspectors, that sort of thing. Young people with a solid education in business would fit the bill nicely. Of course, we are only talking about a civil service salary, in the “pretty good” range.
But maybe, considering their service to their country, we can bear some of the burden for their education. Seeing as how that is what makes them so useful in the first place, sure, why not?
Bankers? Lamp posts? These guys can’t even block traffic. Besides, that’s what the Pinkertons are for right?
I never understood this LOTE rationalization thing so popular with disillusioned liberals, I mean uh progressives. Me, I always vote a straight R’lyeh ticket.
And I am certain that most of the Tea Partiers bleating about “freedom” are already among the most free people in the world. That hasn’t shut them up either.
So I assume you’ll be campaigning and voting for Democrats in 2012? Or are you confusedabout what the two parties are doingin Washington D.C. these last three years?
I went to an organizational meeting of “Occupy” in my hometown yesterday. Th facebook page just got started last week and yet there were 50 people that showed up. Young, old and unwashed hippies. With this movement just in its infancy, It’s to be expected that it’s unfocused, that will improve in time.
Mock these folks at your own risk, because even if this particular movement does not take hold, millions of frustrated people still exist and it’s still legal for them to vote.