Like I said: They have turned themselves into a circus side show.
It must be hard for you, given your enthusiastic support early on, to see it come to this. Need a moment?
The dog is perfect. The 99 percent have lots of complaints . But when your home is being foreclosed ,one rises to the top. When the mortgage company refuses to redo the mortgage ,even when the home is worth half what it was, that is your concern.
When you can not find a job, even though you may be well qualified, that is what eats at you.
If you have just graduated from college and have an educational mortgage to pay, and jobs are scarce, you worry about how you will get through that.
When you are homeless and just looking for a way to survive through the night, school costs seem very unimportant.
When the homeless get food, shelter and medical care at the occupy camps, the people providing it are able to escape their problems for awhile. Doing work for others does a person some good.
Some campers see the income inequality as a harbinger of real trouble for the future of the country. They are trying to exert pressure on politicians to do right for all the citizens, not just the rich. The campers are voters too.
I call it as I see it. Elect a dog to be your representative = Circus sideshow. Politics has nothing to do with it.c
When my closest political allies do something like that, I will happily call them on it.
“And a dog shall lead them.”
Why is it a weakness? It is an educational movement sending a message to the politicians that continuing the present policies will result in them losing support and votes. That matters to politicians.
Who are losers? By what standard are they losers? The movement has gone on for 6 weeks. That is a little too soon for a realistic appraisal.
But they have already changed the dialogue. Politicians and officials have taken notice. It is a rousing success.
Politics has everything to do with it! Start with why does the mayor get to decide whether or not a group of people comply with his notions about order and organization? Are they breaking some sort of law with this experiment? Since when is a municipal mayor so empowered?
I saw Michelle Bachman, Presidential candidate on TV the other night. And you’re telling me that you blame the Occupados for making a side show out of our politics?
You know the old joke, the first thing about teaching a mule something is to get his attention, that’s why you have the two-by-four. To get his attention.
Explain what you meant by the phrase “you people” and who the “you people” referred to and I’ll be happy to respond.
BTW, I understand that white people often get upset when non-whites have the temerity to act as if they’re equals rather than people who need whites to save them or rule them.
Apologies if I’ve offended your sensibilities.
Politics has nothing to with whether I call something a circus sideshow or not. If it’s a sideshow, I’m going to call it, whether I agree with the politics of the sideshow or not.
Since he was elected by the people. You know, the 99-percenters. The Occupiers were always breaking the law as soon as they decided to camp out in city parks. The fact that some mayors have restrained themselves for a time does not mean they must do so indefinitely.
You’re right. She’s not a sideshow. She’s all three rings of the whole circus.
OWS is firmly against your notions of cruelty to animals.
You just strengthened the case that the OWS movement is a bunch of spoiled, bitter white trash losers pissed off that life hasn’t gone the way they anticipated.
The actions you describe are not those of pragmatic adults trying to influence public policy but of moronic teenagers who confuse shocking or outraging adults with accomplishing something.
Nice try. The first Nonhuman-American politician was Pigasus! (A sow, BTW, though the Yippies called her a boar; couldn’t run a female candidate for POTUS then, there are limits!)
You’re confusing them with the Yippies, who never took politics as such seriously, but practiced politics as a form of street theater. OWS is not what you are describing. OWS is a lot more serious – because their concerns are not cultural but economic. Which doesn’t mean they can’t have some Yippie-school fun with it! 
But it is a real political phenomenon and movement, and calling it a sideshow won’t change that.
Or… they have a point about corporate personhood and are all on board to the point that they all get the joke.
Why do you keep calling them losers? Or… white trash 
The main reason I am not down there with them is that I have to work- a lot. Presumably lots of the protesters have been caught up in the recent unemployment wave. When unemployment jumps 5% in about a year and then stays there, it isn’t because an epidemic of ‘loseritis’ is sweeping the nation, it is because jobs are vanishing.
In the context of decades of GOP ‘starve the beast’ strategies like cutting taxes on the wealthy and driving up the debt with stupid, endless wars, I’d be pissed off too if bankers crashed the economy and the message from the government was, ‘sorry, there isn’t anything we can do to help, we’re too busy with all this bullshit.’ I have a good job with health insurance and the whole 9 and I am still pissed off. I don’t see why a dog prank would top your list of gripes.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
And there’s at least a couple common usages. You got the circus sideshow that is loud, colorful, and chaotic, and may, or may not, be a futile display of irrelevance. Another is a cavalcade of Diane Arbus mutations, such as the Republican debates, which inspire high levels of squick. Even as one feels compassion for the victims, one craves to look elsewhere.
But I think either or both miss the mark. Both analogies point to questions of relevance, will the OWS movement lead to effective political action, which is really just another way of asking when will they stop acting so silly and start playing by The Rules, so that they can co-opted and submerged, and their voices drowned out by Serious People saying very, very adult things.
**John **wants to know when they will stop being so silly, and engage the System as it is, like normal grown-ups. When will they recognize that the System, for all its minor faults and failures, has brought our nation to the happy position it currently enjoys! With, admittedly, a few minor faults and failures, the consequences of which tend to fall on our less worthy citizens.
When will they accept reality, and submit themselves to order and reason, to effect whatever minor cosmetic changes are possible, rather than flailing about looking for some new solution, some new approach. Why can’t they simply be vaguely liberal, in a strictly non-partisan fashion, and work for such changes as are practical, and leave real questions to the sober, sombre judgment of the grown-ups, who have guided our country to this happy, happy place.
Without position papers, and well-dressed spokesmen speaking in tones of moderation and calm deliberation, they are but a flash in the brain-pan, doomed to collapse in a matter of a couple days. OK, couple weeks. Two months, tops.
Like most of your attempts to read my mind or paraphrase my position, you got it wrong. Feel free to keep trying, though.
No, no, I am dismissed, brushed aside as unworthy of serious consideration. I will slink away. Perhaps some day, I will have something mature and adult to say. Kinda hope not, but, we’ll see.
Michael Lind (not a radical leftist himself) writes: