Comments on: How the Occupy movement may yet lead America

By: Beobachter

Beobachter — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:46:23 +0000

@Parker 1227
“then Western civilization really is doomed.”

Western CIVILIZATION?

…Legalised greed and the sole right of the strongest….

What we had in the way of civilization has been evaporating rather rapidly because of too free (financial-) market and neo-conservative power politics.

Why should people look up at us?, there is hardly any soft power left (Curiosity -Mars- is one of the few things that really is impressive in what we do), it seems as if it is only the religion of weaponry that seems to keep us on top.

By: Beobachter

Beobachter — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:33:33 +0000

@Parker 1227

“Control freak socialists have choked the life out of our once (mostly) free market economy.”

How did we the people benefit of late from that free market (Globalized, laisez faire, supply side-) economy?

By: MontyMoose

MontyMoose — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:33:10 +0000

I feel that only the energy that the Tea Party brought to America can save Romney’s
election.
The difference between the two is…Ideology versUS common differential
indifference. The tea party was not divided they had a central goal. Occupy is every small and large protest group .

By: xit007

xit007 — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 21:45:35 +0000

THere is corruption in our capitalist system but it is mostly where the money is – government and Wall Street. SO these people only had it half right. The insider trading and crony corporate boards – sling money around to those who can play. But government feeds off the private sector – through our tax dollars and spending kickbacks from private companies who are recipients of either – a waiver, a tax loop hole, a contract, an incentive — get my drift. All this while lying to us that they are going to fix our social safety net. Instead they figure out if they could take over healthcare and run that then they would have more private monies to play with — sick I know…….

By: SayHey

SayHey — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:11:10 +0000

Household debt has climbed? Perhaps they learned that from a government borrowing 40% of everything it spends. Nomination for Oxymoron of the Year: “intellectual leading light of the Occupy Movement”.

By: LEEDAP

LEEDAP — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 19:08:41 +0000

While there is some heady and counter-intuitive stuff here, I generally agree. However, fail to see the connection being made between the debt burden of the middle class and any sympathy with the occupy movement. Even though logically they are aligned, I don’t think the average voter chooses to identify with this dystopian band of renegades.

It was interesting to learn that Ad Busters folks instigated this whole thing. If somehow they could take their slick marketing skills and class up the disheveled campers just a bit, then maybe their message might be heard by more than just a few reporters looking for a story.

As compelling and logical their message, the inability of normal people to identify with the protesters makes hearing what they have to say a bit problematic.

By: borisjimbo

borisjimbo — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 06:40:30 +0000

Unfortunately if Occupy came back before the election my guess would be the Repos would us it as an example of lawlessness and unrest among the lefties, possibly pushing enough voters toward Romney to turn the election.

By: OneOfTheSheep

OneOfTheSheep — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 02:34:10 +0000

OWS has NO “enduring significance”. It’s DEAD. The “boundaries of our political conversation” already includes all “possibilities for the American left”. “We, the people” can easily see that the “American left” is quite well served at the highest levels of the White House and the U.S. Senate.

The “…liberating experience of collective effervescence and of being one with a crowd…the unspeakable joy of taking to the streets, taking spaces, exploring new relations and environments” undoubtedly resonates in the hearts and minds of those radical Marxist anarchists “…who hope in vain to breathe life back into “Occupy” (anything). They know they have NO prospect, ever, of attracting even 1/2 of 1% of Americans to their “cause”, but hope springs eternal.

Which is why Graeber and other “elite intellectual leading lights” intentionally spread their tent wide so as to include lazy, bored students, the homeless, and the most incompetent or unskilled of the hopelessly unemployed. There’s no news coverage without numbers!

The “parasitic elite” that threatens the economic viability of these United States is NOT the individuals at the top of our economic pyramid. It is the over 50% of Americans that today pay NO income tax. The debt “at the heart of our politics” is the debt our government incurs without our permission, that which necessitates regular and “routine” increases in America’s “debt limit”.

“Household debt”, the debt arising from imprudent use or abuse of consumer credit or the destruction of prime American crop land by covering it with ever more unsellable McMansions is but a rounding error when compared to the dollars “our” federal government shovels out day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. No one knows where the “OFF” switch is, or, at least if they do, they’re not telling.

By: zebra69

zebra69 — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:12:17 +0000

You and Hayes have a falling out?

By: mpragmatist

mpragmatist — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 11:35:53 +0000

It is amazing how one can become lost in liberal pseudo-intellectualism. One lofty concept begets another and minds join in the nexus of hope and change. The reality is that if all those nice kids actually succeeded in bringing about anarchy, hope and change would not be the result. Society would simply devolve into a myriad small armed camps where passivist liberals would be at the mercy or non-passive thugs who despise their weakness.
soon other agressive nations would move in to “restore order.” If an economic system is crashed, people suffer far worse than they are now. Successful people are successful because work hard and take risks. Thinking a group of spoiled, entitled, children who understand nothing about how an economy really works is pure fantasy. This article wasted time I could have spent reading ideas about how to improve the current system which provided those protesters the means for their little vacation from not working.