Occupy THIS, Commie!

You do realize that much of what we're dealing with today started (as it's been mentioned on here a few times) with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, right?

Deregulation got us into this mess, and you're championing...more deregulation?

 

I'm sure this will generate a fair bit of hate, but oh well.

From the outside looking in, it seems odd to me that the focus of the current rage is Wall Street. Everyone's pissed off that they are poorer than they were, but consider the following:

1 trillion in 40 years seems fairly expensive to me. Then again,

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that people are finally paying attention, I just struggle with the concept that the U.S. has been pissing hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain for decades and no-one really minded, as long as they weren't personally affected. Wouldn't it make sense to elect a government that will stop hemorrhaging money on these fairly futile exercises? Unless of course the majority of citizens want a Government that will continue with those strategies; in which case, isn't a widespread tightening of the belt a fair price to pay for them?

 

Deregulation. The biggest causes of the problems that the we are seeing today. Corporations and banks run amok. This is one of the main reasons I really have a problem with the "Wall Street" part of this. Sure, you can be angry at Wall Street. We get it.

But when an unleashed pit bull runs amok on a playground and bites a few kids, who gets the brunt of the blame? The dog that had no leash, or the owner who let if off the leash?

What these protesters are demanding is "change from Wall Street". Good, I agree. But by asking Wall Street to govern/change themselves, doesn't that sound a little, "free market".
Not only that you have to be able to follow up your demands by having something that can be used to pressure them. "We're going to inconvenience you! You will be forced to smell our smelliest members that we station by the door you use to get to your high level office building" doesn't really cut it.

The only thing the Occupy Wall Street movement can really do is promise physical violence on the people in charge, but with the exception of the few thugs that are there, that isn't a realistic option.

Remember the owner that let the pit bull get off the leash?:

Spoiler

There are real consequences for them that come every 2-4-6 years. They let the pitbull of the leash. Sure, the pitbull has been licking peanut butter off their balls for years, but it is time to show them directly what the people want, in their faces, and work to get the same old people out of the offices that have been held onto for years.

I know it is hard for the largely liberal crowd to go after their own guy when he is in office, but they need to up the pressure on him, congress, and others to get regulations back on the table, and make sure that the cozy relationship between the richest folks and their congressmen is gone.

 

The thing is, the war on drugs and terror is a bit like an excessive lottery habit. You're never going to win back enough to justify the sunk costs, and it's unreasonably expensive for such a pointless activity. But if you've got enough money to support it without damaging your lifestyle? It's stupid - but it's not the worst thing in the world.

When Gramm-Leach-Bliley removed the protections against greedy cocksuckers playing both sides against the middle for their own profits, that were put into place after the great depression, when greedy cocksuckers played both sides against the middle for their own profits and it fucked over the economy, something surprising happened. The bars over our windows were gone, and greedy cocksuckers snuck through that open window and fucked the economy. They robbed the poor to pay the rich.

Suddenly - all those pointless fucking lottery tickets we've been buying, gambling on something that we're almost certainly never going to win at, starts seeming like a really fucking bad idea. All that money going out and never coming back - that's pretty fucking bad. But it's still not the real problem. We could have paid for that gambling habit just fine, if we'd just had some bars over the windows. So first, lets find the greedy cocksuckers who robbed us all, and string them up by their nuts as a public warning against anti-social douchebaggery. Then lets find the cocksucker who took the bars off the windows and give him a really serious kick in the balls for either being obnoxiously stupid, or fucking in on it. And if he was in on it (and we should be able to figure that out by checking his bank statement) - lets string him up by his nuts as well. Then, when we're not being fucked out of our money by assholes, lets have a look at this gambling problem and see if we can't instead spend it on cancer medicine or education or something.

 

Occupy DC marched up and down M Street today, hooting and hollering. One guy was running around sarcastically yelling about how we were all bad Americans for not shopping. Apparently some 18-year-old from a neighboring school has declared my entire university the 1%, and it made Huffington Post. My posts in this thread should show I support the cause, but what a goddamn joke.

 

If you let me put down any "pit bull" that bites a child, I'd happily subscribe to your metaphor.

That being said it's obvious that Wall Street and Washington are mutually complicit, and in fact one of the biggest objections OWS is making is to the "financial-government complex," where there is a revolving door between major Wall Street Banks, the Treasury, the Fed and various congressional offices. They are so entwined with one another that I consider a protest of Wall Street to be a protest of Washington, and a protest of Washington to be a protest of Wall Street.

 

And while we're at it, let's suppose that OWS had decided instead to protest on the mall in DC, or in front of the White House. Is there anyone here who believes it would still be going strong two months later, or that it would have attracted the attention and the allies that it has?

Going after the Bogey Man was the right thing to do. It was and is a symbolic gesture meant to show nothing more than to tell the world that the people who support this movement are pissed off and want change, and they know who controls the puppets in DC. And more importantly, it got the attention of the media in ways it never would have, had it been a demonstration outside of Congress.

 

I think that the reason that it's gotten so much attention is that it's so vague. I'm not saying this in a bad way; our economic system doesn't have a bogeyman that we can grab our pitchforks and torches and kill. Everything from high-risk leveraging to predatory lending to the government encouraging lending to shitty applicants - there's no one problem that we can do a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on and Reform the System. The system is pretty damn sick, and it's going to take a determined effort from a lot of intelligent, informed people to change how we do things.

I think we have the will; we wouldn't have thousands of people sitting outside in the cold if we didn't. But what now? How do we take this energy (Please don't make me say "motivation") and channel it toward something that will outlast the next batch of lobbyists to come into Washington? Frankly, I don't see it happening. Any change that happens will be incremental, and I'm willing to bet that there are enough Congressmen who are either dumb or corrupt and will either block any sort of beneficial legislation or introduce useless or outright counterproductive legislation of their own. Yeah, I guess I'm being pessimistic. But history is cluttered with examples of good intentions being wasted on garbage or being taken advantage of by politicians who use them as a stepping stone for gaining the very power that they're ostensibly trying to get rid of.

 

OWS will be a success if it continues to generate awareness of any handful of the glaring social inequalities in the US. When my Southern, red-state parents hear about a war veteran being nearly killed by a tear gas canister, they listen. When they see an 84-year old pepper sprayed by domestic police officers, they inquire why. When they drive into any major city in our country and see protesters, they ask what the issue is. It doesn't take a whole lot of time to explain why things are fucked, and so many things are fucked, it's not hard to incense people who were sold the American Dream.

Through any number of measures, it's not hard to determine that the way wealth is distributed in America befits a 3rd-world dictatorship more than the most powerful, wealthiest society in history. It's been getting worse for the past 40 years, and that demands accounting for because frankly, there are millions of people who cannot and will not be exploited further.

The catalyst was tying Wall Street financial derivatives (bets), to insurance used to hedge against those bets, to Middle American's homes. You can gamble all the retirement funds and extra money that people have invested you want because that's what investment is: a gamble. You win some, you lose some. A house was not a gamble, at the beginning. It was a necessity, one of the four things a human being needs to survive along with food, water and air. People who didn't have money to invest and had nothing at all to do with the derivatives market started to lose their homes and jobs.

In 2008, when gas was still $1.50, no one was as pissed at Congress as they are right now. The level of corruption and finger-fucking that the various lobbies are responsible for was just as often ignored. It's not any longer, unemployed people can't afford to be ignorant. Poor people need to be more savvy and that starts with the question of "Where did my money go?" and "Where did my job go?"

Now, the protests are doing what they are meant to do: make people aware. Now people are seeing Congress do shit like declare pizza a vegetable (Do they know 8-year olds can't vote?) and they realize they are no longer represented the way they thought they were. Now people are connecting the dots, all the way back to Nixon.

Where does this lead? My prediction is that Americans start regarding poverty as a national embarrassment and not the usual horseshit of "It's your own damned fault for not working hard enough." We also turn American exceptionalism into American Darwinism, where we adopt the policies and strategies from around the world to suit the current political needs. We will look at places like Sweden, Brazil, Germany and China and think: that could work. We will also follow the same trend as always: 30 years behind Europe and start to adopt some "socialist" policies that provide a firmer safety net.

My grandparent's battle was Democracy vs. Communism. My parent's battle was over race and gender. My generation's battle will be class equality, and I don't think I'm being a dirty, hippie fuckwad for saying that I think things can and should be more equal, corporations should compete more and have less influence on American politics.

 

Tying into everything you so eloquently typed:

 

I have always heard this "make people aware" line for years regarding every cause. Everyone protesting knows that is what they are doing. Making people aware. People want to be a part of something big, and this is an easy way to do it. By sitting outside, holding a sign, and joining in the occasional chant for the news cameras. But there has to be follow through. Going on and on about how you are making people aware months later starts to just seem more and more like moral masturbation.

Think what you will of the Tea Party, those people managed to have the follow through to get candidates that got into elected office. And their platform was mainly "the president is a nigger, Regan was a god, and every abortion kills Jesus"

What they need to start doing is actually to take a page out of the tea party book. Break away from this whole "Occupy" bit. When people hear that word they think of Iraq, and post WWII, or a public toilet. Stagnant, unmoving.

Get more people to your cause by moving towards a more general public friendly format. No drum circles and signs, but rent out space in communities to hold open forum town halls, like the local library, not a dirty camp.

Question the shit out of your local congress critter when they come to town. Shit, dig up dirt on them on any dirty dealings that they have been involved with. Did they have lunch with a senior person at BofA? Call them on it. Work hard to get them to openly be on your side.

 

Reportedly from a NYPD officer's facebook:

 

I see that cops love using irritating grammar and retarded abbreviations just like any OTHER Facebook-toting moron. It won't take long for social media to "out" these guys (if they haven't already I dunno) you can bet on that.

Bountymoney to whoever batons somebody? Maybe police academy should be a longer-lasting education experience than 10 short weeks to drum out these psychopaths.

All that post was missing was a couple of BOOM!!ROASTED's.

 

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a necessary film to watch. It will install a white-knuckling, purple fury anger in any working class citizen. If this film doesn't make the mind reel and the stomach churn towards what corporate greed can do, I don't know what will.

Too Big to Fail is a bullshit film that makes Henry Paulson out to be some sort of crusader instead of what he is: the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who happened to be the only big survivor of the market crash, who ruined America for the sake of making the sure the rich STAYED rich. It's a propaganda film that obviously didn't do any fact-checking. Don't watch this movie, there's a reason films like this never make anything but straight-to-TV.

 

That was some form of humor where you take something that isn't true, and then push it to the extreme. Shock value? I can't remember.

 

Wait, wait, wait. Explain to me how increasing the taxes of millionaires will fuck over the poor? See, I always assumed poor could in part be defined as "not a millionaire".