I keep trying to like this Occupy Wall Street movement, I really do. I made a crack recently that I wished they would emulate John Dillinger a little more and Michael Moore a little less, but, hell, anything that identifies bankers and CEOs as bad guys and crystallizes a sense of class consciousness can’t be all bad, right?
Right?
I’m not so sure. And exactly for the reasons in this picture posted by Chris La Tray:
That’s not to say that there aren’t some serious concerns that need addressing, but when I read stuff like the messages posted in We Are the 99 Percent, what I see are a bunch of incredibly over-educated middle-class people bitching because their incredible sense of entitlement hasn’t yet been met.
And that’s something I ain’t interested in. Not even a little bit. Because what it does is reinforce the vantage point of those CEOs and bankers. Instead of questioning their right to do what they do, it only requests that the plunder be spread a little more broadly amongst the educated class. And I have a big problem with that, for reasons that Joe Bageant summed up a few years back:
For maybe 20 years I chased after the “things” that symbolized transcendence of my poor rural background — big historic house with several fireplaces, antique guns on the wall, complete silver service right down to the caviar ware. And when I was done, it all just sat there looking back at me from behind glass cabinets — and I was drinking too much and creating nothing. A couple of refinances later, I finally got the message. This stuff owns you. Because a system owns you.
Now I am debt free, writing what I want, and understand that capitalism is the name of that extractive monetary system. It is the wine press and we are the grapes. And I have come to understand that our elite monetary masters will continue to crank the press down on anyone who participates in this system. No matter how poor we think we are, there is plenty more to be squeezed from Americans.
Anyway, just my two cents, but I don’t think the world needs a movement made of people whose sole goal is to gain their place at the wine press. And that’s what Occupy Wall Street looks more and more like — like middle class people trying to retain their place doing what middle class people do, which Joe Bageant speaks to here in The Kingdom of Survival:
To be honest, I have trouble even conceiving of Occupy Wall Street as a movement at this point, in that it only reifies the legitimacy of the wine press. And the only movement I’m interested in would be the one looking to smash the fucking thing into splinters.
Wrote a piece on colorado indy media you may be interested in. http://colorado.indymedia.org/node/8299
Great, thought-provoking post. In the bigger picture, all the things you point out are absolutely true. The false sense of entitlement we all seem to have as Americans is a symptom of the culture that would require an entirely different movement to address– one that would be less about taking to the streets and more about looking into our own hearts (if you’ll pardon the ‘touchy-feely’-ness of that statement). I think of the protests as a good start, though. The bankers and corporations are indeed the bad guys, always have been, and the more exposure that fact gets, the more it’ll seep into the popular consciousness via media– the only way anything ever gets through to anyone these days.
I agree that the only real solution is to smash the entire thing to splinters. But we don’t have the balls for that– or at least, we don’t have the balls to admit that’s what we really want.
Either way, I support the protesters one hundred percent, and hope the movement gets bigger and bigger. Maybe, if we’re lucky, some positive change can happen and then we can start addressing the rest of the world’s injustices.
I just met up with the protesters here at an Occupy Dayton rally. I understand your perspective above, and to a certain point I agree with you. But here is the way things work: until people feel it THEMSELVES, they assume that someone else is going to bail out the brown people living on other continents. I’ve been an anthropologist for 18 years now, professionally, and I can attest that the US middle class likes to create caricatures of “the others” in the world to be used toward their own best interest. The image above is yet another example of this. Not every person in (what I am assuming is an African nation pictured above) is starving. And guess what? Those who are are starving because of their OWN top 1% ripping them off. The story is the same elsewhere.
And to further belabor this point, let’s talk about the IMF and the World Bank. These organizations have been touted by the majority of the middle class as “international aid agencies” when they are nothing of the kind. They are basically organizations like the Fed (our Federal Reserve has been continuously attacked by the protestors as one of the sources of our own economic demise) that screwed up economies the world over with models of development that promoted Adam Smith’s ideas of free market economies coming to the rescue. I don’t want to break this all down but if you are interested in learning more about this, a nice but somewhat boring film to watch is “Life in Debt” about the Jamaican economy.
When I was in undergraduate school, I dated a man who was very passionate about the IWW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World
I used to think he was crazy. But in fact, if you think about it, the only way to address the world’s injustices is to start small and think big. Start with the injustices in your own back yard and move forward. Fight the structures that oppress in your own land and then look around for those that do so elsewhere.
I like this story by David Graeber:
Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
“Up in our country we are human!” said the hunter. “And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.”
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/431372
I like to be human. In this way, I support the other humans around me who are fighting for their own lives and financial well-being.
I want to believe with all my heart that the protests are a start. I’m not sure those in the streets there are even conscious of what it is they are protesting (hopefully not the chance to become bankers). It’s why sometimes I write (and say) I can’t wait for the extremists on the right (the ubber capitalist backers) to get their way already so the house of cards can collapse all that much sooner … because unfortunately, things need to get worse here (like the picture beneath the protests above) before capitalism is squashed. It won’t happen in my lifetime (those with the gelt are too clever and will probably throw a few more bones to the masses for years to come) but sooner or later, I have to believe (and refuse to discount the possibility) it will crash and burn itself out … I sure hope so.
I dunno, maybe I’m too cynical. As I just posted on FB, I guess what makes me mad is that for all the working class people I know, all the stuff that’s being bitched about on We Are The Other 99% has been the norm for decades. Low wages, no health insurance, no security, etc. I laughed when I saw one of the folks on that site bitching because their household income is only 40k. Most of the folks I know would kill for an annual income of 40k. Hell, I’m almost forty, and up until three years ago, I never made more’n that. (And I know how lucky I am that I do now.)
Part of it just seems like they’re just whining because they now have to deal with what working class folks have had to deal with the whole time. Which is fine, whine away. But I got sick of the self righteousness of the whole thing.
Well, it’s worth noting that the 99tumblr and Occupy Wall Street are two different things. Some of the 99tumblr folks are just distressed middle class types now shocked to find out what we’ve already discovered—life can suck. The OWS people really are putting something on the line, and there’s a great mix there. Of course, like any open demonstration, there are lots of politics, including tedious white-bro middle-class politics. Here’s one thing I found heartening, though of course it’s a drag to have to go through these very basic arguments time and again:
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/03/so-real-it-hurts-notes-on-occupy-wall-street/
Here’s another thing I have a tiny tiny bit to do with:
http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1689242.html
My friend who is there sends me a message every day. He says that it’s unlike all the other protests he’s been to before, in a number of countries, because he can not yet tell how the protest is going to end. That’s a good thing.
Damn good point, Nick. I was conflating the two because I’m watching ‘em both at the same time. And thanks for the links.
Also, good piece, Glenn. Thanks.
The good thing about this Occupy Wall Street thing is that at least it is getting people talking about the situation with the banks/government. It makes people like me look at more information and try to understand what is it exactly that is going on. I don’t think everyone in NYC is there for the same reason, and I don’t think that they truly understand the magnitude of the whole situation.
About I was just commenting in another thread earlier today that what this SHOULD be about is breaking the machine. People don’t realize that the global economy is entirely based on the enslavement of debt and that there is NO real wealth other than what the 1% hold. I even went so far as to suggest that if this was REALLY a revolt against the system that a run on the banks and a complete collapse may be the only thing that will prompt any solutions. This would quickly show people who the 99% really are. If everyone refused to continue the debt cycle that makes the world economy tick by paying off loans where possible and ceased to deposit into the banking system… the whole world would be thrown under. I doubt anyone wants to take that drastic of a step though.
I like what KAK said: Not every person in (what I am assuming is an African nation pictured above) is starving. And guess what? Those who are are starving because of their OWN top 1% ripping them off. The story is the same elsewhere. Very few people realize that the economic issues WORLDWIDE are based on the actions of an elite few.
The basis of the “99%” is flawed, and not reported correctly. The top 1% of households has grown immensely in net over the past 30 years, whereas the bottom 99% has not. This is fact…..But as usual, facts can be very decieving.
(1) 30 years ago, it was still the norm for men to work and most wifes to stay home. Women that did work tended not to be professionals. Today, women essentially parallel men in the workforce. The result of this is that a two-professional household now builds a net worth at a rate only the rarest could a generation ago.
(2) 30 years ago single mother households were relatively rare. The statistics on the poverty level of single mother housholds are staggering. A quick look at the percentage of households headed by single mothers shows that this alone is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the problem. Shockingly, if the single mother households are removed from the overall data, African-American households are virtually a dead parallel with Caucasian households.
(3) The “work” done by the majority of people today is not “wealth creating”, and hence they are not paid enough to get ahead. If you are building a product that is good, the market likes it, then sales are increasing and you are making more product and more money. If you get your college education and work as a IT program manager in a company that sells a service to other service providers, you are not growing the economy, and ability to do more and make more are limited.
To say that the “rich” are robbing everyone, and that is the reason for the economic situation, is a farse. It is up to everyone to look beyond the sound bites and deal with the reality.
By the way….I am not one of the 1%. I have worked like a dog in small companies for 30 years, growing them and making decent wages. I have been unemployed now for over 2 years, largely because no one is investing in truly small companies in this environment. The government defines small companies as <500 employees. The focus needs to be on the TRULY small companies, the ones with <50 employees. These are the companies that are out there taking risks and either succeeding (and growing to 500 employees, creating massive jobs), or failing, and the folks try again. THIS is where the growth needs to come from.
Pingback: Quote » Kick Him, Honey
Pingback: Occupy Denver full of shit, Denver anarchists not so much » Kick Him, Honey