It appears I may have been too easy on the motley crowd of
rent-a-protesters, anarchists, communists, and socialists who are
protesting in New York. (Wait. Anarchists and
communists? How do they protest together? One wants no
state at all and the other wants an oppressive, choking, omnipotent
state?) It's easy to dismiss a crowd complaining about
"corporatism" who camp out and surround
themselves with it. Bottled water, McDonalds coffee, Vaio
laptops and MacBooks, Skippy Peanut Butter and Nutri-Grain
bars. Oh, and be sure to donate
some vegan food for them, would ya?
The Occupy Wall Street Crowd/Days of Rage crowd is spreading to other cities around the country (Tulsa? Really?). The numbers of useful idiots are increasing because the high-fame useful idiots (Michael Moore, Susan Saranwrap, and others) are showing up and making it the place "all the cool kids hang out", especially to a generation that values fame above all else.
Look, these folks haven't been shy about what they're up to; they simply want to collapse "the system". Steven Lerner, a VP of SEIU (before "plausible deniability") was caught on tape calling for this last March. Just today, in this video, one of the self-declared organizers said, ‘This Is Revolution Not Reform’ — (and) We Are Anarchists and Revolutionaries,‘This Is the Beginning of a Revolution in This Country’. They published a rambling, barely-coherent manifesto that bounces from:
- They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of
dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
- They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
And for the record, education may well be a human right, but going to college is not. You can educate yourself just fine with a library card, or better yet, your Internet connection. Where did the idea start that if you went to college you were guaranteed a high paying job right out of school? Didn't anyone tell them they need to have a marketable skill? Maybe they should think about such things before they take on that large debt, do you think?
Elsewhere, I've seen the demand for a $20 minimum wage. As long as we're pulling numbers out of our butts, why stop there? Why not $100? Why not $1000? Obviously, Fine Arts majors don't have a real fine grasp of "cause and effect".
These spoiled kids; these well-schooled but oh-so-ignorant protesters are classic examples of what Marx called "useful idiots". The society they are wishing for will crush them like they've never imagined being crushed. College students? Ask the survivors of the Cultural Revolution in China, Fidel Castro's revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia: the intellectuals are the first ones to be exterminated.
If you haven't read Sultan Knish's take on this, it may be the best word.
Yeah, protests in Tulsa! You go kiddo!!
ReplyDeleteI liked this part...
"If you noticed that this group seems to be a “weekend only” protest, it seems that many of the Facebook members have requested this because they have jobs."
The productive find more effective ways to protest. Exactly what to these kids hope to accomplish with their protest? Its one thing to protest the government where your elected representatives have to listen or risk losing their jobs, but what incentive do the big bankers and multinational CEOs have to listen to these kids? The protesters are in no way a threat to the protestees - protesters can't fire the CEO and they certainly don't have the financial clout to make the board listen. Do they really expect the big banksters to see their protest, realize the error of their ways, and repent and make things right like Zacchaeus the tax collector (ref. Luke 19:1-9)?
While I may agree in principle with a few of the points they're trying to make, I (and probably all the executives in the Wall Street offices) see this as nothing more than theatrics. If they really want to make a difference then they will have to actually gain an understanding of the system that they're protesting in order to target their protest at the places and in the ways that it will be most effective.
In another interesting twist of thought, I wonder how universal is the revulsion of these "protesters" against the Tea Party activists? I wonder if they see the "grass roots" parallels? But of course they're different... somehow.
Productive people (often) protest by becoming unproductive.
ReplyDeleteHow do unproductive people protest? (Hint: You're watching some of them on television.)
So the takeaway is that you must first be productive in order for your protest to have any sort of real meaning. That is the point that really strikes me about these "protests".
ReplyDeleteNow juxtapose these protests with the Tea Party movement, which is mainly comprised of productive individuals. Makes sense why the MSM embraces the ineffective and symbolic groups and vilifies the potentially effective ones - they also have a large vested interest in the status quo.
One of the takeaways of this whole protest is how similar they sound to the tea parties and others who are opposed to the crony capitalism we see everywhere. When profit is privatized and loss is socialized, the market can't work - and then we all lose. Scattered in the nonsense ideas from the occupiers are a few that sound reasonable.
ReplyDeleteBut I see a big difference between us saying to investigate, Fannie, Freddie and the other government involvements, stop the bailouts and shrink government vs. Roseanne Barr saying the rich people who can't be re-educated have to be beheaded.
I know it makes me sound bloodthirsty, but maybe Pol Pot had the right idea. When you consider our "intellectuals" - our college professors, our media "stars" and Hollywood freaks (certainly to include cretins like Barr) - it would probably do society a favor to eliminate them. I'd stop short of killing everyone who wears eyeglasses, though. There are lots of decent folks who need a little visual assistance ;-)
ReplyDeleteThen we need to re-institute the Pinkerton Agency for dealing with the unions . . .