The news that 175 people were arrested over the weekend in a Chicago OWS protest started me thinking about the ritualized nature of left demonstrations. The drums, the chants, the defiance, the arrests — and, sometimes, the glass smashing and the fire setting: it all unfolds according to a predictable pattern that in its modern form is essentially unchanged since the Vietnam War.He does have a point. The Occupy protestors are either professional activists, unemployed dropouts, or union agitators on the make -- with a few anarchists, pedophiles, and other career criminals to add diversity.
...Back in the day, when most workers in American industry had workweeks of seventy and eighty hours, had little or no formal education and lacked the money and the leisure to do much about politics as individuals, mass demonstrations really meant something. People were giving up all the leisure time they had in a week, they were risking being blacklisted — losing their jobs and being blocked from working in their field in a time with no unemployment insurance or social safety net — and they were walking into situations where “police brutality” meant getting killed or disabled, with no lawsuits or compensation.
...Those demonstrations were often the only way people had to show what was on their minds and how deeply they felt. These days, when the electorate is being constantly polled, and cable news channels are feverishly tracing every tiny tick in public opinion, demonstrations don’t really tell us anything. Nor do they change things much; if the Tea Party had stopped with rallies, it would have been forgotten very quickly. It was only when Tea Party activists stopped dressing up in those ridiculous three cornered hats and started organizing, fundraising and attending town halls that the movement had a substantive impact. _WalterRussellMead
At the Cleveland Occupy sit-in, a young girl was raped -- and the organisers apparently tried to cover it up. At the Baltimore Occupy sit-ins, the cover-up machine is in full pre-emptive swing. At the Seattle Occupy sit-in, a pedophile was out exposing himself to young children. And how many other incidents are we not hearing about, because the politically correct clamp-down is in full effect. Remember: If it shows Obama and his supporters in a bad light, the skankstream media will simply ignore it.
It is instructive to look at the riots occurring on the tiny island of Mayotte. The native islanders -- largely unemployed and on the dole -- have gone on the rampage, demanding much more generous welfare benefits from the paternal French protectors of the island. How do these island riots -- and similar riots on French islands in the Caribbean -- relate to the Occupy movement?
It is quite simple. Persons who are largely outside the productive wealth-generating system of a society will often demand to be supported by the government apparatus of redistribution, once they feel they have the political power to make those demands. Rather than gaining the skills, competencies, and expertise to become part of the productive, wealth-generating segment of society themselves, they choose to use the threat of violence and civil disorder to extort redistributionist "tribute" from the state.
The Occupy sit-ins are not about justice in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, they are about moolah. They are about taking money from productive persons and transferring that money to layabouts, so that they can continue to pay their bills while laying about.
Readers who remember discussions here about psychological neoteny, the flight from childhood responsibility, and the lack of meaningful rites of passage in modern child-raising, will start to understand how movements such as Occupy can gain traction -- even in a modern society.
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