Occupy Wall Street - Part 3

We need to be clear that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are addressing very serious issues concerning corporate influence over American public policy and America’s growing economic inequality.  The right has decided that the way to cut this movement off at the knees is to turn them into a joke.  “Conservative” commentators say the OWS folks are hippies, they are dirty, they will be gone when the first snow falls, they are backed by liberal fat cats (George Soros), they have sex in their sleeping bags, they play in drum circles & chant, etc.  The right hopes that by turning OWS members into a joke they will essentially diffuse the serious message they bring forward, it is a cowardly means of avoiding these very complex and critical issues.  The left should recognize this technique; they used it to attack the Tea Party, find the idiot with the placard of Obama made up as Hitler or dressed as an African bushman and paint them as racist.  This shit is easy; we are human and thus full of hypocrisy, illusions and inconsistencies.  Yes, I am sure that there are as many OWS protesters with (corporate) smart phones as there is social security and Medicare recipients railing in favor of small government in the Tea Party, but none of this necessarily invalidates or should invalidate the serious matters raised by both groups.   

The Tea Party missed the larger issue of our dangerous corporate crony capitalism that underpins our current “democracy.”  This situation has yielded our new American plutocracy.  This fact gets lost in their odd dialogue about socialism and big government.  The OWS protesters think that additional government regulation is the order of the day.  Any additional government regulation will be of the “Swiss cheese” variety.  Written by corporate lobbyist with holes big enough for the rats to crawl in and continue to eat, in this case the physician cannot heal itself.  Asking our government to legislate solutions to the problems OWS see will not work; it is like asking the fox to make the laws governing safety at the hen house.

At the end of the government cannot legislate economic equality, it can only ALLOW for economic equality by staying the fuck out of the way.  Allowing Americans, the businesses and institutions they create to be responsible for their own destinies, to stand and fall based on their own merits with no superfluous interventions from the government - that is (or should be) the American way.