It’s funny, the most striking thing to me about Occupy Wall Street is the thing that nobody really seems to be talking about much. It’s the thing that makes it abundantly clear that Occupy Wall Street is a genuine, people powered movement, and it’s the thing that makes Occupy Wall Street more obviously credible than the tea party movement was. What is it? It’s the fact that the vast majority of people in the movement voted for Obama. They voted for Obama and yet, they’re taking action because they feel that Obama hasn’t. They’re doing something that most people are simply incapable of doing; railing against their own political party in order to do what they feel is in the best interest of the country.
Contrast that to the tea party. They sat on their fucking hands until the guy they were vehemently opposed to from the beginning, got elected president. Protesting against the guy you always hated gives you an inherent inauthenticity.
Now protesting in order to force the guy that you voted for to deliver on his promises, that’s what patriotism looks like. It’s putting your country ahead of the political team you’re on. And it’s a sign of an authentic movement. Wearing a tri-cornered hat isn’t patriotism. It’s fucking Halloween.
Regular readers of this blog are aware of how I feel about blind dedication to a party; it’s stupid, and you will fuck yourself and everyone else when you put your party before your own self interest. We collectively need to start looking more critically at what our politicians do on a case by case basis, rather than sticking by them because they’re in “the right” party.
How different would our current situation be today, if conservatives had stuck to their conservative principles during the Bush presidency? Would we have an intelligence community authoritatively monitoring us without warrants or probable cause? Would we have massive deficits if they had stood up and screamed every time the words “emergency supplemental” were introduced by the administration and the republican congress? Okay, we probably still would have gone to war, but there are some issues in which I believe would have turned out differently if conservatives had been conservative when their president was running the country.
I believe that liberals and conservatives are inherently different on the issue of blind loyalty. I believe that conservatives, by their nature, “conserve”. They are more accepting of the status quo, regardless of how shitty the status quo is. And I believe that they viscerally prefer less nuance in their decision making process. They like for things to be clear cut, allowing them to make black and white choices. I think that liberals are all about the nuance, maybe too much sometimes. I think that liberals are more prone to bucking the system. Any system. Liberals are, by definition, more liberal in how they process information. By liberal, I mean generous. Liberals are more generous with their critical thinking and more open to looking deeper into issues, and more open to changing their opinions as new information is presented. Not all liberals are like that, but I feel very comfortable in saying that more people that call themselves liberals are capable of it, than those who call themselves conservatives.
Participants of the Occupy Wall Street movement are, in my estimation, the most liberal with their thoughtfulness. They voted for someone that they believed would change the system. When he didn’t deliver, they realized they were wrong and did something about it. Admitting you were wrong is one of the hardest thing for most people to do. The occupiers have done that. They deserve to be praised for that. And that act of admitting they were wrong tells you that this is an authentic movement.
Instead of being praised, they’re being ridiculed and dismissed by the main stream media. By contrast, the tea party were given the benefit of the doubt, and mostly praised right from the beginning. They were praised for being a “grassroots movement” Fox News actively promoted the tea party, which should have been the first sign of inauthenticity. Not just because it was Fox, but because having a massive media conglomerate behind something these days, means that it’s not a movement for the people.
Don’t be fooled by the positive coverage that some of the MSNBC hosts are giving Occupy Wall Street. Here’s how things at MSNBC work; the network has very little control over anything their hosts say. That’s generally written into their contracts. They can “encourage” the hosts to go in a certain direction, but they can’t tell them what to say. If they become too problematic in what they say, they eventually get fired like Phil Donahue did. He had the highest rated show on MSNBC and still got fired for being against the Iraq war, when it wasn’t fashionable to do so. I know that Maddow isn’t giving Occupy Wall Street a ton of coverage. I can’t speak to how much the other hosts are talking about it, because I don’t watch it much. Here’s Cenk Uygur revealing his experiences with MSNBC;
The next sign of the inauthenticity of the tea party was all of that bussing people into rallies crap. What kind of fucking moron gets on a bus that will take them hundreds of miles to a rally for free, and doesn’t ask, “Who paid for this bus?”. And to add to the irony, they took advantage of that free bus ride to protest the notion that someone might get healthcare for free. If you’re against people getting free shit, you might want to consider paying your own way, you fucking hypocritical asshats. They were the opposite of a grassroots movement. That should have been obvious to anyone with two braincells to rub together.
Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has been turning down big donations. They’re not falling into the same trap that the teabaggers fell into. When the unions decided to join the movement, it was decided at a general assembly meeting, that they would allow the unions to participate with the caveat that the unions would not be allowed to speak for the movement. They’re being much smarter about not being co-opted than the teapublicans ever were.
In terms of main street media coverage, we’re living in opposite land. They’re taking every cheap shot they can to discredit this movement from claiming that George Soros is funding them, to claiming that they’re in that park to have sex and do drugs (is that supposed to be a deterrent?). They’ve been called every name in the book. The main stream media is actively working to break up this movement. And since we all know that the mainstream media is owned by giant corporate entities, their disdain for this movement should tell you that it’s probably a movement that is fighting for you.
This movement is the real deal. You can tell that they’re the real deal because it took them a while to come up with a message. You can tell it’s the real deal because there are still a lot of people holding up signs advocating for things that are off message. You can tell it’s real because many police forces across the country are doing everything they can to break them up. You can tell it’s real because people in the movement have the conviction to camp out and literally occupy.
To summarize, a fake grassroots movement includes;
-Corporate media backing
-Asshats getting on free busses to stop people from getting life saving health care
-Fuckwads trying to take down a president they always hated
A real grassroots movement includes;
-People smelling bad because they’ve got the conviction of living in a fucking park indefinitely
-Corporate media ridicule
-A message that comes together over time as momentum grows
-NO corporate donations
I hope this helps to clear up any confusion that anyone may have had.
