Occupy Wall Street

this is obviously the new conservative talking point of the moment...like anyone in their right mind is going to take tactical advise from the tea party. please.

 

I am saying to you we have different perspectives that leads to miscommunication. You are saying to me that I am an idiot, stupid, a punk, lazy, illegitimate - and you think it is a job well done - because you just put me in my place.

Another anecdotal story, read at your own risk.

My grandmother had a fear of using escalators. No doubt it was irrational, she would even say it was irrational. But using that word did not solve the problem. I have irrational fears, I suspect most people do - and all I am doing right now is going through a process with you and a few others because you have...never mind. Let's move on.
--- merged: Oct 13, 2011 6:35 PM ---

Because of the alliance...but perhaps I am missing something.

 

Clearly, no politicians are aware of what's happening in New York or across the country. No pressure is being applied to them at all. Large groups of upset people do nothing to "apply pressure".

 

True. I really don't care. I don't even know why I started reading this thread. Moving on.

 

nice, ace. i've consistently referred to your posts, the style of your posting. i know about as much about you as a person as you know about me. that is to say, almost nothing. but here, there inevitably comes a point at which you decide that you're a victim. boo hoo. goddamn, this is tedious.

look, it's perfectly simple to find out what ows is about. it's entirely simple to figure out the effects that the movement is having at the level of legitimation of an incoherent arrangement brought to us by neo-liberalism.

it's also quite simple to work out why the right is panicking. you can see it happening. i expect that we'll soon see the organization levels of the right figure out that they can't stop this. at that point, i'm not sure what they'll do. if they're smart, they won't do anything. from what i can see, the right is already losing it's hold on the rhetoric that underpinned such populist appeal as it was able to generate and then direct into analytically bankrupt and politically suicidal perspectives that actually persuaded some people that more of what got us into this mess will get us out.

so first it was old-school red-baiting. then it was distortion of the basic movement. now it's instruction about how to target protests. what the right is also trying to do is act as though the new media impact of the ows movement doesn't exist. but once they do that, they miss the point entirely. right now, the movement---which is still spreading and connecting with other, similar movements all over the world (chile, anyone?)---is operating like a motor. it's already changing the questions that people are asking and the frameworks that people are asking them through. this isn't happening as a direct result of the people who are participating--it's happening through a host of synergies that are unfolding in front of you.

what's not so simple at this point is what will happen if this keeps going...at the moment, it's largely a motor that's accelerating and focusing what increasingly appears to be a legitimation crisis....

 

Yeah,maybe they need to find more common ground with the Tea Party movement. Get some guns in the fight.

I admit, the whole OWS movement appears a bit ineffectual at the moment but so did the Egyptian movement went it first started out. The greatest difference between the two - a single minded focus. If the OWS movement can find a way to bring its disparate entities together for consensus on a narrow platform of demands, it will sprout more powerful legs. Even if it can't, the ability to hang in there for the long haul may lead to greater, more focused pressure on policy makers.

 

Maybe you're the one mis-characterizing and misinterpreting the OWS movement. Just because you're from a place with with a lot of leftists doesn't mean you know anything about what's going on with OWS. And it's quite arrogant of you to act as though being Canadian gives you a better perspective on political movements. Spare us the condescension.

 

Me too. Where's my cookie?

 

I think differently than you and believe differently than you. And therefore our individual perspectives differ. I understand that's difficult for you to absorb, but you'll just have to try.

 

any pass you might get based on this feeble "thinking differently" argument doesn't extent to systematic mis-representation of matters of fact. and it doesn't let you off the hook for being able to defend your frame of reference. so far you have shown that you have no particular grip on the factual level and cannot defend your frame of reference. so i would say that you're wasting our time.

i believe the technical term is trolling.

 

You want cheese with that whine?

I have expressed, at length, my views on OWS. If that's not satisfactory to you, that's your problem, not mine. If you can't glean from my posts exactly where I stand and what my basis for that stance is, then you haven't read my posts adequately. I have made my points...you and your cohorts have countered and this has continued for some time now. So don't accuse me of trolling simply because my responses are not to your liking. No one has forced you to engage me in debate, but you chose to do so. If you'd like to bow out that's fine, no sweat off my sack.
--- merged: Oct 13, 2011 8:28 PM ---

Again with the condescension. I'm starting to see this as your m.o. Fact is, your views are based on nothing more concrete than mine, Canadian.

 

No. The OWS folks see that the political system is rigged to favor those with more money. Not all the wealthy are the problem, just the few that take advantage of this weakness in the system.

Separately, many OWSers are familiar with American history, specifically the 1930s. This isn't talked about often in the American media, but following the crash in the 1920s, the thing that got the whole economy going again was not capitalism, not private companies hiring... it was the FDR administration's policy of increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to hire 11 million Americans and to jump-start the economy. Granted, unemployment was worse then, in the mid 20% range, but it actually worked. FDR proposed a ~100% marginal tax rate: basically any money made above $25,000 would be taxed. He bargained with the Republicans in the legislative branch down to something like 94% above $25,000 (adjusted for inflation, $25,000 in 1935 would be around $330,000 in 2011). It was a smashing, resounding success. It was so successful, in fact, it more than anything else is what can be cited as the foundation of the American middle class for decades. It stayed around 91% through 1962, when it was lowered to around 75%. In 1982, it was dropped to 50%, then in 2000 to 35%. It's now 33%. The process by which money in politics has shaped to tax code is called class warfare, it's been going on for a long, long time and it directly corresponds to deficit problems. It's not as simple as not liking fat cats, it's actually returning to one of the central contributing factors in America's most successful economic times. It's returning to a system under which most of the rich were happy to pay more and the entire country flourished. We're trying to get back to a financially stable, fair country.

We would, but we don't have millions to spend on lobbyists. Protesting the government has been tried and, recently, has failed spectacularly, most notably in 2003 when the largest protest in human history failed to stop the stupid, wasteful, and downright evil invasion of Iraq. It doesn't work anymore, so we're trying something new, by bringing attention to the bribers instead of the bribees.

 

So this resounding chorus of 1% this and 99% that is just a figment of my imagination?

 

You don't have a perspective, Eddie. You have a single tape playing in a loop in your head. We're just trying to help you realize that there are other tapes you need to listen to in order to form an actual perspective.

 

Well, you could always try voting for someone who doesn't hand over $1 trillion of taxpayer money to Wall St. and who doesn't further invest our nation in the two wars in the Middle east.
--- merged: Oct 13, 2011 8:37 PM ---

Ignore.