Occupy Wall Street

So now we're supposed to believe that ows is part of some political process?

 

ows is a process.

 

Much like most significant movements in the history of the U.S.

There are bumps along the road and there is often division from within. But most notably, there is always vocal opposition from without from those who feel put upon by a movement's desire for change or worse, those who play the victim.

 

I guess I should stop using the word "occupy" when referring to the protesters because most of them aren't occupying anymore. They're just sort of hanging around during the day and then scattering at night. Most of them probably go back to their dorm rooms.

 

You demonstrate here that you only care about people's opinions if they are close to your own. If not they are "rewriting history", "brainwashed by the "right winged media", or "just plain not as "informed and in tune" as you are.

No, you just degrade and talk down to people who disagree with you. You refuse to show your "facts" even when asked to do so. You ignore portions of posts that make good points. You confront people who challenge you as hated enemies instead of someone you can actually learn from (because again the persona you display here TO ME, appears as one of someone who thinks themselves "better and smarter than everyone else". To me you are nothing but a blowhard who refuses to meet anyone half way and degrades anyone who challenges you.

I don't like you or your superior personage demonstrated here either. I speak not to be a martyr but HOW I FEEL. I speak in my terms about me because I cannot nor will not speak for others unless MY experience allows me to. MY opinions are just that MY opinions.

If you feel I am trying to martyr myself, then ok, truly I don't care. I am not here to be your friend or to win your favor, when it is obvious we have no respect for each other at all. Ooopsy, I must be martyring myself because I don't give a damn what you think of me.

Challenging my opinion when you act superior and that yours is the only viable one and mine doesn't matter, is very degrading and yes, I do consider it a personal attack when you sit and come across acting like one's intellect is less than yours and thus doesn't matter. I simply have ZERO respect for that (your) attitude.

You can believe whatever reason you need to for my apathy towards your attitude. If there were a block button here I'd block you. I truly only answer you because at times you seem to want to speak for me and about me as if I do not have the intellect to do so.

I supported that Roach "rewrote history with his own" in regards to the Unilever takeover of Ben and Jerry's. In post 1034, where Roach made up Roach's own history of Unilever's takeover of Ben and Jerry's, I provided facts that his history was totally BS. I seriously doubt you will call Roach out on his rewrite of history simply because you probably think that history is more accurate than the facts I presented. Of course I don't claim to know Ben. I don't in public name drop to prove my points or try to impress. i do however know someone relatively famous who once was a prominent Chicago democrat and is now a Republican because of attitudes like yours. I won't name drop though but all you have to do is check out my FB friends list and you will see his name. Not because I fear you will challenge me, but because I fear you would degrade him here just to ease your ego.

BUT I'm the one rewriting history? I provided facts to prove Roach's history wrong yet you and Roach refuse to do the same for me, you just simply tell me I'm wrong, and yet refuse to show factual evidence where I am wrong. I show you courtesy, you show me disdain. I can only come to the conclusion that you don't have the facts to prove me wrong, your attacks lie simply in your beliefs and self indulgence in trying to make the one you disagree with look less than. I guess if that is what you need to do to justify your treatment of others opinions then so be it. Mazel tov to you.

I disagree, I have immense apathy towards your persona and attitude but I don't hate you personally. Don't even know you nor do I care to. We are too different in how we handle things, yet very much the same in some ways. So this may be true, what I dislike about you, I could subconsciously see in myself. Something that if true, I need to work on consciously changing.

So there you have it, Redux/Roach, you two are one in the same in my eyes. You parrot each other and have the same condescending attitudes towards others.

 

In fact, I only suggested that you rewrote history regarding Gandhi and MLK, both of whose actions harmed innocent bystanders and businesses. I never suggested anyone was "brainwashed by the right wing media" nor suggested that anyone was "not as informed and in tune" as me.

Challenging or questioning your opinion is hardly degrading you.

But thanks for your emotional over reaction (again) and misrepresentation (again) of what I posted.

When you really want to discuss the facts on any issue or are willing to have your opinion challenged and not over-react and take it as a personal attack, just let me know.

 

There you go degrading and brushing off everything I said. Yes it is emotional because I truly truly dislike your persona and attitude. I really wish we had the old ignore button.

If you think that is emotional, it is. I am not like you and Roach, who once wrote to me that this was just all a game to him. I don't play games where politics are concerned. Politics is not a game it affects people's lives and thus if you are truly passionate in your beliefs they will evoke emotions. We, or rather I, am not a robot. I am passionate in my beliefs, right wrong indifferent, I am passionate about them and I am pretty consistent in them.

Degrading others and acting as though you are better than and you are far more intelligent, may seem to you as though you aren't dealing with emotions, but you are, smugness and egotistical attitudes are very much emotional.

I'd say either you have no passion in your beliefs because you don't know what you believe in or you have no passion because you truly do not care what happens simply because you are above everyone else. You are more intelligent, more righteous and simply put a "better person" than everyone else.

I gave my reasons why I dislike OWS and believe them to be phonies and my reasons were not good enough for you.

Again, my dislike for your smugness and ego truly has never reached such heights, and I've been divorced twice.

Play your games but not with me.

 

I simply pointed out how you misrepresented my posts in your last attack and put words in my mouth that I never said. I have never called you names, never attacked you personally and never questioned your intelligence as you have asserted. I have challenged your opinions and evidently you find that degrading. If that is the way you want to take it, IMO, it says more about you than it does about me.

 

I fight to be heard, not degraded nor have my intelligence questioned when intelligence usually has little to do with one's political opinions (that is a joke in case you didn't get it).

I never said you called names or personally attacked now did I? So who is putting words into whose mouth? And yes, you can insinuate by attitude and the way you write that you feel superior. Such as when you challenge my opinions and I give the reasons for which I have come to those opinions, you state that I am "rewriting history" and yet again I say to you show me where. And you refuse to. OR you'll cut out one little paragraph or sentence that you believe you can use against me without the WHOLE being used. Most of what I write is not based on a little blurb or paragraph. You can cut and paste a lot from me to get what you want to hear and have totally screwed with the whole meaning of what was said in its entirety. But if you did that then you'd have to admit maybe I have valid points, which you refuse to want to do. Again, I am not here for you to validate what I say. I just get pissed off when you cut what you want to get what you want when I answer the vast majority of your responses. I rarely, below is one example, cut a post and not respond to the whole. Because it is in the whole that provides the meaning.

I'll give an example of how you refuse to answer a question and provide proof: you state I put words in your mouth, where, show me, post the thread in which I put words into YOUR mouth. Please show me so I can tell you my rationale for it or I can apologize for doing it. Your call it's up to you. But based on past posts, you will ignore this and/or come up with an excuse as to why you don't have to. And that is fine.

If the above is putting words into your mouth, I stated I based that paragraph on your past attitudes towards my posts.

You wrote this in another thread:

I found this sentence very poignant. Especially when you accuse me of being emotional and saying you are not. How can 1 fight and not be emotional in their beliefs. I personally, believe that one who is NOT emotional towards his /her beliefs won't fight for them because they lack passion. There can be argument over the fact that in order to have a belief worth fighting for one would or should have passion for that belief. But again, it is my belief one has to have the passion of a belief in order to be willing to fight for said beliefs.

The very definition of passion is emotion. emotions as distinguished from reason.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passion

Intense driving or overmastering feeling or conviction.

I think OWS is being led by people with to me misguided passions and lack of a true belief that will come to a feasible conclusion. I think the leadership has a false sense of self righteousness and entitlement. I think that when those opinions and beliefs have been stated in the past whether passionately or not, have been poo pooed as not important.

I am or was passionate about seeing OWS succeed, now, I don't care because they are puppets. To me, IMHO, they have lost the noble vision they started with and the message they are now conveying is that of entitlement and "we want what we want fuck everyone else." Which to me is the very opposite of the original vision. That is MY opinion and belief on the subject. And what I have in past posts tried to convey to you. Only to get responses of, "you are too emotional and have no idea what you are talking about." Maybe I do and maybe I don't but if you look back I was a very HUGE supporter at one time. And so much so on my FB I lost numerous friends because it was all I talked about because I supported it that much. And for someone, who has no knowledge of me personally to basically blow me off and treat me like my opinions are uneducated and biased and swayed by a political party's talking head, I take it personally because I had a lot of emotion (hope, pride and enthusiasm) for OWS to succeed. Now I see it failing and my beliefs and opinions don't matter? You'd rather drive it to the far left and destroy the movement than listen to someone that truly put a lot into it?

Again, this is why I have apathy towards the Democratic Party. The leadership has no loyalty to the people who truly care about keeping it relevant and focused and being better than the GOP not just the opposite idiocy where one side is so far one way and there is no true solution that will benefit ALL people of this nation, that there is nothing getting done at all. The infrastructure has been falling apart, the tax base has been depleted confidence in government is at an all time low, and neither side talks solutions but points fingers.

OWS when they first started offered a promise of a solution, but not anymore. The TP did the same thing, when they started out. Politics didn't matter, then slowly one party took them under their wing and the extremists started seeing a way to get more say in the party because finally in both cases the moderates were given a voice to be heard and the extremists became enraged because it disrupted their power structure. When the moderates leave because you have gone too extreme, there is no excuse. You can sit and say what the TPers now say, "well they obviously weren't willing to sacrifice for change." When in the OWS case the opposite is true. They bitched about losing the propane tanks and how they wouldn't be able to charge their laptops and I phones. They bitched about how the donations should be spent. They bitched about the police coming in and enforcing the laws. Those are sacrifices they were not willing to part with in their supposed fight. Then because I say you all are affecting other people's lives who are part of the 99 you are supposedly fighting for, I was told basically I had no idea what I was talking about. Ghandi and MLK DID NOT ASK 1 PERSON TO SACRIFICE WHAT THEY THEMSELVES WOULDN'T and yet the OWS expects everyone else to accept being laid off and losing jobs and business and parks to be over run, while they bitch about losing propane tanks and "how are we going to charge our laptops/I Phones?" and being arrested and taken down and booked or told to leave. It's just self righteous, entitlement, bullshit thinking and that is so far from the original inspiring message that I can not in any way support it. If OWS doesn't want to listen as to why they lost my support, then I will work to see them fail. Not that my opinion means that much, but I do not want what they have become to succeed. If they refuse to sacrifice or listen and that was their original vision , then they have veered far off course and have started that slow march into obscurity and being a failure, only like the TP the extremists will cling to it and keep it alive as a tool for the extremists and to shut the moderates up and keep them from having any say. That is the ONLY reason OWS wants to be considered moderate now. They've proven they will not sacrifice, ythey have proven they have no desire to set up any type of end game, they have proven they don't give a damn about people losing their jobs or businesses, they don't care about anything but themselves. They complain about the 1% but they rely on that 1% helping them. They are sell outs and as fake as the TP. Only the TP didn't cost people businesses and jobs and have camp outs and cry about having to make sacrifices.

 

People protesting in the streets for policy change political? No, that doesn't sound right.

 

I was going to ignore you, pan because I suspect the Mods want this nonsense to end.

But here is where you put words in my mouth:

I suggested you rewrote history regarding Gandhi and MLK and the adverse impact their actions had on others (individuals and businesses) who did not support their actions and others here agreed. For your to suggest that unlike the guys above, OWS "...expects everyone else to accept being laid off and losing jobs..." is an opinion not based on facts and which I challenged.

Please show my post where I said (given that you are quoting me) you or anyone was "brainwashed by the right wing media" or "just plain not as informed...as I am"

I wont go on out of courtesy to others. If you dont like what I have to say; ignore me. You shouldnt need an ignore button.

Or as someone else said...."getting a (fucking) grip" Oops, I just saw you attacked her as well.

 

I think people are nostalgic.
I think people forget that every *EVERY* protest for change anywhere on the planet:
has taken years and years of effort in various places, in various ways
has been maligned by average, everyday sort of people who don't agree
has been maligned by the press and by entities that have a financial or political stake in the outcome
has deliberately cost business owners and communities money, time and space even if they are not a part of it, even if they don't agree
has encountered violence waged by police and/or military

I think people who look back on times such as the civil rights era here in the states and the revolution in colonial India and see them as these great halcyon times when justice came easy to people who politely asked the behemoth of injustice 'can we have a little change, please?' do more disservice to the legacy of these times than anything else. These people were ANGRY. MLK was ANGRY. Ghandi was ANGRY. Their movements were 'nonviolent' not 'nondisruptive.' This thread is making me feel sick. Ducking back out.

 

An interesting perspective from a column in Forbes (hardly a bastion of liberal thought) that captures it well:
Occupy Wall Street deserves more attention than the Tea Party

IMO, that reflects what many here have been saying.

 

structural crisis-->the inability of existing institutions to manage capitalist crisis. ideological crisis--->the political worldview that enabled this crisis by replacing the need for a coherent *transnational* institutional/regulatory framework with imaginary claims regarding growth as a steady state that is impeded or distorted by regulation, the political worldview that ties itself to some nostalgia for nation-states and using nationalism as a mobilizing tool, etc etc. cannot be used to comprehend the crisis that it has created. cognitive crisis--->to the extent that people, particularly those in power who traffic in this fatuous ideology, are confronted with a situation that their worldview cannot process coherently, ideological crisis is cognitive. political crisis--->this, in the united states, is squarely and entirely the fault of the right, which at this point obviously, self-evidently cares about nothing except power for its own sake. this crisis is enabled by a dominant media apparatus that operates on the assumption that the existing national-level political order is necessarily legitimate and coherent no matter what the actual state of it may be. in this they replicate the effects of rather smaller matters, like the fact that in the united states blank votes and not counted so there is no way to dissent within the electoral system--you cannot register any kind of protest within the existing system about the bankruptcy of the system itself, about the idiocy of the candidates it offers. in this way, american pseudo-democracy most closely resembles shopping.

so in a general sense there we are. and people are surprised that movements would start forming from outside the conventional process? of course its no surprise. and it's a whole lot better that something like the occupation be the motor of thinking and acting to address this system paralysis that neo-liberalism has made, that conservative socio-economic ideology has produced, than would be the case were some neo-fascist movement like the tea party to be doing it. the tea party, like right libertarianism, is a performance of this crisis, a demonstration of its effects---unable to imagine even the need for alternative ways of thinking to address the problems that their core viewpoints have created, they retreat into an entirely imaginary world in which their viewpoint hasn't really been implemented, so what we "need" is more of what got us here. that's insane.

but because conservative politics is an identity politics, anything like coming to one's senses and simply looking at the situation is fraught with problems. better and easier to make shit up about the occupation---and not surprising given that the occupation is a basic threat to what's left of the neo-liberal right. it is pointing toward ways beyond it, working them out. it is the embodiment of the process of erasing an outmoded, dangerous and shallow political thinking that is responsible for much of the wreckage we are now facing.

so its not surprising to see various forms of psychological dysfunction being displayed in posts from people who are horrified by the occupation and seek to find ways to contain what it means. it is pointing toward sawing off the intellectual branch they're sitting on. that would be hard to deal with. so they try to assert continuity. reality is secondary in these cases to the need to assert continuity. and challenging that assertion of continuity can only be either dismissed or treated as some threat to the unity of the ego that is doing the asserting.

 

The Tea Party was sort of a joke to me when it first started. It was a group of people that seemed to be doing little more than gathering and complaining. But then they started to get organized and most importantly, they found leaders to represent them. And now, the Tea Party is a major political force.

Right now, I see OWS as little more than a spoiled, entitled group of liberal youngsters that are learning a lesson in futility. When they realize that they cannot sidestep the democratic electoral process and therefore need to be represented by leaders with an actual strategy, perhaps they will become relevant. Obviously I don't see that ever happening because I don't think any of those people have the integrity or strength to fight a real battle. A battle that requires more than just standing in the street waving a cardboard sign.

In the end, people will see that ows and the Tea Party have nothing in common. One is an pro-active group of Americans that are effecting change in this nation the other...well, they're not really much of anything at all except a name.

 

Perhaps OWS is at the same point in the movement (one month in) as the Tea Party was when you dismissed it as a joke, but evidently you are not willing to give OWS the same opportunity to grow.

I would agree the Tea Party is a major force, but only within the Republican Party, taking it even further to the right (not easy, given how far right the party already was). We'll see if it can sustain itself in the next election. I dont think it will given that it is on the wrong side of issues that voters care about most (tax policy, govt regulation, shared sacrifice in debt reduction, etc)

 

From Gary Wolfram PHD., college professor at Hillsdale discussing the complete lack of knowledge OWS has regarding capitalism and as a result why their movement will fail:

"How is it that for thousands of years mankind made very little progress in increasing the standard of living --" think of that, thousands of years. "-- and yet today half of the goods and services you use in the next week did not exist when I was born? It wasn't that there was some change in the DNA such that we got smarter. The Greeks knew how to make a steam engine 3,000 years ago and never made one. The difference is in how we organize our economic system. The advent of market capitalism in the mid 18th century made all of the difference.

"We need not just rely on historical data. Look at cross-section evidence. I try another experiment with my students. I tell them they are about to be born and they can choose whatever country in the world they would like to be born in. The only caveat is they will be the poorest person in that country." The point of this question is, you can choose wherever you want to be born, but you're gonna be born the poorest person in the country. So you better choose a place that offers you upward mobility. That's what he's getting at here.

"Every student picks a country that is primarily organized in a market capitalist system. No one picks a centrally planned state. No one says, 'I want to be the poorest person in North Korea, Cuba, or Zimbabwe,' countries which are at the bottom of the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. What does it mean to be poor in our capitalist society that the Occupy Wall Street crowd so hates? Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has several studies of those classified as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau. He found that 80 percent of poor persons in the United States in 2010 had air conditioning, nearly three quarters of them had a car or truck, nearly two-thirds had satellite or cable television, half had a personal computer and more than two-thirds had at least two rooms per person.

"Contrast this with what it means to be poor in Mumbai, India, a country that is moving rapidly towards market capitalism but was burdened for decades with a socialist system. The Occupy Wall Street movement has shown a lack of understanding of how the market capitalist system works," and that's primarily, folks, because they haven't been taught it. They've been taught socialist utopia crap. "They appear to think that the cell phones they use, food they eat, hotels they stay in, cars they drive, gasoline that powers the cars they drive and all the myriad goods and services they consume every day would be there under a different system, perhaps in more abundance.

"But there is no evidence this could be or ever has been the case. The reason is that only market capitalism solves the two major problems that face any economy-how to provide an incentive to innovate and how to solve the problem of decentralized information. The reason there is so much innovation in a market system compared to socialism or other forms of central planning is that profit provides the incentive for innovators to take the risk needed to come up with new products. My mother never once complained that we did not have access to the latest Soviet washing machine. We never desired a new Soviet car. The socialist system relies on what Adam Smith referred to as the benevolent butcher and while there will undoubtedly be benevolent butchers out there, clearly a system that provides monetary rewards for innovators is much more dynamic and successful. The profit that the Occupy Wall Street protesters decry is the reason the world has access to clean water and anti-viral drugs," that they need now.

"The other major problem that must be solved by any economic system is how to deal with the fact that information is so decentralized. There is no way for a central planner to know how many hot dogs 300 million Americans are going to want at every moment in time. A central planner cannot know the relative value of resources in the production of various goods and services. Market capitalism solves that problem through the price system. If there are too few hot dogs, the price of hot dogs will rise and more hot dogs will be produced. If too many hot dogs are produced, the price of hot dogs will fall and fewer will be produced."

Market capitalism is the key to the wealth of the masses. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in his 1920 book, Socialism, only market capitalism can make the poor wealthy. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek in his famous 1945 paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, showed that only the price system in capitalism can create the spontaneous order that ensures that goods will be allocated in a way that ensures consumers determine the use of resources. The Occupy Wall Street movement would make best use of its time and energy in protesting the encroachment of the centrally planned state that led to the disaster of the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, and dictatorial North Korea"