Ocuppy Wall Street Episode II: The Empire Strikes Back

First page. I'm occupying a recliner with my laptop at my inlaws right now.

No coherent message? Heres a staring point. I think it needs more adjectives.


“You control our world. You've poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You've liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants... to your decadence. You've stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic human rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You've profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living(while lowering our wages). You've monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame."

Who is "you" in this paragraph?

It seems this comes from here: http://weaintgottimetobleed.com/

It was posted on April 1, 2011. (Hmm ...)

...

I really do find myself wondering what percentage of occupiers voted in 2010. I wonder what percentage are going to vote in 2012.

Not saying voting is a panacea. Just wondering.

The Plutonomy

http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/69/5/778.full

Worst. Thread. Ever.




Technically, Empire Strikes Back was Episode V, so someone needs to make a title correction for the thread.

attack of the clones......... doesn't sound right......

Technically George Lucas can go f'ck himself.

After watching news video from various camps '"attack" of the clones' sounds prefect.

OWS Episode II: We have met the enemy ...

Yep. That's about right.

Its run by a large Eastern Syndicate, you know.

335 more days before you can use that line again.

Re: OWS Episode II: We have met the enemy ...

Ambiguous nouns imply they're super cereal.

unfortunately this movement wont succeed. half of the people in it are genuine, but the other half are clueless bums, or 'bros' on fakebook that conform to any popular movement like the sheep they are. what makes it ironic is that they are such sheep-like consumers yet they join this movement.

the 2nd problem is that older people that have a job spend their whole time working and their free time 'de-stressing' over the natural bitterness caused by inequality enforcing capitalism at the work place and everywhere else, that their brains are too tired too think so they just say 'its a movement for bums. i had a tough time getting a job.. but i DID IT. YOU GOTTA WORK HARD! STOP WHINING!' they can pay off their mortgage, have a beer in their off time and watch violent movies to de-stress, and think that is what life is and should be. so they dont participate.

I think this was Steve Buscemi's character from Con Air. Iranian intellectual thought is equivalent to a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

Purely anecdotal, but having spent a bit of time with the Occupiers I would say nearly all. If a person cares strongly enough to actually get out and protest, then they're very likely either to have voted or to have conscientiously abstained. I doubt much more than a few percent just couldn't be bothered. These are generally highly politicized people. YMMV.

Having said that, I'm over it. I nearly always vote, and of course I'm not going to stop, but I've completely lost faith in our democracy. At this point voting is little better than an inmate in a debtor's prison who gets to choose which brute is going to rape him in the shower.

Furthermore, I've come to the conclusion that allowing the wealthiest people to buy separate and highly unequal government for themselves is an unsolvable design flaw in democracy. I really don't know if there's a better solution but I'm tired of pretending that our democracy is working for anybody but the richest .0001%.

I watched when Perot, Nader, and even Ron Paul were savaged by the two-party system. I've seen ballot access shrink even as corporate influence went supernova. And any outside voices were either muffled or, worse, co-opted. The issues that matter the most to me are routinely ignored while the major parties debate whether the very richest among us should be taxed at 14% or 15%.

Our democracy is badly busted. I don't know if it's fixable. I am absolutely, positively sure that voting isn't going to fix it. Protesting could maybe, possibly, have some tiny effect.

It's actually that latter bit that I had most in mind.

OWS could have been (could still be?) a truly formidable electoral force. But tactically, they seem to have essentially dis-empowered themselves within established political channels. And my sense is that these tactics derive from an overall aversion to engaging in electoral politics.

I've never been a fan of direct action that is not at the exact same time accompanied by action in established political channels.

I'm pretty sure voting won't make it worse.

And I'm pretty sure the latter severed from the former is useless.

Even better would be protesting, voting and influencing by whatever means possible at all times.

But then how do you explain that there are vastly different democratic systems in the world that are having different effects on both the policy of those countries and the debates within those countries? Sure, not everything over here is roses, and we certainly have partly your issues, and plenty of our own, but the political culture in Europe seems to be at least less histerical.

There are any number of ways to explain this. And depending on the specifics, any of them might be valid.

US politics has become dysfunctional for many reasons too numerous to list. Some are structural and procedural. Some are historical and cultural. Some are economic and some are ... the list goes on and on. No other place is going to have these factors, let alone in the combinations that we have them here. Hence the differences.

While I completely agree, I also suspect that if every single person who had even the slightest inclination towards OWS coughed up their entire life savings to put towards the only influence that matters, it wouldn't even match what Phil Anschutz alone donates for influence in a year. Just saying.