Occupy Wall Street “A Giant, Ideologically Charged, Post-Adolescent Sleepover Complete With Face Paint And Pizza Deliveries”
It’s hard to discern what the whole Occupy Wall Street thing is all about, notes National Review’s Rich Lowry:
What was remarkable about the Right’s tea party is that it depended on solid burghers who typically don’t have the time or inclination to protest anything. Occupy Wall Street is a project of people who do little besides protest. It’s all down to a standard operating procedure: the guitars, the drums, the street theater, the age-old chants. If the perpetual rallying cry of demonstrators is to be believed, “the whole world” does little else than “watch” activists stage protests.
The New York Times quoted one Occupy Wall Street veteran telling a newcomer: “It doesn’t matter what you’re protesting. Just protest.” That captures the coherence of the exercise, which is a giant, ideologically charged, post-adolescent sleepover complete with face paint and pizza deliveries.
“The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” the first official release of Occupy Wall Street, is Marxism for people whose familiarity with Marx probably begins and ends with seeing his bearded visage on some T-shirt. It thunders that “corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth.”
There’s little doubt that most in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement are muddle-headed naifs. That anyone could believe that corporations, which must rely on people voluntarily purchasing their goods and/or services to survive, are not seeking “consent to extract wealth” is ridiculous. But that’s what happens when you feel things rather than think things.
I don’t think there are many in this movement who could be accused of thinking deeply about much of anything. Other than how best to accessorize themselves in the latest fashions of protest chic.
The irony of these anti-corporate crusaders implementing their nascent “revolution” using tools provided by corporate giants like Apple and Google shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
What’s frustrating is that the instincts of many of these protesters are good. They’re being co-opted by crusty old Marxists and supposed “anarchists” like Noam Chomsky and the like, which is unfortunate, but they’re right about somethings. Corporate bailouts stink. Higher education has become a scame perpetrated on America’s youth. They’re upset about these things, and they should be.
But they seem to think that the solution (and this is strange for a movement that supposedly has its roots in anarchist thought) is more government programs. More wealth redistribution. More entitlements.
The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
Tags: Asshats, occupy wall street
