After spending two days at the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street campout, I have yet to encounter anybody with a serious platform, or to glean any coherent sense of why they are there. The terminal vagueness which is the hallmark of the demonstration was best articulated by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in 2004’s Team America, in which a disgruntled and effusive Tim Robbins puppet complains that, “the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they’re all corporation-y… and they make money.” This is a sentiment I have heard repeatedly from attendees, almost verbatim. It is always accompanied by derisive gestures toward the skyscrapers towering overhead, whose construction, I am informed without irony by the union members who have now got in on the action, is a source of well-paying union jobs.
When I try to transcend the inchoate vitriol and ask What Should Be Done About All The Problems?, indignation turns quickly to silence, or frustration — or both.
In truth, those camped out in Zuccotti Park are running a commune more than a protest. They have established a small communitarian village, which is punctuated by a small cabal of the angry, the insane, and the ignorant. Nothing I have seen is representative of a serious movement, and even less is indicative of any substantive thought. John Maynard Keynes is nowhere to be seen; instead, Occupy Wall Street has become an irresistible magnet for performance artists with generic grievances, and those who consider Stéphane Hessell’s absurd pamphlet, Indignez vous!, to be a serious rallying cry. So prevalent are these types, in fact, that a significant portion of those in attendance might as well be wearing t-shirts announcing, I’m Only Here For The Drum Circle And Organic Arugula.
The upshot is that a stranger walking past the scene would – does – have trouble ascertaining precisely what it is that the protesters are after. Within twenty yards, I saw, often self-contradictory, signs against nuclear weapons, tax loopholes, the tea party, cuts to government spending, and the bailout; and for the legalization of drugs, high-speed rail, free college education, redistribution of wealth, and confiscatory taxation. It is telling that the most coherent signs in the park are the ones advertising the table offering free quiche and lentils.
The main, inherent difference between the Wall Street movement, and that of the Tea Party, is age. It can naturally be expected that a group of young people–full of testosterone and the like–who are reacting to affairs that affect their future, to act differently, as compared to a group of old people, who are mostly retired or nearing retirement.
Charles’ essay lines up with what others see who go to these things and come back and report.
What a stark contrast to the very pointed reasons for demonstrations back in the 1960’s.
People knew exactly what they were for or against.
Their signs were also pointed.
But today it is all over the boards.
Student loan forgiveness.
Destroy Wall Street.
Destroy the banks.
Destroy capitalism.
Tax the ”rich” until they are out of existence.
But somehow (maybe falling fropm heaven?) free food, medical, college tuition, housing for all.
Maynard G. Krebbs has been put to shame by these slackers.
I wonder how all these altruistic protestors are tolerating New Yorks street people who undoubtly are attracted to all the freebies there in the park?