Thursday, November 24, 2011

Random thoughts on occupy wall st movement

The occupy movement seems to have mushroomed all over the USA in many towns, cities and communities. The Occupy folks have disjointed and incoherent messages but the messages seem mostly to be about corporate greed and corporate influence in politics. Virtualy all messages also rail against the 1% superwealthy and how they should pay their fair share. I cannot even unravel the other messages which are mainly ultra- left and even veer toward outright soclalist/communist slogans.
This tough economy has indeed bred a growing discontent among many Americans but where does OWS fit in?. It is obvious that many Americans are being ground down and feel dispossessed and left out in the depression- level UE economy but is OWS a harbinger of this growing discontent or is it just a small minority of spoiled college- educated hippies with worthless humanities degrees.

It is obvious that OWS is angry at 'the system'. Is it corporate greed? Corporate domination of America? It is Capitalism? It is corrupt politicians? The messages are somewhat confused and muddled. Is it the growing disparity between the tiny minority of superrich and the rest of the 99%?. If they want to complain about the super-rich why are they not raging against hollywood and sports mega-rich superstars? Where is the middle class in all this?

We are indeed faced with a catastrophic economic meltdown,the worst since the 1930's Great Depresion, but it is not easily resolved by simpistic rants against the rich. Any radical wealth redistribution schemes will only result in totalitarian class warfare disasters like the world witnessed in Red China and the Soviet Union in the 20th century. There the proletariat 'will to power' became a crushing monster which eliminated all 'class' enemies of the state, often by murder and the gulag. Is that what OWS wants?.


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