What I Saw At The Revolution

A report from the front lines:

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.

As he says, they’re not the 99%. They’re not even the one percent.

[Update a while later]

The children of la revolucion are eating their own.

28 thoughts on “What I Saw At The Revolution”

  1. They are every bit as rational as the “keep the government out of my Medicare” Tea Partiers. They are as much performance artists as the guy at the Tea Party rally dressed up like the Continental Line circa 1778.

      1. That’s my thoughts. Gerrib is picking out random examples. In terms of 99% vs 1%, the OWS crowd is 99% of what is 1% in the TEA Party.

    1. Biggest difference: Guy in tri-corner hat has a day job, and took time off to attend the Party. OWS guy has no marketable skills, and showed up hoping someone might feed him or possibly share drugs.

      1. 2nd biggest difference, when the TEA Party rallies ended, the trash was neatly picked up and put in cans. There will be nice photo comparisons when the socialist start talking about how much they care about pollution and the environment.

        1. I first noticed that phenomenon at Grateful Dead concerts in the 80s. Lots of Deadheads fancied themselves as hippie environmentalists, yet there were invariably mountains of trash left behind in the parking and camping areas afterwards. I don’t know how it started, but I began noticing a few fans going through the area after shows with trash bags, picking up trash. I thought it was a good idea and started doing it myself. I would bring a box of trash bags to the shows, and go around and fill one up afterwards before leaving. (It wasn’t a big deal because I would usually wait around for the traffic to clear out anyway.) Others saw me and asked me if I had any more bags, which I did, and I gave them out.

          I rarely go to concerts nowadays, but when I go to any public event, I not only pick up my own trash and properly dispose of it, I’ll also make a point of picking up a handful of other people’s trash on the way out. If everybody just picked up a little bit, there would be nothing left behind.

      2. Actually, I ran into a lunatic hippie in a tea-bag costume at one of the first tea parties in State College on Tax Day, 2009. If that doofus had a job, it was no more of a job than Joe Occupy Wall Street’s nowhere part-time university job.

        Only reason I’m sure it wasn’t the same guy is that Joe Tea-Bag was twenty years older. He was probably a protest-junkie who thought the Tea-Party thing was another opportunity to play peacock and annoy others.

        While I was sympathetic to the Tea Party, I find actual protests kind of boring, and never spent more than five minutes in the vicinity of one.

    2. Except the tea partiers aren’t trespassers. That park is privately owned and they don’t have permission to be there.

  2. From Rand’s update: “Neither, you, nor anyone else will own us.”

    LOL! I want to see them shout that out to the union thugs who start to muscle in on the limelight. Buddy, your asses already are owned, you just don’t know it yet.

  3. Chris – why are the Tea Party gatherings on the weekends and these during the week? The Tea Party folks actually have jobs (or are retired) and are honest, productive parts of this country. The ‘occupy folks’ don’t have jobs and are just leeching off of the rest of us who work.

    These guys live in a land of unicorns and fairy-tale rainbows. BTW, how many of them have you invited into your home to share a meal???

      1. Oh. So calling for wealth redistribution, fees on bank profits and massive tax increases on the rich is just their PR. They’re REALLY there looking for job prospects. Got it.

  4. Interesting op-ed, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/6/obamas-october-revolution/

    Occupy Wall Street seeks to demonize big banks, large corporations and capitalism. Its goal is to overturn America’s economic structure. The protesters are calling for wealth redistribution, fees on bank profits and massive tax increases on the rich. Many are demanding a socialist revolution – the confiscation of private property and nationalization of the economy. They are the heirs of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin. Their aim is to impose the hammer and sickle upon America.

    I don’t think they are all Socialists but they sure don’t mind organizing protests with them.

      1. Starting Friday happy-hour a little early there Chris. How much did we “give” Bear Strums? Or Lemon Brothers? How much did we “give” GM? And Chrysler?

          1. Sounds like Gerrib is starting to realize the problems with federal stimulus to failing entities. You don’t get back the amount you put in. It’s a shame he was arguing about the multiplying affect when he was pushing for TARP and the GM bailout.

          2. GM went bankrupt anyway. Should have just had them go bankrupt in the first place.

            Sure there are lots of d-bags on wall street or big banks or whatever but punishing them out of spite doesn’t help poor people.

  5. The way to fight these protesters is with more entrepreneurial capitalism, in the form of a pot dealer showing up with a backpack full of weed. He’ll make a fortune and the hippie protesters will get all mellow and melt into the sidewalk.

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