A movement that seeks to include 99% of the country is going to have in their midst a representation of all kinds of political ideologies. The presence of these people does not induce fear in me. These people have ever been present and ever been feared. A study of the 1930's will reveal that there is nothing new under the sun here and these people are no more a threat to the Republic now than they were then.
The same hype is being used now as then including the fear of a dictatorship.
In the 1930s-
In Washington D.C., 3,000 Communists staged a "hunger march." In rural America farmers were joining together to prevent insurance companies from foreclosing their neighbors' farms. In the spring of 1932, 15 to 20,000 unemployed veterans camped out in a park in Washington D.C. demanding full payment of the bonus promised them for serving in World War I, and they were dispersed by the U.S. army.
Meanwhile various explanations for the Depression were voiced. Some in the U.S. blamed the Soviet Union for dumping goods on the world market. Henry Ford, who considered himself an expert on just about everything, blamed the Depression on what he called an era of laziness. Many blamed the Depression on high tariffs having caused a decline in world trade. President Hoover saw the Depression as caused by attitude that had somehow gone awry. And, of course, a few in the United States saw the Depression as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
In Europe, many were blaming the Depression on the United States for withdrawing loans even to sound European enterprises. And people blamed the United States for cutting back on imports and for failing as the world's leading creditor nation.
Marxists had their own analysis of what was causing the economic crisis. In 1928 the Communist International (Comintern) claimed that capitalism was entering its third stage since the Great War: stage-one being the crises just after the war; stage-two the recovery that followed in the mid-twenties; and stage-three being a crisis created by the old problem of production out-racing consumption. By 1932, rank and file Communists were impressed by the Comintern's analysis. With Karl Marx having predicted the fall of capitalism, they saw capitalism as having entered its final crisis. The failure of capitalism, they believed, would bring the discontented masses falling in behind Communist Party leadership and then they would be able to overthrow the capitalist system -- matching economic inevitability with human activity.
So, even though these elements, highlighted in the video Stone and AEF have introduced, are involved in OWS, they are not the majority representation. Anyone can go into a crowd of people and find the ones who will best make a case for the point of view they espouse. It was done with the Tea Party in attempting to discredit them and for those who wanted to discredit the Tea Party, the presentation of them as uninformed morons was wholly embraced though the representation of the group, as a whole, was completely and intentionally incorrect and misleadng. I'd hoped the nation would join together at the inception of the Tea Party because it welled up from a righteous anger at our leaders for completely disregarding the American people who overwhelmingly called for them to let the too big to fail, fail. The Tea Party, at it's beginning, was a danger to the status quo. I sensed it immediately at the first Tea Party rally I attended in Feb 2009. I knew the powers that be were alarmed at what was happening and they were going to find some way to neutralize the threat and they did. OWS is set up to represent any and all who want to be involved. That it appears to be exclusive to liberals and left leaners is only because folks from the right are promoting the divide and conquer strategy. They are encouraged and welcome to join the movement and influence the national conversation... a possibility that has the establishment quaking in their boots. Were that to happen, they will have no choice but to listen to the people.
The folks who maintain "we are the 53%" seem to forget that they too have been affected (maybe not as harshly) by the 2008 implosion. Everyone of us saw a decrease in our 401ks, some of us have seen the value of our 401ks increase since the fall out of 2008 but how soon we forget. The gains of the last 2 years should have been on top of that which we had already acquired before our 401ks were blasted in the wake of 2008. Many were at an age where that 401k was necessary to their retirement and the loss is not regainable. Not only were our 401ks affected then but for millions of Americans toxic derivatives which the government bought off the banks, remain embedded in our investment portfolios so, the other shoe has not fallen on us, yet. 2008 was a foreshock, the bigone has yet to hit
Graham Summers Phoenix Capital Research said:
If you add up the value of every stock on the planet, the entire market capitalization would be about $36 trillion. If you do the same process for bonds, you’d get a market capitalization of roughly $72 trillion.
The notional value of the derivative market is roughly $1.4 QUADRILLION.
I realize that number sounds like something out of Looney tunes, so I’ll try to put it into perspective.
$1.4 Quadrillion is roughly:
-40 TIMES THE WORLD’S STOCK MARKET.
-10 TIMES the value of EVERY STOCK & EVERY BOND ON THE PLANET.
-23 TIMES WORLD GDP. http://seekingalpha.com/article/198197-why-derivatives-caused-financial-crisis
Basically the tone of the OWS movement will only be set by those who are most willing to be involved. The American Revolution was not a popular movement. Many were content with the status quo and were content to be subjects of the crown. As Edward Countryman writes in his book
The American Revolution, pg 109, "Country people joining in, popular committees taking power, old rulers being displaced and confrontation politics: These were the elements that started to change a limited movement of resistance into a popular movement of revolution. They came together all over America from 1774-1776, but how and when this process happened varied from place to place."
I have been a conservative Republican all my life. Only since early 2008 have I begun to open my eyes and try to learn what the hell is really going on. I blindly supported Bush in all he did. I stupidly defended the PATRIOT Act at the time and turned a deaf ear to all those sounding the alarm as to what it meant to the Constitution. I have yet to vote for a democrat as president. I never listened to the other side to try to hear what they were saying. I make a tremendous effort to do that now, because my failure to do so in the past has made me complicit in all the crimes that have been perpetrated against the people of this country and that has led to the type of government that is inflicted on us, now. Were the Tea Party to have called for a unified people, they would be a force to reckon with to this day. I am aware of the origins of the OWS movement. I support the movement because I see it as the last chance to affect the necessary changes in this country. I also believe the powers that be recognize this, too and they will do all they can to divide the people and keep us from unifying. Phone calls, letters and voting are not enough to get the attention of our leaders. They are influenced by cold hard cash and nothing else. I know there are many people just like me in these OWS protests all over the country. I have met them at my local occupy events. I have seen them interviewed by independent journalists without an agenda. I'm encouraged by their presence. I often wonder if the American Revolution had taken place in modern times, how the press would have villified our founding fathers. I've a suspicion the revolution would never have gotten off the ground.
