It’s been hard to miss some exposure to the month-long Occupy Wall Street protests. Their camp-out in Manhattan’s Financial District has inspired similar movements across the country. As the protests amass powerful interests behind them, they appear to be a force to be reckoned with.
But who are they? What are their demands?
The “Occupy Wall Street Manifesto,” a list of their demands, gives us some insight into the group’s mentality. It reveals a list less of “demands,” but more of things that would make them happy.
Among the juicy ones are the abolition of the “modern gilded age,” free college tuition for everyone, a $20 per hour minimum living wage — money just for being alive, regardless of employment — the end of all Big News and the bailing out of only “morally gratifying” institutions. And $2 trillion for fixing stuff.
As is pretty clear, all this stuff adds up to a lot of money, but where is it supposed to come from?
The answer is from the “rich people” who can “afford to fund” it. More specifically, the people whom the protesters deem are the evil, greedy “Wall-Streeters,” the mean upper class who took everyone’s money. It is a vague attack on nobody.
And they want the government to start taking people’s money? Just go into their houses and bank accounts and take it, then give it to “the 99 percent?” Would it be through taxes, or all at once, today?
That’s not how a democracy works. The whole point of having a three-branch system is so the government doesn’t have the right to march into your house and take your things. Does Occupy Wall Street want an unlimited government?
It seems that way. It asks for a “consolidated government authority” to take those evil capitalists’ money and distribute it. Seems like a pretty slippery slope.
The Occupiers make it pretty obvious that even they don’t know what they want. They ask for an “end to censorship,” so everyone can be equally heard? Well, they say that, then turn around and demand that corporations contribute only to political parties the Occupiers deem worthy.
While the grand-sounding Manifesto is mostly incoherent and often contradictory, a vague outline of their goal emerges: a society where everyone is totally the same, has just as much power as the next and people’s finances are redistributed to make things more fair.
Sounds a lot like an old social movement that advocated total equality, shared possessions and classless society.
Beyond its ominous undertones, the Manifesto gives no practical solutions, no ideas for fixing things — it simply demands them.
“We don’t know how to get what we want, but we want it now!” might as well be its motto.
I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t things in need of fixing. There are a lot of problems with this country, many of them relatively new and getting worse. Political ossification, a widening income gap and declining American importance do threaten this country.
I don’t even mean to say that mass protest is a bad means of expression. But occupying with no actual ideas, just a laundry list of wants, is. It does not contribute to a better world. It does not bring us closer to a more harmonious society. It just indicates that there are a lot of pissed off people in our country. That’s nothing new.