THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT
ST: Let me take a wild guess: You support the Occupy folks. If Obama is unable or unwilling to transform the system from the inside, you and your buddies will do it from the outside? Get real, Bernie. To crib from Stalin, how many troop divisions do you have behind you? Americans, you may have noticed, are not all that taken with actual revolution, though many throw that term around loosely. And yes I realize that what's in the works is a structural/social revolution, not a violent one.
BW: The Occupy movement and its allies may not be ready to storm the barricades with pitchforks, but as some in the Tea Party and now in the Occupy movement have demonstrated, the anger and frustration out there is immense and deep. Those in this movement are eager to search for ways to confront the power-wielders and get some significant changes made.
There is a potential tipping point if that rage and desire for real change can be channeled properly. Who knows? There might be some clever way to bring elements within the Tea Party faction together with their counterrparts in the Occupy movement, starting with their shared anger at the banks and bailouts. Can you imagine the impact if such a potential alliance could be forged, even if on a small scale?
ST: Those are mighty big "ifs." The Occupy movement seems to have very little organization or clear sense of direction, and their fuzzy goals offer little outreach to Middle Americans -- which is the substrata of American society that can possibly lean on the power-wielders to change things.
Plus, the longer Occupy's actions continue as they are -- encampments, marches, demos, allowing their anarchist component to smash windows, not dealing with infiltrators and provocateurs and so on -- they open themselves to losing momentum and to being co-opted by traditional and more organized elements in society, including Democratic politicians. It happened during the revolutionary days in "The Sixties," and it's beginning to look familiar today.
BW: You could be right, but I don't think so. It's equally possible that the situation is so desperate right now in the country -- one in 15 citizens below poverty level, nearly 20 millions out of work, the growing economic inequality, the disappearance of the American Dream, the growing strength of greed-obsessed individuals and corporations, etc. -- that this nascent "revolution" may actually generate a genuine, diverse and long-lasting Movement for radical systemic change.
ST: What you've got now is a roiling sense of anger and frustration. Whether that soup is marinating anything that will emerge later is still a question mark. As long as the powers-that-be can paint the Occupy folks as marginal "hippies" and youthful malcontents, your side is losing.
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