Article: We Are Not Your Human Resources

Their critiques have been fast and furious, so much so that, golly, it almost seems like the establishment needed to find something for which to criticize the movement, even if they had to invent it. I'm sure the Eric Cantors and New York Timeses of this world would never be so nefarious and disingenuous as to do something like that, of course. But it sure seemed that way, especially as you hear the ubiquitous critique that the folks in Zuccotti Park "don't have a message".

Gee, you think? I mean, if ten thousand people march around the Pentagon, what do you think that could mean? That they want an increase in Social Security benefits? A longer baseball season, perhaps? If thousands of blacks march on Selma, what do you suppose is their demand? Deregulation of derivative trading? A ban on cloning? And if thousands decide to occupy Wall Street, what ever might one imagine is the reason they are there in particular? Because lower Manhattan has the best falafel stands?

Still can't figure it out, Masters of the Universe and talking head plastic media arbiters of American culture? How about this for a hint: The protesters keep chanting, "We are the 99 percent! We are the 99 percent!" What could that possibly mean? Yes, it's true that there are no leaders for you to coopt, jail or ridicule, and we know that makes you, er, uneasy. Yes, there is a manifest absence of manifestoes with forty-seven point plans full of tax reform schemes and new educational testing initiatives. But even you pompous blow-dried blow-hards in your gated communities should be able to get the general gist of what we're saying, that we in the 99 percent are sick and tired of being exploited and thrashed for the sake of satiating the pathological greed of the one percent.

Even if you have no brains inside your immaculately coifed heads, you should still be able to decipher that no-brainer. Unless, of course, the problem is that you just don't want to. Take for example the fine specimen of a regressive columnist Mark Steyn, who writes for the Orange County Register (of course), and just recently scribbled this dribble: "My colleague Rich Lowry correctly notes that many of the beleaguered families testifying on the "We are the 99%" websites have real problems. However, the "Occupy" movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable lethargic pseudo-university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole. Indeed, for all their youthful mien, the protesters are as mired in America's post-war moment as their grandparents: One of their demands is for a trillion dollars in "environmental restoration." Hey, why not? It's only a trillion."

What Mr. Steyn doesn't want you to notice (among many other things), and what most of his readers won't in fact notice, is the basic lie at the heart of his dismissive assertion. What got us "into this hole" is precisely the opposite of what he suggests. It wasn't some liberal Frankenstein experiment gone shatteringly awry that wrecked the country, but, quite to the contrary, it was in fact the dismantlement of the liberal experiment of the mid-twentieth century, a program that had been so successful that it created a massive and wealthy middle class in America far beyond anything that had ever existed anywhere in the world prior to that time. But regressives decided to take it apart, and over the last thirty years they've won every policy battle on every question of political economy, from taxes to trade to labor relations to regulation to privatization to deficits and beyond.

Thus, what Mr. Steyn and his ill ilk are desperate for you not to know is that what wrecked the country and the planet is their conservatism (or so-called conservatism -- it's really regressivism). That's why they want you to forget who was in the White House when the sh*t hit the fan. And that the last two Democratic presidents have created White House economic teams comprised of Wall Street executives. And that taxes are far lower than they used to be, and regulation of bankers nearly nonexistent, and social programs dismantled, and job-exporting trade deals signed, and unions crushed, and on and on and on. These people appear to "not get" Occupy Wall Street because they're desperate for it to disappear. In truth, they get it thoroughly and entirely (and, deep down, they can't believe it's taken this long for it to arrive), and they know it for precisely the existential threat to their sickeningly indulgent lives of infantile greed that it absolutely is.

But just in case I'm being unduly harsh to a class of boardroom rapists and murderers and the media and political marionettes who enable their predatory agenda, let me see if I can be helpful to them and simplify the message. It's just this: "We are not your human resources". We. Are. Not. Your. Human. Resources.

The truth is, the one percent in this country sees the rest of us -- not as equals, or even as human beings -- but as commodities put on this earth to serve them, no different from machines or infrastructure, computers or chemicals. We are their resources, who just happen to have bodies and minds somewhat similar to their own (though of an entirely different class, of course!). Which means we're a pain in the ass because, unlike machines, we have an annoying tendency to want a moderately decent salary and time off to spend with our families, not to mention bathroom breaks on the job. What a drag, eh Thurston?! To them, we're not human beings entitled to human rights and empathetic respect. We are, instead, the frustratingly-expensive remaining elements of a wealth-production machine that cannot (yet) be replaced by computers, robots or Asian peasants.

This is -- in the minds of the one percent -- a pure relationship of sheer exploitation. In truth, it fundamentally differs little from slavery or patriarchy or environmental destruction. What all these systems have in common is the age-old notion of one class of people living large at the expense of other creatures' misery.

And rarely in the last century have the oligarchs and plutocrats been as successful at doing just that as they are today. Moreover, under the generous leadership of an entire political class ranging from Barack Obama to Scott Walker, they are at this moment still relentlessly attempting to destroy what little is left of American middle class prosperity in the name of unquenchable elite greed. And why not? Since when were three yachts ever enough?

What frightens these people about Occupy Wall Street -- and, make no mistake, their attempts at ridicule are the purest possible expressions of their fear -- is the idea that the public might actually be on to their game at last.

That a critical mass might have reached critical mass.

That we might no longer be susceptible to diversion by means of ethnic or lifestyle divisions pitting us against one another, or by foreign bogeymen and the endless national security "crises' they are said to represent.

That we might remember that things were once better here, before we abandoned our humanity and wisdom in the name of greed and expediency and oligarchy.

That we might realize how weak the one percent actually are -- just as our Egyptian brothers and sisters found out about their own kleptocracy -- and that we might discover how easily toppled corrupt regimes are once exposed for what they are.

That we might demand a modest but fair share of the national wealth, and a political system in which people, not just special interest campaign contributors, actually have a voice in policy decisions.

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