Dave Weigel, libertarian, has an article at Slate on what he calls “The Occupy Wall Street protests and the creation of the post-Obama left“:
… I hung out with Occupy Wall Street on Friday and Saturday, which wasn’t enough time to figure out what the movement is about, because no one knows what it’s about. The professional radicals who provided the jargon and call-and-response technique had not pressed their agenda onto the protesters. The union members who’d started to show up, like the SEIU volunteers who dropped off free ponchos and food, admired the protest without co-signing it. They’re saving that for an Oct. 5 march, which will bring dozens of unions in league with the nascent movement…
__
The anarchists and minarchists in the crowd might not like this observation—no parties, man!—but Occupy Wall Street is post-Obama left-wing populism. It will be post-Obama even if the man himself holds office until January 2017. Seven years ago, the people protesting in Zuccotti Park had marched outside the Republican National Convention, decrying George W. Bush. Three years ago, they had channeled their energy into the messianic candidacy of Barack Obama. And here they were again, inspired by AdBusters and Democracy Now, ashamed of how the Tea Party movement became the de facto populist response to the crisis.
__
On Saturday, before the arrests happened, the volunteer organizers of the protest handed out a four-page newspaper called The Occupied Wall Street Journal. They had raised more than $10,000 to quickly print 50,000 copies. “There is a worldwide movement of resistance and rebellion building,” write Eric Ribellarse and Jim Weill in the paper’s lead story. A timeline starts the movement on Dec. 17, 2010, when Mohammed Bouazizi poured gasoline on his head, then sat in public in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, then lit a match. The Tea Party has always been ostentatious in its American exceptionalism, starting rallies with recitations of the Pledge of the Allegiance. The loudest mic-checkers in Occupy Wall Street want the opposite—a mind-meld with the developing world. Americans are letting financiers rob them and foreclose on them because they think this country gets a pass from the global class war. On Saturday night, as the occupiers got debriefed on the arrests, the connection was complete.
__
“Why isn’t the Tea Party here?” says one occupier, darting past me to get a better position near the speaker. “They got no balls!”
I don’t think I agree with Weigel’s take, but he’s trying out a meme that may get traction because it’s comforting to the Media Village courtiers.
arguingwithsignposts
… but I’ve got pixels to fill and a deadline, so I’ll make some shit up anyway.
Has Weigel given up his admiration for that great politician Dick Armey yet?
JGabriel
Dave Weigel:
So this is the new meme? The Wall St. Occupiers are commies who want to make us a third world country, which is proven because they (allegedly) don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of their rallies?
New meme sounds a lot like old meme.
.
JGabriel
@Dave Weigel:
“… despite all the signs telling me it’s about class war and the rich getting financial assistance from the gov’t while the rest of us suffer declining wages and unemployment. You see, I have poor reading comprehension.”
.
JPL
Thanks Weigel for giving us your opinion,
Websters says
libertarian means an advocate of the doctrine of free will
a : a person who upholds the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action
democracy means a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
anarchy means a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
Personally I have trouble with a libertarian calling anyone an anarchist but that’s just me.
Samara Morgan
Is Weigel your personal glibertarian rent boi naow?
cleek
no. don’t do this.
nobody down there is going to light themselves on fire. and they aren’t going to overthrow the government by chasing Obama into exile.
Mohammed Bouazizi didn’t kill himself so we could post-hoc justify a bunch of vague lefty-isms.
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: Weigel is Anne Lauries personal glibertarian rent boi….thus the serial linkage.
Havent you heard about the upcoming BJ/Glibertarian alliance?
Enlightened Liberal
For god sake, “messianic candidacy of Barack Obama?” Was this a contest to see how many BS right-wing memes could be in a single article?
One thing that strikes me about these protests is how the teabaggers, who are against Wall Street bailouts, should be on board with this. That is of course, if they weren’t bought and paid for by the same people who brought us the financial crisis.
arguingwithsignposts
@Samara Morgan: Dammit, m_c. Are you going to stalk AL now? You’re running out of FPers to hate on.
Samara Morgan
@cleek: no, but that is when the social media/demographic clock started ticking down.
The demographic singularity is coming.
Why lissen to that assclown Weigel’s spin?
Weigel and Anne Laurie wanna tell us there is nuthin’ to see here. Keep on walkin’.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: im an equal opportunity deconstructor….none of you retards actually know what stalking is, having never been stalked yourselves.
And Anne Laurie kinda made it personal with her JAFI “shariah-ridden brown babies” remark.
Is that racist by BJ “standards”?
Inquiring minds want to know.
:)
Rihilism
I’m sure it’s just me, but I read this snippet and I have absolutely no idea what Weigel’s point is or if there was supposed to be a point beyond “here’s my experience at the protest, some generalizations, some anecdotes, and an occasional snap judgement”. Perhaps that was the point? Sort of a journalism as performance art? Or was it supposed to be, “these are the same impotent, disorganized hippies from the WTO, Iraq War, ‘pick yer favorite left-wing’ protest, at it again. Silly people, no?”
So, I went to the full post at the link. I still got nothing. I assumed the post’s title implied there would be some sort of analysis, er, or, somethin’.
My sincerest apologies to Mr. Weigel for my apparent inability to comprehend his brilliant writing style…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Samara Morgan:
Um, she’s not listening. She’s pointing out what he’s saying and why he’s saying it. Is the difference too subtle for you?
JPL
Wanting a democracy to work for the common good and not just wall street does not mean they want to overthrow the government. Are there thugs in the crowd? I have no idea. I stopped reading Weigel when he mentioned the word anarchist. I’d like to know Dave’s definition of a minianarchist?
Southern Beale
Well, I don’t know if this will take. My local morning news bot in fucking Nashville Tennessee knows what it’s about. Yesterday she said they were protesting “corporate greed” and “social inequality.” That works for me.
And then we have the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, who went down to Zuccotti Park to cover the protest not because it’s news but because a CEO of a major bank asked him if this was news. I wish we all had our personal New York Times reporter to call about stuff they aren’t covering.
But anyway, this was Sorkin’s take on the protest:
Xenos
My 15 year-old is reading excerpts from Ngugi wa Thiongo’s ‘Decolonizing the Mind’ for her English IGCSE class. This reverse-Comintern internationalism is very, very basic stuff for most of the world.
I am glad to see it, at last, sinking into American consciousness.
Samara Morgan
@Enlightened Liberal:
And that would be, libertarians like Weigel and libertarian lickers like Anne Laurie.
:)
arguingwithsignposts
@Samara Morgan: Let me speak in terms you might understand. You are the cancer that is killing /bj/
gnomedad
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Well played. But, to paraphrase Mencken, it’s difficult to get someone to understand something when their rationale for trolling depends on not understanding it.
Samara Morgan
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): why link him at all? why not link the mission statement instead of musing cluelessly about the “goals” and “tactics” of occupywallstreet.
She is promoting weigel like mixie promotes EDK’s forbes blog.
The Dark Carnival is coming to town. Dr. Rabbitsfoot is playing his sax and settin up his snake oil wagon.
Anne Laurie is just clinging to the reasonable conservative mythos, because shes scared out of her wits.
debit
I would love to know why someone who is a self admitted troll is still allowed posting privileges.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: I am sure I am going to regret this, but not everyone who links to someone else on a blog is agreeing with everything in the linked piece. Sometimes that is the case, but one also could link in order to point out an interesting view, start a discussion, invite people to point and laugh, demonstrate the power of the conventional narrative…. Moreover, if one does link with approval to a piece by a particular author, this does not mean that one endorses everything that this author has ever written. Is this concept really that hard for you to grasp?
Samara Morgan
@gnomedad: I FUCKING LINKED THE MISSIONSTATEMENT you dumbass sline.
Weigel and AL could have done that. Instead they prefer to muse cluelessly.
meh.
old ppl. will they never learn?
cleek
@debit:
seconded.
do we have a third?
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: AL has linked Weigel weekly for the last month.
Why? he has nuthin to say.
Here is a thought exercise for you Omnes….name ONE “good” libertarian.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: Fucking blogging, how does it work?
Samara Morgan
@cleek: @debit: hehe
i think you should email Cole about it.
ichi! ni! san!
Samara Morgan
well Omnes?
/taps foot impatiently
Did you just have a blackout or sumpin’?
im only gettin’ started, cleek.
just try and shut me up.
And AL is a JAFI. Harem-bait? shariah-ridden brown babies?
teh interwebs are forever.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Why would I take part in your thought exercise? I am not a libertarian. I am not libertarian-curious. I will suggest, however, that one can learn much from good writers with whom one disagrees. So AL is linking to a writer, as I noted above, it doesn’t necessarily mean she agrees with him. She pretty much explicitly stated that she does not.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOLbjection. Assumes facts not in evidence, i.e., that m_c is thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: She called it a thought exercise; I was being polite.
kay
Way to put words in their mouths, Mr. Journalist.
Weigel’s meal ticket is the Tea Party. They gave him access in return for favorable coverage.
How many times does he use “Tea Party” in that piece of punditry?
“Here’s how they’re like my Tea Party” (favorable) and here’s how they’re unlike my Tea Party (unfavorable)”.
I hope they can resist labeling by pundits. “The post-Obama left”. There’s something obnoxious and arrogant about someone who spends two hours with a group providing a short-hand label for the group.
soonergrunt
@kay:
You just described the entirety of the press corp. Also too, please be on the lookout for an email this afternoon. I’m sending you a copy of a letter my union recently sent to the VA.
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
Sadly, it’s not a game we have much say in (I’m using we in the sense of “people who are not pundits,” not this protest specifically).
Pundits get to call movements whatever they want because there is no penalty for them being wrong or misguided or stupid or all of the above. Examples too numerous to mention.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: /yawn
she has linked him noncritically for the last month.
its my hypothesis that Weigel is AL’s glibertarian rent boi.
why link any glibertarian except to criticize them?
isnt this a liberal blog?
so what do you think about AL’s JAFI comments? Are they racist comments?
I never know here.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: WRT the “post-Obama left” comment by Weigel, did you also notice that he said they were the same people who were protesting Bush in 2004? If that is the case, how are they somehow “post-Obama?” It is not a particularly good piece of journalism.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: OO, clearly you don’t grok the awesomeness that is Weigel’s punditry. That was the pre-post-Obama Left in 2004.
Samara Morgan
@kay: hahaha!
bravura Kay!
we’re only gettin’ started, right? AL is signalling us that Weigel is a “sensible” glibertarian and a swell writer, and btw we-are-all-the-same (kumbayah).
and…..the teabaggers are the same as anonops.
LOL!
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: Anonymous and the chanese didnt exist as such in 2004.
Weigel is fulla shit.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: look how many times AL has uncritically linked Weigel in the past few months.
she digs him, like mixie digs Kain.
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: I notice you post your “/yawn” when you have no answer. In my first comment to you, I suggested a variety of reasons why someone might link to another writer. Why did AL do it? Fuck if I know. I, unlike some, don’t presume to know the inner workings of other people’s minds. As far as AL’s comments to you go, they were over the top, but can you really complain? Do the comments about adopting the trappings of non-Western cultures as a form of piss-off-your-parents rebellion strike too close to home?
arguingwithsignposts
In other protest news, the NYT has a story about the spreading protests, at the bottom of the front page.
marcopolo
@arguingwithsignposts: Well, if you just do a little math 2004 was seven years ago, most of the folks I see out in the park in NYC seem to be in their mid-twenties and younger…I just don’t remember all that many teenagers out protesting in 2004. Just my 2 cents.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Why link him then?
amk
what a load of typical shallow pundtwitry.
marcopolo
I should add that we do have our own extension Occupy protest here in St. Louis, I have been down to this, and the age cohort here seems to be similar to the one in NYC.
Also, the police here in St. Louis had been letting things play out with a fairly hands off attitude with allowing folks to camp out downtown on Sunday & Monday nights but have now told the protesters that if they sleep out in the local park tonight, they will be arrested for vagrancy or violating curfew or something. This morning the protesters will be having a general meeting to decide whether to get a permit that will allow them to remain downtown overnight for the next few days but definitely put an end date on when that will be acceptable.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: i always have an answer. i yawn when im bored.
yeah i can. AL is a JAFI.
you dont know anything about my parents, or about Islam.
you think Amir Khalid is a muslim but he doesnt even know the requirements for becoming one.
And what do my parents have to do with AL showing her JAFI ass?
arguingwithsignposts
What the fuck is a JAFI?
debit
And another thread successfully derailed.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: Just Another Fucking Islamophobe
Samara Morgan
@debit: winning!
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup. It’s a way to put them in a familiar box and make them unimportant. Which is basically what Anne Laurie said at the top of the page.
WereBear
But there was this right in the article:
Brains, how do they work?
Virginia Highlander
@cleek:
I think any comparison of the Arab Spring with the Wall Street protests is a hell of a reach. Seems like a ridiculously superficial reading of both.
Feudalism Now!
Why is anyone giving Hermione Four Loko any oxygen? Ignore her and her flames will die. There is no ‘discussion’ there, just ranting and diverse slang. She likes pie. I get it.
Weigel has always been a tool of a writer. I don’t see this as the start of the village meme for OWS. The village meme is to ignore it or focus on the cost to the taxpayer from these lawless vagrants. The village cannot fathom a world where people do not suck up to the rich. It is anathema to them.
kay
@soonergrunt:
I get it, I think, in terms of their job. They DO need access, or they wouldn’t have anything unique or marketable. It’s the trade-off to get that access that kills them, in terms of credibility for me.
Weigel’s “added value” re: punditry is his access to the Tea Party, because he’s not a Nate Silver (who invented his own category) or a policy-person pundit (Ezra Klein). That’s my Grand Theory of Punditry. They somehow have to add value to get paid, because if they don’t, well, we’re all pundits, right?
And I will look for your email.
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
Which still doesn’t explain how McMegan, Bobo, Chunky Bobo, The Mustache, Kraphammer, Bloody Bill Kristol, etc. keep getting paid.
arguingwithsignposts
@Virginia Highlander: I would more closely tie the Wall Street protests with the protests happening in Spain, Greece, etc. over the EU austerity measures. But I think they all take a little inspiration from the Arab Spring protests.
Virginia Highlander
You know, as annoying a m_c can be, I find the remarkably mean-spirited m_c bashing to be offensive. My opinion of her sharpest critics continues to fall, while my opinion of her does not change.
Isn’t that ironic?
birthmarker
I was watching the Weather Channel about a half hour ago and they covered OWS. They referred to it as speaking out against “corporate greed” but the visuals were of protesters pretending to be zombies. Frankly it looked pretty lame.
But then the Weather Channel actually had a pretty interesting interview with Erich Pica of “Friends of the Earth'” talking about the oil pipeline. He was allowed to speak freely and at length. He was allowed to respond to a quote from TransCanada. It was all kind of refreshing.
WereBear
@birthmarker: Are you saying the Weather Channel will save us? How delightfully subversive!
Samara Morgan
@AL
then why constantly link him?
he is a libertarian. what don’t you understand about that?
you should relly change your glitch up.
debit
@Virginia Highlander: I think that if you find m_c’s relentless thread jacking and trolling to be less offensive than the people who call her out on it, ironic is not the ending in -ic word I would use.
arguingwithsignposts
@birthmarker: It’s not a real movement until Jim Cantore shows up in a rain slicker.
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander: THE FUCKING ORGANIZERS compared it to the Arab Spring.
Here’s the mission statement.
Which AL and Weigel could easily have googled.
Virginia Highlander
@arguingwithsignposts: Agreed that the sit-ins are more like what’s happening in Europe. I’m not so sure whether they are inspired by the Arab Spring or want to wrap themselves in that mantle, if indeed there is a difference.
The Other Bob
I think many of those protestors were about 14 years old in 2004.
Virginia Highlander
@debit: And here you are!
Samara Morgan
@debit: again, im not threadjacking.
IM ON TOPIC.
Omnes is draggin my parents into this, not me.
AL is a JAFI. i can call her on it, like ABL calls out the leftracists and the rightracists.
Josie
@Samara Morgan: She links him in order to disagree and to stimulate discussion. You know, as in civil discourse. John Cole links Sullivan and DougJ constantly links and fusses about Bobo, and neither one favors the writer in question. Maybe you should contribute something useful to the post at hand or go somewhere else with your repetitive criticisms.
arguingwithsignposts
never mind.
Virginia Highlander
@Samara Morgan: So what? The Peetardiers compared themselves to the Founding Fathers.
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander: wallah.
THE ORGANIZERS SAY THEY ARE USING ARAB SPRING TACTICS IN THEIR MISSION STATEMENT. They are not saying they are arabs you gormless ‘sline.
are you and cleek relly this thick?
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
I don’t, though, take them seriously. I think you or I are just as good and reliable re: “taking the pulse of the nation” as David Brooks. I would argue we’re better. Why not? What’s the measure? It’s not like they’re accountable when they call it wrong. Did you announce Michele Bachmann was serious yet misunderstood, or defend Donald Trump? Me neither. Because that’s ridiculous. I felt confident I understood Michele Bachmann, and her limited appeal.
One of my sisters says she found it amusing that Jerry Seinfeld was the only person who called out Donald Trump and his ludicrous and disgusting smearing of Obama. Seinfeld. He felt some responsibility to say “you know, this sucks, it’s insane and mean-spirited, and I don’t want any part of it”. All of the “finger on the pulse of the nation” professionals were anxiously looking at polls and trying to determine where to come down on it.
A comedian. It’s fitting, somehow.
birthmarker
@WereBear:
@arguingwithsignposts:
Ha! Maybe so! Actually I think the corporate overlords will squelch it quickly.
PeakVT
@arguingwithsignposts: They write stuff their paymasters find useful.
debit
@Virginia Highlander: Tell me where I have ever attacked m_c personally. Go on, link me to it. You can’t. I rarely even name her, just point out there’s a troll, it’s annoying and wonder why is it allowed to continue.
Ash Can
@Virginia Highlander: Matoko is a freely admitted troll who spams threads here for the sole reason of getting attention. Yes, we take vehement exception to that. Why shouldn’t we?
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
Nor do I. It is, however, incredibly frustrating that so many people do – people who attend Davos and Aspen Conferences and ride around in limos. People with power.
I sometimes wish the op-ed pages would give the space they devote to these pundits to a rotating cast of regular people who can write to talk about other things. It would be a real eye-opener for the plutocracy to find that most people don’t really give a shit about a lot of what they think is important.
Which is why it would never happen.
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander:
just like Weigel, you are equivalencing the teabaggers with occupywallstreet.
nice.
Virginia Highlander
@debit: So, you’re saying that my opinion of you has not declined? I can only assure you that it has.
Samara Morgan
@Josie: and mixie links EDK. So what?
the front pagers all have their pet glibertarian rent boiz, and they are all giving their crapology airtime.
@debit: i learned from DougJ the Mastertroll.
ABT.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Ash Can: actually im here to point out the idiotic misperceptions and profound lack of google-fu of the juicitariat.
Virginia Highlander
@Ash Can: Your point being?
Does she also admit to being an Aspie?
debit
@Virginia Highlander: I’m devastated, I’m sure.
Virginia Highlander
@Samara Morgan: No, I’m not, and my words will not reasonably support any such construct.
Virginia Highlander
@debit: Nope: you’re just a sarcastic ass.
Kane
I have yet to hear a consistent and coherent message from the Tea Party as to what they actually represent and what their movement is all about. Their two and half years of inconsistency has never been a concern for Weigel or the rest of the Village.
But less than a month in, the protestors of Occupy Wall Street are somehow supposed to have a complete manifesto declaring their principles, policies, intentions, and goals all drawn up and presented for media approval. Otherwise, it’s difficult to take them seriously.
soonergrunt
@cleek: I’ll buy some of that action. And may I just say that some of the new pie-isms that the filter is using are pretty good. A couple of them have that certain special je ne sais quoi. A couple have been worth the golf clap.
Kane
A familiar and recurring scene is unfolding around the world. Citizens taking to the streets demanding opportunity, jobs, access to health care, education, housing, and responsible government for the people.
Do a search of the word “protest” on Google news. There are literally tens of thousands of results, with recent reports of protests in Israel, Spain, Syria, Bahrain, Taipei, Japan, throughout Europe and accross the USA and beyond. Who knows how many other events there are that are not even being reported by the local, national, and global media.
The protests range from opposition to corporate privatization, “piggish capitalism,” police brutality, failed economic policies, lack of jobs, social injustice, demands for health care, and countless protests of numerous corporations and their unfair treatment of workers.
And yet, we are repeatedly told by the media that the demands of Occupy Wall Street are unclear and uncertain. Please. If you can’t comprehend what this movement is about, you either haven’t been paying attention or you’re disingenuous and intellectually dishonest.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek: You really should put a link to the Pie Filter on the front page of your site. And someone should put one on the front page here as well.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: “shariah-ridden brown babies” and “harem-bait”.
That is how JAFIs talk.
QED
Ash Can
@Virginia Highlander: My point being, what the hell is your point? If it’s civility you’re looking for, I suggest you stick with David Brooks and forget about this joint.
soonergrunt
@Virginia Highlander:
My son has Asperger’s Syndrome, as do the children of a lot of people I know. None of her behavior is explained by AS. A lot of it is explained by being 16 years old and having read some books. If her parents weren’t white conservatives, then she probably would be going on about how Ayn Rand is the kindest, warmest, most thoughtful human being EVAR!
Her claim of AS is more readily explained by excuse seeking behavior (as a HUGE number of AS claimers are) than by truth. And even if she did have AS, the proper response from the community is to rigidly enforce the community rules and norms to ensure that they take.
cleek
@soonergrunt:
you can thank ‘licensed to kill time’ for most of the new ones. i’ll have another batch of user-submitted lines going in soon.
gotta keep it fresh!
Samara Morgan
@Kane: nah, just google-challenged.
the juicitariat is going to let AL and Dave Weigel tell them what to think.
cleek
@arguingwithsignposts:
good idea. i’ll see if i can make WP do that.
debit
@Virginia Highlander: Actually, I’m a very sensitive person with delicate sensibilities.
Chris
@Kane:
I suppose it’s American exceptionalism that over here, we’ve had so many protests for piggish capitalism, police brutality, failed economic policies, lack of jobs, social injustice and all the rest. No one else seems to have a Tea Party Movement. I’m enjoying the fact that there’s finally someone other than these guys protesting in America’s streets.
soonergrunt
@Chris: But you know if any of these lefty protesters anywhere showed up with a gun, there’d be snipers on the rooftops in about 10 minutes.
Samara Morgan
@Chris: white christian nativism is world wide, and many movements– the counter-jihadi movements in Scandinavia for example– are analogous to the Tea Party Movement– its just that the largest aggregate of white christian nativists with any power is concentrated in America.
Anders Breivik and the EDL are two more examples.
The teabaggers are not actually fiscal conservatives– they are white christian nativists that want to return to the 50s.
Shoe
If you actually do know anything about aspies, you know im physiologically and psychologically INCAPABLE of caring what the “community” thinks about me.
If you didn’t care you wouldn’t post. Derp.
OzoneR
@Kane:
Part of this is because there are people at the protest mucking it up and the media is starting to give THEM attention. Yesterday the news here in NYC interviewed a bunch of Ron Paul nuts who were holding signs saying “End Corporatism, Vote Ron Paul” and gleefully saying Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate to vote against Citizens United, which is why we need to audit the Fed. I’m not even really paraphrasing, it almost went like that.
And the punditry tried to explain how wrong it was and how many different messages there are (Ron Paul people marching with progressives? How chaotic and unclear!)
OzoneR
The general problem for progressives in one tweet;
Another words, yeah, I admit the protesters are right, but I’m too proud and hate liberals too much to join in and find the solution.
maya
@Samara Morgan:
Yes, because that was the era when their skin magazines still had the decency to airbrush the pubes.
cleek
@OzoneR:
Ron Paul is so awesome he gets to vote in the Supreme Court, too!
Samara Morgan
@maya: lawl! its true, isnt it? In the 50s freed market capitalism made americans the overclass of the world.
now the jobs are fleeing, following that sweet, sweet cheap labor.
gotta blame someone.
I cant wait until the teatards realize America spent 4.4 trillion dollars for nothing when Iraq plants a boot in Americas fat white ass in december.
its gunna be epic.
srv
The question isn’t why isn’t the Tea Party there, it’s why all the John Cole’s of the Left aren’t.
A dozen front pagers and we have to rely on Weigel to go downtown. Here’s an idea, how about one of you go to the front line and try to punch some hippies in person? I’ll kick in $100 for your airfare.
OzoneR
@srv: I see you’ve missed the other 239023890235890 posts on this subject on this site, including kay’s the other day where she linked a post from someone who was on the Brooklyn Bridge.
singfoom
@srv: You’ve also missed all the damn posts where I’ve linked to the donations page. Some of us have jobs/responsibilities/families and are far away from Wall Street, so we do what we can to support them since we can’t join them on the ground.
http://nycga.cc/donate/
srv
@singfoom: And you’ve missed the point as always. I’m not interested in some friend of a friend of some other blog or twitterati. Sheesh.
@singfoom
But you’ve always got time to troll BJ. I don’t need some fuck like you lecturing me about giving. go DIAF with your excuses.
Chris
@OzoneR:
Exactly. This is our moderates, independents and mushy middle in a nutshell. I was starting to see messages like this one within months, if not weeks of Obama’s inauguration.
Which is why as much blame as people will put on “Obots” or “the professional left,” I continue to put most of the blame on the voters, and especially those mushy centrists – because let’s face it, if someone as moderate and centrist as Obama could still bring out their hippie-punching reflex, and that reflex could still overrule all other considerations in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, then I don’t know what to do for them.
Except keep voting Democrat, and wait until enough of these idiots die out for an electorate that gives a shit about things other than hippie-punching.
gaz
Shorter samara:
Why do even acknowledge the existence of Libertarians?!!! *clutches pearls*
Sell Out Sell Out Sell Out…
(blah blah blah)
Samara: it’s getting old. fast.
You don’t like Libertarians. We get it.
We
Just
Do
Not
Care
See how that works?
singfoom
@srv: Wow, thanks for your aggression. I’m not a troll, but thanks for playing. You got beef with people doing what they can to help?
Your problem, not mine.
Cheers.
Jay C
Bullshit. The Tea Party isn’t “there” for a very simple reason. Though apparently not simple enough for even the media simpletons covering the OWS protests to get.
The Tea Party isn’t there because – thanks in no small part to decades of concerted right-wing efforts to make it so – the average Teabagger probably imagines that (despite a generally shared dislike of “Wall Street”) the OWS marchers and the policies they advocate (such as they are) are the source and cause of the nation’s problems, and not in any way a solution.
It’s a terrible thing for the country, of course, but the Teabagger types, AFACBD, seem to place themselves on the other side of too many divides – social, political, cultural, religious – from the OWSers to ever see any congruities of purpose. Lame (and deflectionary) as it may be, an outraged sense of American Exceptionalism lies at the heart of the Tea Party “movement”. Whether the marchers in Zucotti Park are right or not (and JFTR, I think they are), the last thing the “keep the government out of my Medicare” types want to hear is that our problems are like anyone else’s.
slag
Really, David? Because I spent just a few hours with the folks in my fair city yesterday, and I had no trouble at all finding out what the Occupiers were about.
Hard to teach a man something he doesn’t want to learn, apparently.
OzoneR
@Chris: and the new populist Obama isn’t helping either.
soonergrunt
@Shoe:
Which is a huge tell, because the “aspies” I know–my son and many other children and teenagers from support groups and so on, care very deeply about why nobody likes them, or why they have great difficulty making and keeping friends. It’s a source of pain for them when they think about it, and they have to constantly be reminded as to what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. The mature ones accept the correction for the assistance that it is.
It’s not that they are incapable of caring, it’s that they learn social skills and norms much slower than their peers.
Being “incapable of caring” is the signal symptom of psychopathy or more commonly, narcissism. Neither of these should ever be indulged or tolerated.
Chris
@Jay C:
This a thousand times. The motivation for conservative voters is the same as it has been for half a century – they think it’s their country and their birthright and the rest of us are unwanted guests trespassing on it.
And that’s also why there’s an unbridgeable chasm between us – we, the people who aren’t teabaggers, can’t have a conversation about what we all want for this country, with people who don’t even think we should be part of it, and therefore don’t think we have a right to be having that conversation at all.
El Cid
As soon as I have the time, I’m going to show up there and show all these dumb OWS people how it’s done, and thereby launch a nation-wide appealing successful movement.
I haven’t done so yet in my local area, Atlanta, but that’s only a coincidence.
However, now that someone has actually launched such a protest, it means I’ve been shut out and dominated and they are preventing me from doing something better.
The nerve of these wrong people.
slag
Ezra pretty much nails it:
Not exactly rocket science here, David. Well, maybe it is for you.
4jkb4ia
Tampa Bay is starting to come back in this game, and the announcer is still almost sounding asleep. John Rooney and Mike Shannon later on will sound as if they are having fun.
It’s a perfect day for baseball here. The first playoff game in St. Louis each year is a cherished ritual.
b-psycho
I’m getting sick of pie. Cleek considering adding any other food-themed filters?
cleek
@b-psycho:
hmm… haven’t thought about it… suggestions?
debit
@cleek: Haggis?
ETA: or really any amusing sounding foreign food. Like hasenpfeffer, for instance. Or wienerschnitzel. Because I am 12.
4jkb4ia
Well, Tampa Bay is done. They have accomplished their purpose in life. The Red Sox would not have done any better.
Mike G
@Enlightened Liberal:
The teatards’ outrage seemed more focused on the possibility that some nonwhite person with an underwater mortgage might get a break. The unofficial start of the teatards was Dylan Ratigan on the trading floor in Chicago bitching about a bailout of mortgage holders. The Koch Suckers aren’t paying for a movement that attacks corporations, financial or otherwise.
And American excpetionalism is all some of the teatards have going for them. Take away the manufactured ego-boost of being “Murkan”, and they’re just corporate-gullible chumps working too hard, with too little vacation and too little health care and safety net compared to their peers in the Western world.
LT
This place has enough FPers now to be completely schizophrenic. “Comforting to the Media Village courtiers?” It would have been very comforting to John a few weeks ago, until he did a very quick about-face – and good on him – but I bet ABL and Dennis are still crying “EMOPROG!!!” about the protests.