This weekend, the growing Occupy Wall Street protests spread to cities around the world. It seems that a large number of people have finally had enough with the crooks & buffoons that have been acting as overlords.
In my opinion, this movement is our country's progressive answer to the misplaced priorities of the Tea Party- which was fueled by fear & anger toward the government, but with a blind eye to Free Market abuses & no realistic approach to generate solutions.
Speaking of the Tea Party, this is an insane video of possibly the most empty-headed teabagger out there, actress Victoria Jackson. She's mingling with people in the Occupy Wall St. crowd & boldly displays her insufferable ignorance. I don't know how anyone can talk to her seriously. Could it possibly be performance art on her part?!? I'd recommend forwarding to about 2 min in. Her voice is hard to take, despite the excellent answers by the people she interviews.
The Tea Party has attracted (rightfully) angry Americans looking for alternatives to the 2 party system. However, that movement has mostly been a pawn of big industry, namely Koch Industries, & big media, namely Fox News. That's why the Tea Party's main stated goals are cutting government programs, lowering taxes & reducing regulations. Their desired policies mostly benefit multinational corporations, not the average person.
However, the knee-jerk reactionaries raising hell in the Tea Party were actually ahead of the curve in openly expressing general frustration with a system gone mad. These Occupy Wall Street protests are the result of everyone else in America finally reacting en masse to the many dysfunctional elements of society that have metastasized into systemic failure.
The driving vision of this recent upwelling is not to just initiate reform, but to fundamentally change in the way society operates. Everything is so screwed up, maybe this kind of organized, widespread nonviolent protest this is the only way to start the wheels turning toward real progress.
After reading through the '99% Declaration' policy points, I think these are definitely the right issues to be focusing on. These groups of people are trying to effectively address the problems at their root cause. This is actually a rational & pragmatic platform... not the stoned ramblings of bongo-playing hippies:
Traditional apologists for the elitist tendencies of the status quo are having a hard time adopting the reality of this popular movement into their worldview. America's biggest knucklehead, Fox News' Sean Hannity, is the standard bearer for being wrong on every single issue.
These two U.S. Marines have the right advice for anyone like him, who is foolish enough to dismiss the growing unrest in this country:
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