What OWS Wants Should Terrify You
Occupy Wall Street can’t seem to get it’s message unified, even among themselves, but I think that in the minds of many of the more disillusioned participants is a vague vision. One that was put to paper first in 1961 in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This vision should terrify you.
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”
These words begin Harrison Bergeron , a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The concept so bizarre and inconceivable, that it was published first as a work of fantasy. The idea that government can form an agency whose entire raison d’être is to make every citizen equal, and devise enforcement for such a policy, is the ultimate in crimes against the individual and the death of private innovation and motivation. It is evil empowered – the literal smothering of Ego and will by government sanctioned force.
Yet, isn’t that what the 99% want? Aren’t they vaguely ( or not so, in some cases) suggesting that the government step in and take down the 1%? Aren’t they pining, not to excel and propel themselves out of disparity and helplessness, but to have someone else drag down those who do not share in their misery and lack of motivation? Aren’t they suggesting that their entire base of failure is because of a small number of people who do not define their existence and motivation by socially accepted definitions of limits on success and prosperity? Maybe it isn’t even that deep.. maybe it is pure denial of responsibility and cohesive blame at the nexus of their lashing out without a defined path to resolution. Regardless of the “why”, the “how” that they are driving towards isn’t just the end of the individual and of American Exceptionalism, but also the entire basis of the Great Experiment. It is the end of America as it was intended.
Read Harrison Bergeron in its ten page entirety here and then, for a fantastically terrifying and inspiring adaptation see the trailer for 2081 below ( and then go buy it. YAY, Capitalism!)
** Quick update: I was made aware that the Handicapper General in 2081 is none other than Tammy Bruce! How awesome is THAT? Follow her on twitter here!
Very good post. This is the real threat, the threat of absolute government imposed equality.
Labor unions, public unions, college students, teachers, environmentalist, homeless, welfare recipients. mischief makers and the communist party of America are front and center in the redistribution of wealth protest against Wall St. They are protesting what the rich have and what they want to have given to them. These groups are led by Van Jones and others with approval of President Obama and the liberal socialist communist he has around him in Washington D.C.
Very well summarized, Joe.
These groups are open to the public. You are invited to any General Assembly meeting where decisions are made. These groups are not led around by anybody other than their General Assembly. Regarding your comment, “These groups are led by Van Jones and others with approval of President Obama and the liberal socialist communist he has around him in Washington D.C.”. What is your source for that information? You must have some kinda real “inside track” on Obama’s secret approvals…. right? Secret double-agent briefings at midnight or something?
Thanks for letting all know what should terrify them, however, your underlying premise is wonky as it relates to Occupy Wall Street seemingly unable to get it’s message unified.
“YOU may be happy being told what to stand for. YOU may be happy to be told what kind of idiotic, cartoon hat to wear. YOU may be happy to be told what to chant and when. YOU may be happy to be told what to believe and when to believe it. [What to be terrified of?]
I AM NOT.
The first meeting of the Occupy Muskegon General Assembly was meant to ASK people what they want, not TELL us what we SHOULD WANT.
WOW.
WHAT a concept.
A movement that ASKS Americans what they ACTUALLY WANT and then decides as a group how they’re going to address those issues.
Holy crap. That almost…..ALMOST…sounds like a Democracy. Directionless. Disorganized. MESSY. With all these people having a VOICE and DISAGREEING with each other sometimes.
OH for the LOVE of GOD, NOT THAT. NOT DEMOCRACY.
ANYTHING but DEMOCRACY. ANYTHING but an actual demonstration born of ACTUAL PEOPLE and ACTUAL DEMANDS without a CENTRAL DICTATOR.
Why…this DEMOCRACY thing sounds an awful lot like ANARCHY. If no single person is in charge? It MUST be anarchy! Right? Because the will of the general populace couldn’t POSSIBLY have anything useful to say or have even the remotest capacity to SELF GOVERN.
OH.
Oh…YOU feel like our meetings are directionless and disorganized.
Well thanks for the input.
We’ll write it down on our big whiteboard and take your criticism under advisement.
You know what…maybe…just MAYBE…YOU are not comfortable with Democracy. MAYBE you NEED somebody to tell you what to believe. WHAT to stand for. And how.
Or maybe you just have NO CONCEPT…
NO CONCEPT
…of how an ACTUAL grass roots, democratic movement works.”
The occupy movement is not about redistribution of wealth but redistribution of democratic power. Equality of opportunity not equality of ability. Lobbying and corporatism have robbed the people of both power and opportunity.
Lobbying and Corporatism have taken over OWS. Union involvement and literal sponsorship destroyed any credibility that this is an uprising of the unthrilled citizenry. Shoulda worked harder to keep it clean.
Contending lobbying/corporatism have taken over OWS now? Gads, you’re more desperate than assumed. You offer intuitively-perceivable wild-arsed dishonesty, flying in conflicting directions, in response to a message that is resonating with the American people. Nice. Keep it up! THAT works to attract attention to what we have to say like police violence does against “freedom” to assemble and speak peaceably.
Sadly, OWS is no longer a grassroots movement. With the likes of SEIU and Moveon.org championing it and fiscally donating to it, it’s now just standard left rhetoric. If I wanted to
Hear how liberals hate capitalism, I’d watch Rachel Maddow.
OWS doesn’t represent the 99%, they represent a VERY small portion of the 99%… thankfully in a democracy, majority rules! Though, I should point out… the United Stated isn’t a democracy, we’re a republic. But why would I expect an internet troll to know as much?
Dont you have a drum circle to attend?
Funny thing about these “drum circles.” We can all easily observe that a silly little rag-tag drum circle of simpletons off in a park called, Zu… something or other…. after a month has not only captured national media attention but it is commanding and holding the national dialog… even in the furthest deepest catacombs of conservative rhetoric …. like this site. A “drum circle” already, absolutely, going to impact thought in decisions being made in this country and national policy. You suppose something about your “drum circle” analysis might be off a little? Gotta get back to my “drum circle” now. Don’t fret, those not participating can stay informed about where the drum circles are going as we process it democratically, it’s all open to the public. Cheers.
uhm.. you aren’t impacting anything except for city costs in cleaning up after you and locking you up and a large amount of twitter snark. There will be no legislative change for OWS ( or Occupy) because you have no influence. The MSM loves you.. YAY! They don’t make policy either. You are the .00000000007% and you are messy. That’s pretty much it.
Do you really believe OWS will not impact policy? We are 30 days old (yesterday?) as an organization. Give us three months and try to say the same thing then. I differently propose this will be a long and cold political winter for your perspective. Check the latest political cartoon on this site, for perspective! Somehow we’re both irrelevant and we’re using the President of the greatest nation on earth. Go figure. While clutching onto your “corporate interests above people 1%” perspectives you, no doubt, will continue to have some very good reason to be frightened. Our message is resonating.
What message??!! You said above that it is a leaderless movement. I’ve talked to local “occupiers” .. they have no message or clear idea why they are there or what the want done. The only thing resonating is that you have no clue how an economy works, or can even fathom the concept of personal responsibility. No, I don’t think you will influence policy. Dodd-Frank is already there.. too bad 99.9% of you have no idea what it even is.
OWS is ASKING people what they want, not TELLING us what we SHOULD WANT as in Glenn Beck’s Tea Party “revolution.” Ahem. A movement that grows itself ASKING Americans what they ACTUALLY WANT for months and then decides, months later, as a group, how it wants to best address those issues. …GEE… sounds a little like pure, horizontal, direct democracy. Directionless. Disorganized. Well, that’s certainly not a more respectable “revolution” like “Glenn Beck’s was. His was all organized and nobody had to think or disagree. In fact, you’ve not seen anything like this in your lifetime. You are in fact, Right-fully confused.
ANYTHING but an actual demonstration born of ACTUAL PEOPLE and ACTUAL DEMANDS without a CENTRAL DICTATOR. There really are no Koch brothers paid organizing staff, no lobbyists directing those paid staff, there is no Newt Gingrich emailing out what the talking points before rallies. Oh my.
Sounds an awful lot like chaos to you? If no single person is in charge? The will of the general populace couldn’t POSSIBLY have anything useful to say or have even the remotest capacity to SELF GOVERN. It could not possibly meet twice daily to make decisions for itself. Oh…YOU feel like those meetings are directionless and disorganized. Well thanks for the smallish-minded input. Again, we’ll write it down again on our big whiteboard and take your criticism under advisement.
“thankfully we are a democracy”??? you are THANKFUL that we live under MOB RULE??
remember, the MAJORITY of the bell curve of intelligence is BELOW all the smartest people!
We were designed to be a Republic, as you say. Most of us “trolls” know that. And it sounds like you like that fact. And then you go and contradict yourself with this “thankful” statement. get it together!
Corporations have corrupted and co-opted this people’s democracy. They have bought our politicians and our processes. They have been abusive with the power they have taken. We’re taking back from corporations and we’re making corporations pay their fair share going forward. It’s a new day.
This should terrify you even more. With a 67% approval and 23% disapproval, New York City voters agree with the views of the Wall Street protesters. Further, they say 87% to 10% that it is “okay that they are protesting,” […] https://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1302.xml?ReleaseID=1662
no, you are wrong. what they want is not for everyone to be equal, but for the 1% to not be allowed to be a MAFIA that locks everything up and prevents us from achieving what we could if we could GET THEM OUT OF THE WAY. that’s all we want, for them to quit overreaching and violating our human rights. between the two sides there may a fine perforated line, but right everything is SO tilted to their side, that it’s irrelevant. get a clue.
Reduced size of government, lowered taxes, fairness in corporate dealings with their customers, end the Fed, get rid of the IRS; who were we talking about again?
If OWS Has No Coherent Message, How Come Eric Cantor Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Income Disparity’?
What you see on Wall Street is not only greed, but the result of what the Occupiers stand for, the liberals fear that someone would actually WANT to achieve more than the least of us. That is what they want to “limit’, and that is the belief that you CAN do as much as you would want to achieve in your lifetime. The Occupiers don’t believe that anyone should be allowed to do such a thing.
But that is our interpretation, not what they are protesting. What the Occupiers are protesting is false, Keynesian economic’s that the wealthy on Wall Street are taking up so much money that there’s not enough left for the ordinary person to be able to keep the menial low paying job they hold. The Occupiers believe that it’s the government’s job to make sure that 1% of the population doesn’t hog all the money, and keep it locked up and not want to make loans to small businesses so they can hire people at some small wage so they can continue to make payments on their Prius and solar cells on the roof of their house. But it’s not the government’s responsibility to make jobs for the private sector. It’s the private sector that creates the jobs. The Occupiers understand that but they want the government to step in and force these rich people to let loose of their money so somebody else can have it to create a job for somebody.
But I’m getting sidetracked. What America really needs to see for the first time since the 1930’s when Roosevelt took over the economy from the rich industrialists who were loaning money to run the government since World War One, is to actually let the government start being run according to the Constitution. The economy hasn’t been allowed to be run by the Constitution for decades. There wouldn’t be any need for Occupier demonstrations if our economy was run by the Constitution because the laws that made the bankers and investers, hedge funds, international investment houses by the Socialist Democrats would have never been allowed to come about. Banking laws would have never been made which created the atmosphere where “derivitives” were created that the banking/investment brokers were feeding off of and became the super wealthy on Wall Street. And most of them is who the protesters see as being what represents Wall Street. They are not the only banks on the street. There are other banks that were not involved with the scams that were being allowed by the Socialist Democrats.
You cannot tell me that under the iron fist of the Banking Commission run by the Socialist Barney Frank, who forced the ordinary banks to make loans for houses to people who didn’t even have to have a job, were the poor saps who were feeding the investers and insurance companies who bought all those loans and were allowed by Barney Frank to create the financial intities called “derivitives” where all the huge wealth came from. See, under the right kinds of banking rules that would come from adhereing to the Constitution, none of those things would have even been allowed to exist, let alone somebody like Barney Frank to give the nod for them to be created. The laws and rules and regulations Barney Frank said needed to be made in order to “protect the consumer” were never made to protect anyone except the big banks and investment brokers from scrutiny by the Securities Commission, and the Dept. of Trade. Everyone on the Securities Commission should have been fired when it was found out what Barney Frank and his abler, Chris Dodd, who was the man who rammed the laws through the Senate, had done which caused Freddie and Fannie to collapse.
And what is even more a travisty is the very people who created what the Occupiers are protesting against were put right back in control of the Banking Commission and resurrected Freddie and Fannie after they were declared “bankrupted”. They weren’t, they were taken out of the public’s eye, so Barney Frank could just go right back and make the same thing all over again.
So if the Occupiers want to protest something they ought to be protesting why our government won’t let the government be operated by the very document that gives it it’s laws of operation, the Constitution of the United States. But see, if those who we vote into office did make the government operate by the Constitution they couldn’t make themselves and their friends super wealthy. So that makes the question, “Should there ever have been super wealthy people, then?” The answer is we don’t know because the Constitution has never been allowed to work that far. Even the wealthy industrialists after the turn of the last century who were the “wealthy” of those times were protested against because of the low wages they were paying their workers, practically slave labor, was the reason why “labor unions” were formed in order to put an end to that sort of treatment by the wealthy.
What we need this time is to rebel against those Socialist Democrats hogging the Constitutional laws that could be made which would have prevented the near collapse of our economy thus bringing about the sort of wealth we see on Wall Street. It’s our Constitution that will correct all these problems because it needs to have many amendments repealed which allow the kinds of greed we see everywhere across America. It’s not that greed could be eliminated by the Constitution, but what applying the Constitution like it’s supposed to be would create a economic environment where it would be unneccesary.
It’s the greed of the Socialist Democrats like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raynes, Jamie Gorelic, Rahn Emanuel, Jim Johnson, Frank Paulsen, and Bernecke, who is over the Treasury….AGAIN…, are the very people who should be forced out onto the street right in the middle of the protesters and made to explain why they allowed the banks to get that big, and why they backed Barney Frank and Chris Dodd’s laws and rules that caused the collapse that took all the money away from the small businesses which can’t hire anyone now because the smaller banks don’t have the money anymore because the big banks on Wall Street are now broke!
See how all these things are connected? But if the Constitution had been followed as to how our banks should operate there would have never been the situation we see on Wall Street. Investors and bankers would have been allowed to make the money they could according to fair and correct laws according to economic’s 101 that everybody in the banks and investment houses knew the Socialist Democrats were making. They knew those laws would bankrupt the country, and cause the economy come to near collapse like it is now. They all knew that the laws Barney Frank and Clinton, and Bush to, so don’t think I’m letting the Republican’s off the hook. It was the liberal Republican’s who were backing the laws made by the Socialist Democrats that over rode the conservative Republican’s who were trying to tell the House and the Senate what would happen if they passed those kinds of laws. Well, everyone was seeing dollar bills in their eyes and didn’t want to hear reason, and the laws which created the super wealth on Wall Street were passed. And we see that the conservative Republican’s, and a small handful of conservative Democrats were right.
Now, Obama is piling on to the debt that the country got into paying back all the money that all the banks and investors lost by following the laws made by Barney Frank. And who did Obama put back in control of the same banking commission that caused the problem with our economy that is causing these protesters to hit the streets across the nation? Barney Frank, the economy killer!!