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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

The movement still, as far as I can tell, has no intellectual grounding. Watch the Reason.TV Video: http://reason.tv/video/show/what-we-saw-at-occupy-wall-str

You have a Ron Paul supporter next to a guy who wants to nationalize the banks. You have a guy supporting Obama next to a guy who thinks Mitt Romney will "fix the country".

And of course the folks "letting their freak flag fly"

So this movement stands for nothing. Except for maybe "we're unhappy with the world right now" and really who isn't unhappy with the world right now? The only thing more ridiculous then the Occupy Wall St crowd are the pundits and politicians trying to use them to make their own points (which includes Krugman and the people he's criticizing)

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> So this movement stands for nothing.

I read your comment, shrugged, then read the op-Ed. When I got back, I found myself scratching my head as to whether you'd even bothered reading it.

The thread of common anger among the protesters is the notion that banks took risk, enjoyed protection by tax payers and then, once resuscitated by the people, bought politicians to prevent regulation that would prevent future indiscretions.

I don't need to have philosophical agreement with my neighbor for us to be joined in outrage when the guy across the street gets mugged while we're watching. These guys have a legitimate beef. I'm not going to quibble about whether their proposed solutions are in agreement.

The seed of common anger is the perversion of regulation and governance at the highest tier of financial institutions.

However, the expressions of anger at the occupy* protests has been running the gamut. From moderate calls for financial reform all the way to straight up marxist wealth redistribution.

There may be fairly broad public support behind the sentiment that there's a fair number of problems with the system as it exists today, but there is nothing like widespread support for the gamut of messages coming out of occupy*.

That a Ron Paul person is protesting shoulder-to-shoulder with someone from the Green Party is very telling. Even though the solution to the problem isn't clear, they do have something in common; and this in itself is a rather important political development.

I disagree that the movement lacks intellectual grounding -- "heads we privatize profits, tails we nationalize the loss" is about as clear as you can get. Doesn't matter if your anti-corporate or anti-government, corporate/government collusion permits right wingers and left wingers to get on the same page.

I think you're illustrating a universal constant through your examples.

The political spectrum isn't really a spectrum or a line. It's a circle. There is always a point where right meets left, where people agree on the solution, but disagree on the problem that necessitates that solution.

That wonderful point is where the lunatics from either side meet, shake hands, and agree that everything must be destroyed and you have to start over. Of course, once they actually achieve that solution, they'll be at each other's throats again, since they never agreed on what the original problem was. Revolutionary Politics 101.

True, it's a circle.

But are the people who protest the current setup insane, or is it the people who think dumping trillions of dollars into a broken system while doing nothing amidst historic unemployment and stagnation who are nuts?

As far as I can tell, this criticism "but they have no coherent demands" is mostly an invented media talking point. It is the successor to the first attempt, "these people are inarticulate clowns", which was too clumsy to work.

Since when is a popular protest movement required to come up with a detailed policy paper? This isn't the Brookings Institute. What we see is exactly what you'd expect: a diverse group, overlapping agendas, a few common themes. It's not like those themes are hard to identify (viz., large banks were rewarded for wrecking the economy, the political process has been corrupted by money, most people are stagnating or suffering economically).

It's not hard to see what market-oriented types and anti-corporate types have in common here. They're both opposed to socialism for oligarchs.

If they share one thing, it's a feeling of being unrepresented in government. The core purpose of making their numbers known is to impart to Congress and the Obama administration their discontent with the status quo, with legislation increasingly adopted for the benefit of the investment banks in particular, and the extremely wealthy more generally, to the detriment of the rest of the country.

It is a not-so-subtle reminder that while those other guys may fund their election campaigns, the rest of us are the ones who can take up pitchforks and torches, and have a good old-fashioned mob lynching if things go too far in the wrong direction.

The common thread may be an opposition to "privatize gains, socialize losses". They may not agree on whether socializing the gains or privatizing the losses is more desirable, but they know they don't like the current system.

What is interesting to me is how quickly this narrative infected the media. The only think reported about OWS is clashes with the Police, or the lack of clear message.

The narrative "OWS has no message" was started by media pundits. It's unfortunate they all decided on that exact narrative at almost the same time.

The conspiracy theorist in me, combined with an intense cynicism, wonders if the corporate parents of the media weren't the originators of this idea, but I'll leave that up to the reader to speculate.

I don't believe it's coincidence that the media started bleating the "OWS has no message" meme at the exact same time.

Yeah, I know it's reddit, but this comment from a P/R person was pretty eye-opening:

"Right at this moment, hundreds of journalists are receiving calls and emails from communication agencies, pitching them on the 'lack of focus' keypoints on the behalf of their clients. This is why the coverage we get only revolves on this point, because there is a concerted effort behind it. Sounds terrible? Well, that the way things work."

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/l428p/occupy_wall_...

If you read further down that thread another pr guy calls this guy out as being almost entirely wrong. The reason fire the lack of focus story is that... Drum roll... At best a journalist can say that there are many viewpoints. How would you report that story objectively?

Obviously opinion pieces are going to take that and run with it based on their own agenda, but the essence of the argument is correct -even though it is the kind of thing that can kill a protest. This is a problem OWS, et al will have to fix.

To their credit, it seems occupy boston formed a committee to ratify some resolutions.

To their credit, it seems at least occupy boston formed a committee to ratify resolutions

Okay, maybe OWS stands for nothing.

But recognize that there is a populist frustration with the way America is going. It's no coincidence that Obama's election, Election 2010 (Tea Party), and OWN (2011) all intertie heavily with populism. There is a rising level of frustration.

Except that OWS is losing legitimacy because the political operatives have decided to take it over or at least try. By putting the union members on the line with genuine protesters they are making it out to be something it is not, as in there is a direct attempt to make this work for the DNC and not for the protesters.

The odd part about having the union members march along in NYC is many of them are very highly compensated both in yearly pay and retirement whereas the majority of protesters look like they still need mom and dad.

There is a rising level of frustration but I don't think OWS has the answer. The local Atlanta version very impolitely chased on Representative John Lewis shows that at is basis they are not aligned with any particular party. So attempts by the DNC machine to co-opt this to give them a legitimate counterpoint to the Tea Party are going to fail, and fail badly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that several of the unions weren't going to back national candidates for this upcoming election, beholden as many of them are towards the 1%, and were instead going to focus more support and funding for state and local candidates. If true, that sounds like pulling back from the DNC.

Shivetya, I'm a little confused as to how, in the span of one post, you say being co-opted by Democrats dampens their legitimacy, and then say the Democrats' attempted co-option will fail, and badly.

Legitimacy, I'm not personally concerned about. It's reasonable to presume that any significant group will have the pro political operators move in and attempt to coopt to various aims. The legitimate concern is the fact that 'relatively normal' people across the American political spectrum are unhappy with the direction of "Washington". Note the quotes and generalizations.

That's the real story.

I'd be extremely wary about coming to any conclusions based upon the Reason.TV video. They have a clear political agenda and it's difficult to really understand the complexities of any situation through a series of edited interviews.

In any sense, from what I understand it seems that the group isn't necessarily pushing for any particular policy but the fact that the Government is systemically broken. They feel there isn't any democratic say from the average citizen in the policies made by Congress and the Presidency. It seems that they choose Wall Street as their target because their large financial abilities allow for them to give massive amounts of financial contributions to key politicians, essentially cutting out the average voter.

However, I haven't been to the movement in person, so it's difficult for me to be sure with any certainty.

At the very least it can be said that they have one commonality, they feel their voice is unheard in society. On top of that the narrative seems to be that opportunity is not available to all, as it is those better off, regardless of how they got there.

But isn't that the point? Lots of people aren't unhappy with the world right now, and, wouldn't you know it, they mostly seem to be the people who have the power to change things.

"and really who isn't unhappy with the world right now?"

Most people who are capable of rationally evaluating the standards of living we currently enjoy versus that of any other point in human history usually aren't that unhappy with the world right now.

I say this in the general sense; of course at any given time, N individuals will be hitting the bottom of the barrel, but the barrel is getting shallower and shallower with each generation.

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes; apparently I'm factually incorrect, and the Global Human Development Index is actually declining?

No, you're probably not incorrect, factually, but if you're expecting a bunch of upvotes for a rehash of the kind of mumbled apologetics we've been subjected to since at least the 80's (eg. the world is better now that it ever has been) when we're staring down the barrel of a massive deficit that wasn't here 10 years ago and you've got home foreclosures and unemployment rates sitting at or near historic highs, well...

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