The 53% vs The Ugly Cartoon That Occupy Has Allowed Itself To Become.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance

and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King

I started this blog to speak out against political correctness, cynical government and just plain stupidity and it doesn’t get much more stupid than what the Occupy Movement is degenerating into. It has successfully taken a principled idea and eroded it into a meaningless confusion of internecine fighting between factions, mixed messages, misinformation and an incredible lack of understanding of the real issues. I am embarrassed to admit that like so many others, I supported the initial movement. They had correctly identified a key issue in our society and had found a unique, if somewhat naive, way to draw attention to it. I don't support it anymore.

Occupy has become a cartoon of stupidity and hypocrisy almost elevated to the level of art.

It has done something, though, that almost no other group has ever done. It has successfully united the lunatic fringe on the extreme left and extreme right. Occupy now has the support of anarchists, communists and neo-Nazis. Lovely! None of those groups support Occupy’s original message and too often support things like racism nor are they representative of the 99% that the Occupy Movement claims to represent. But why quibble over those things when the involvement of these groups increases the number of people marching with the movement?

The seeds of the destruction of Occupy have already been planted but the sowing wasn’t done by the enemy’s of the movement.  They were planted by those within Occupy itself and ts eventual demise will come not from without but from within. Occupy is very much the author of its own failure.

In Australia, Occupy Sydney feeds the homeless, a commendable act. In Los Angeles, Occupy LA boots the homeless out of the park. I guess Occupy can’t decide if the homeless are part of the 99% or not. They’re having the same problem with other groups too.

In Canada, a country with the most regulated and safest banking system in the world the Occupy movement targets banks. It boycotts restaurants that are owned by corporations while handing around boxes of donuts from Tim Horton’s also owned by a large corporation.

So ineffective is the Canadian Occupy movement that yesterday, in Ottawa, the novelty Zombie Walk from Parliament Hill drew more than 2000 particpants while OccupyOttawa was only able to drum up a couple of hundred. There are reports that the Zombies were heard chanting, "We are now the 99%." and it is hard to argue with the math.

For the entire Occupy Movement, the wealthy are the enemy except those wealthy celebrities who support Occupy or make a financial contribution. Profitable corporations are the enemy too except, of course, the ones who make things for profit that Occupy needs and/or enjoys, like computers and cell phones, sound systems and video equipment.

The hypocrisy is embarrassing and the thinking too irrational to want to be associated with it.

Occupy Earth wants to keep the monetary system but eliminate and ban profit.  I gather that Occupy Earth is unaware of how successful that has been in the former Soviet Union and other places like North Korea. When I pointed out to one of the members of Occupy Earth that eliminating profit only resulted in institutionalized poverty for all, including food and housing shortages, the reply was that he’d eat his shoe before supporting the profit motive. I don’t know what he will eat after his shoes are gone in his new world order but one thing is certain; I won’t let him eat any of my shoes.

The defined 1% is being expanded so rapidly by Occupy that I can’t keep up. First it was the Wall Street securities and finance industry that undermined the world economy with derivatives and sub-prime mortgages. I could srelate to that issue because it was a real problem and needs serious regulation. Now, however, the 1% has grown to include: banks (but not credit unions…yet), corporations that own restaurants, nuclear power, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, museums and just last night, a call to occupy the board of education in NYC. The list also includes anyone who disagrees with the mindless twitter coming out of the movement. Free speech as defined by Occupy is only permited to those who flatter and aggree with the movement At the rate the list is growing the 1% will soon be the 99% and Occupy will find itself with no one to represent.

Government is also on the list but considering that 1 in 6 Americans work for some level of government or the public sector (with similar ratios in most democracies), that really is going to cause some math problems for Occupy in maintaining their “we are the 99%. I doubt that that are many bureaucrats, teachers, nurses and other public sector employees who are very sympathetic to a movement that considers them to be part of the problem.

Occupy is the embodiement of Animal Farm. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. I fail to see how that is any different than what they claim to be protesting.

Another member of the Occupy brain-trust called on government to make all health and education free. He obviously fails to understand that government has no money except for the money it collects from its citizens. Nothing is free; you and I pay for it at some point. The issue is, do we pay directly or do we give it to government and let them pay on our behalf. Money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s earned by you and me and quite frankly, I don’t seem much difference between government taking a lot of my money for their purposes and some intellectually-challenged twit from Occupy taking it to pay for his education. In the end, it’s all the same. It’s taxpayers that end up financing the ambitions and wants of others.

Saying something that is inaccurate repeatedly doesn’t mean it will eventually become the truth nor does saying it loudly. That's just noise. Rejecting criticism by attacking those who criticize doesn’t accomplish much either. It is all simply mindless chatter designed to try and shore up weak arguments for weaker ideas to achieve an undefined purpose.

Another part of Occupy announced that the problem with the economy was that the rich were taking money out of circulation. Huh? How do you come up with stupidity like that? I sent him a text and asked if he thought the rich were hiding their money under their mattresses or in coffee cans in holes they dug in their back yards. No reply.

And that's part of the issue too. When you challenge anyone in Occupy to give you an answer about what they propose as an alternative or challenge some stupid statement that's been made, they either ignore you, send back more meaningless chatter or accuse you of being a 1% sympathizer. I haven't had one person in Occupy put forward a solid idea worth discussing, let alone work towards achieving. In fact, for all the rhetoric, there hasn't been an original idea come out of Occupy period.

Under the heading of, Some Greed Is Good, the New York Post reported that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is in a bit of a pickle. They have successfully collected more than $500,000 which is in the bank (yes, safely tucked away in one of those hated 1% institutions) but are refusing to share it with other factions within the movement. So incensed were some participating drummers that OWS would not contribute to the repair of their drums that were vandalized in the park, they destroyed their own drums. (I'm still trying to figure out how you arrive at that decision)

The Comfort Group Committee within OWS was told to fill out paperwork when they requested funds for the work they do to provide essentials to protesters which means that OWS has now begun to institute the same bureaucratic procedures of the government they criticize. (So much for bringing about real and significant change to the world.)

Now, some of the people within OWS are calling on Bloomberg, the mayor of New York for an injunction to force OWS to open its books. Yes, that would be the same Mayor Bloomberg they castigated on Saturday for ordering police to evict OWS and arrest those who didn’t comply with the order to vacate.

In response, the Finance Committee has said that it can’t approve large expenditures without the approval of the General Assembly and a financial report would be forthcoming at some point. These guys have learned a great deal from government about double-talk and buck-passing (well, not literally of course, they’ve become very good at holding onto the bucks they have)

I find it particularly interesting that with a half million in the bank, OWS continues to beg for financial, food and other support. It’s institutionalized begging turned into quite a profitable little venture.

The hypocrisy behind all of this is almost mind altering. Members of OWS want the mayor they rally against to save them and force the Finance Committee within their own movement to come clean. They plead poverty while sitting on more cash than most of the 53% will ever see in one place and they implement the same bureaucratic procedures of the institutions they protest. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t just so hypocritally stupid.

And that is what is killing Occupy. Stupidity.

It abounds across the movement. While there are some within Occupy who are sincere and really do want to influence a change for the better, they have allowed their movement to be overrun and hijhacked by anarchists, extremists, unions, opportunists, fascists, the tragically pointless and the intellectually challenged. Occupy has become so intoxicated by the little bit of power they were granted that they have become an absurd characture of a protest movement.

Nobody speaks for Occupy; everyone does. Members of the movement say whatever they want to say whenever they want to say it. As a result there is no unified message, no discipline, no purpose or concrete solutions put forward. It’s protest turned into a self-indulgent orgy of mindless posturing. If it ever had a point, Occupy has lost it in the chaos it has allowed itself to become.

You can have all the general assemblies you want, form committees and post messages to the "proletariate" but if you can’t find real purpose behind what you are trying to accomplish beyond rhetoric and cheesey slogans, then your meetings like your protest are meaningless.

And that’s why Occupy will fail. Nothing of value was ever built on hypocrisy or stupidity and Occupy is now drowning in both. It dengrates the memories of people like Gandhi and Martin Luther KIng who initiated protest with purpose and focus. It tarnishes the memory of a sole Chinese citizen standing in front of a tank in defiance of oppresion in his country. It’s a damn shame for those of us who supported Occupy in the belief that it would lead to something better but it won’t. We have been failed twice; once by our governments and now by a protest movement that promised to draw attention to the issues but in the end simply turned itself into a pathetic, self-righteous joke.

Change will come but not thanks to Occupy.

 All that remains now is waiting patiently until if fizzles out (and it will) and then picking up the garbage in the parks. Once that happens, the rest of us who make up the 53% that work and pay taxes can get on with the business of trying to effect real change for the better.

Update: Since posting this, OccupySydney and Occupy USA, as well as others, have blocked me on Twitter proving once again that Occupy only believes in free speech for those that agree with it. "We are the 99%...well, at least that part of the 99% who agree with us." Personally, I'm flattered by the thought that my words are that intimidating to them. 

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