An Interesting Take On Occupy Wall Street
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on October 10th, 2011 4:36 am by HL
An Interesting Take On Occupy Wall Street
Gregory Djerejian probably isn’t a name that rings out to modern-day blog readers, but back when he was updating more regularly he offered one of the most intelligent takes on international affairs and international economics around. So I’m thrilled to see he has a long assessment of the Occupy Wall Street group down in Zuccotti […]
Gregory Djerejian probably isn’t a name that rings out to modern-day blog readers, but back when he was updating more regularly he offered one of the most intelligent takes on international affairs and international economics around. So I’m thrilled to see he has a long assessment of the Occupy Wall Street group down in Zuccotti Park:
However, with Occupy Wall Street I believe some among the status quo oriented elites may be more rattled than with the Tea Party. For one, they may be smarter. Speaking to several of these protestors today, I met MBA students who cannot find jobs (one even told me his GPA at business school, a respectable 3.2), and law students in a similar predicament. As money gets wasted in epic fashion overseas for desperately flawed ‘provincial reconstruction teams’ in Iraq and risible ‘Government-in-a-Box’ initiatives in Afghanistan, these kids are staring at mountains of debt and an equally daunting lack of viable prospects (the MBA student was underemployed working as a barista at Starbucks). So there are intelligent faces and voices in these crowds—not just aimless rabble-rousers out for a rise—and I can sense this movement becoming more contagious (for instance, I saw in some of the more junior police officers today monitoring a march from Washington Square back down to Zuccotti a confused questioning in their faces, indicating perhaps some sympathy for the protestors). They are also smarter than the Tea Party in their choice of targets. Discounting some of the ‘professional’ agitators, or the anarchist fringes, and so on, I sense a reasonably cogent consciousness here, a well-spring reminiscent of Albert Camus’ quote: “(w)hat is a rebel? A man who says no”, here driven by a potent combination of disenchantment that no real change occurred with Obama (unless a poorly organized orgy of stimulus and highly dubious health care reform count) and fury at, not so much the Government writ large as we see with the Tea Party, but more the elites standing behind the Government.
Read the whole thing.
