Economy
In reply to the discussion: STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 17 September 2012 [View all]Tansy_Gold
(17,817 posts)The riots, regardless where and regardless the spark that set them off, were expressions of anger and frustration but they were not acts of revolution.
Seriously, OWS should take a page from the GOP playbook. There's a group that has been demonstrably successful in getting their message out, taking political and economic power, etc.
Again, it comes back to something I've been saying from the beginning: any "movement" has to get into the popular culture.
If you look at the foundations of the right wing belief system -- and that goes right into what Altemeyer and so many others have written -- inequality is at the heart. You cannot have a social structure that favors the top 1% if you don't have a belief structure that accepts inequality is natural, normal, and right. The cult of celebrity goes right along with that, so even TV shows like Dancing with the Stars, America's Got Talent, American Idol, all this stuff that piles humiliation on THE LOSERS (aka the 99%) and glorifies DA WINNAH! is as much a Sunday sermon of essential doctrine as a reading from the bible. The Kardashians as "reality" is another. Excuse me? Reality? Are you fucking shitting me?
That inequality involves double standards of morality, too. Three of us were having a conversation about this right here in Apache Junction a few days ago -- How could the local pukes have nominated Paul Babeu for sheriff again, after all the revelations about his lying (the Louis Purols shooting incident), his being gay, his having an undocumented Mexican lover, etc., etc., etc. And I explained that we on the left believe in equality and we also believe in a single standard of morality for all, because that is consistent with equality. But the right does NOT believe in equality, and they DO believe the rich and/or powerful are different and are not to be held to the same moral code. That's how you have a McCain or a Gingrich or Ensign or Craig whose "family values" are at complete odds with the moralizing of a Dobson or a Perkins or Roberts.
Successful revolutions recognize all this, or at least they utilize it. OWS is doing none of the things successful revolutions do.
IMHO, of course.
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