Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite? – Mr. Blonde, Reservoir Dogs
“This is beginning of a revolution!” “The oligarchs can’t stop us!” “The 99% are taking back the country!”
Nonsense. Occupy Wall Street is a dead end movement – a carnival of confused, frustrated misfits heading for the mother of all heartbreaks.
Not because they’re soft-headed hippies, Socialists, or touting a hopelessly un-American message. Because their energy’s misspent, misdirected, and they haven’t a stitch of the commitment, or the appetite for risk, needed to succeed in flipping the status quo.* No, the fatal flaw in Occupy Wall Street’s strategy, if that term can be applied to their efforts, is the fatal flaw in every other protest movement we see in America: All bark, no bite.
The One Percent these Ninety-Nine Percenters attack work in finance, government, and the bare knuckle intersection of industry and politics known as Crony Capitalism. These people are nihilists, predators. People who view life as combat, every interaction a zero sum game. These sorts don’t bow to the government, and they sure as hell don’t bow to public opinion. They long ago bought off all the regulators, all the Congressmen, and they own the mainstream media. You can scream at them from the sidewalks until your vocal cords are sandpaper and They Won’t Hear a Thing. They will, rightly, snicker at you. Because you are weak. Because you are naive. Because you believe you can petition some magical referee for fouls and handicap a rigged game with free throws.
Here’s a fact, my placard holding friends: The only time the One Percent listen – to anything – is when it impacts their bottom line. Unless you’re costing them money, directly imperiling the system on which they’re dependent for their wealth, in the most immediate and painful sense, your rallies might as well be mime theater in Central Park.
The only hope Occupy Wall Street has of achieving its goals is to rob the banking system of some of the capital it needs to live…
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