The Nuttiness of the 'Occupation' Movement

The Nuttiness of the 'Occupation' Movement
By Bill Murchison
10/11/2011

Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, different leaders of varied labor unions -- pour it on, folks! Show your political solidarity with all the "occupations" going on around the country! Speak to us in anguished tones about the awfulness of free market mechanisms like banks and the horror of earning more money than someone else.

While you're at it, tell us what you're going to do about the horrors of free enterprise and the profit motive. The explicit Marxist-Leninist remedy seems out of favor these days. That leaves, what? Congeries of yelps ("Stop Corporate Greed," "People, not Profits") from the ragtag occupation armies enjoying the autumn sunshine in venues from Wall Street to the West Coast.

Many times over the past couple of years, I have had occasion to drag out the immortal piece of wisdom, "Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Truer words surely haven't been spoken (apart maybe from "There's no such thing as a free lunch"). Those "progressive" commentators and politicians egging on the occupation forces have conceivably taken leave of their senses. Whether the majority of occupiers ever had senses to take leave of is a matter, shall we say, for discussion.

The mainstream media, ever alert to possibilities for provoking a cat fight, have been prowling the various centers of "occupation," striving to make ordinary Americans think something real and vital (as opposed to fake and febrile) is going on around the land. Supposedly, to listen to the occupiers and their well wishers, the country is in revolt against heartless capitalism. As the website of CBS's "The Early Show" informed us Monday, "Americans are frustrated and making their voices heard." News machines like "The Early Show," are frustrated with the heavy lifting involved in sorting through proposals for actual, useful economic reform that would create jobs while reducing media sound bites.

The 1960s flavor of the occupation movement is unmistakable, though the occupiers themselves reference the Arab Spring movement as inspirational: Take over a public square or something and villains will topple.

One measurable difference between the occupation of "Wall Street" and the takeovers of college deans' and presidents' offices 40-odd years ago is that the countercultural types of that time, in their hirsute glory, had moderately clear and at least partly digested aims -- chiefly, "ending" a controversial war in Vietnam. So what if it was a glib and specious idea? It was clear. Also clear was the demand to accord blacks, as Negroes were coming to be called, their rights as freeborn Americans.

Nothing so clear comes to us from the occupiers who rant against greed and corruption, and want to redistribute wealth to the non-super rich who make up "99 percent" of the population (including those who eke by on a mere $750,000 a year).

The fun part of all this is the sudden urge on the part of Democrats and liberals to hide behind the occupation forces, touting their cause for at least as long as it takes to beat out the Republicans' brains in 2012. Sure will be a sight when the campaigns start in earnest and the president has to decide for himself how to walk a fine line between hanging bankers and soliciting their campaign contributions.

Genuine anger, disgust, pain, and heartache exist in abundance. Does that mean phony calls from the grassroots to forgive student debt and redistribute income have either merit or coherence?

What this mainly means is that "progressive" ideas about how economies work -- conditioned on government control and supervision -- are flatter even than once supposed. We wouldn't otherwise find a former speaker of the U. S. House trying to pass off T-shirt slogans and scribbled placard signs as some grand summation of the best in economic thinking.

Another thing this whole episode may mean (pardon my shaking up the syntax) is: These are the people to whom we gave power in 2009, so that they might revive the economy and spur job creation? We commissioned Congress and the president to guarantee loans to shaky, clean- energy projects and to take over health care and auto companies with no better result than trillions in debt and a 9.1 percent unemployment rate?

That's what the friends, the boosters, the encouragers of Wall Street occupation have done for us these past three years?

No wonder they want someone to hide behind.
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Part II The Nutiness of The Media.
There Go The Media -- Again
By Bill Murchison
10/4/2011

"I, Rick Perry, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I further will avoid physical proximity to racially charged names susceptible of scandalizing the media on pain of public disembowelment."

Would that speech do the job, should Gov. Perry against lengthening odds, become President Perry? Not a chance. The trivialization of American politics proceeds apace, with the enthusiastic collaboration of the media -- my own profession, one way or another, for nearly half a century.

With 9.1 percent unemployment weighing down the economy, The Washington Post started the "racially charged name" story that The New York Times elaborated on thus: "at least seven people ... said the name for a portion" of a hunting trip that Perry took guests on at a West Texas hunting camp that bore the racist name "at different points in the 1980s and 1990s." The Name That Must Not Be Spoken.

My knees grow weak. The '80s! A hunting camp! My governor! And a bad word. Not such a word as you hear regularly on "Grey's Anatomy" and "Master Chef." Words describing bodily parts and functions -- that's fine. Why, &$&$&!!, it's downright cool! I say so because I never heard the Post and the Times animadverting on the degenerative effects of R-, not to mention, X- rated language.

Butter, we all know, wouldn't melt in the mouths of our cultural saviors in the media as they advertise, front page, Perry's exposure to words, which he may or may not have reacted to at a hunting camp. Concerning that, in any case, he never raised a ruckus. To the impeachment of ... search me. It's hard to figure the Eastern seaboard media, save as experts in the art of political ambuscade.

The Eastern media were bound to dislike Perry, with his boots, accent and political record. And, it must be confessed, that my governor hasn't always been artful in presentation of his viewpoints. Using the word "heartless," in the context of opposing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, was plumb awful, as well as wrong on its face. Then there was "treasonous," applied to Ben Bernanke. Nonetheless, the idea of a media foofaraw over a name painted here and there at a hunting camp patronized by a presidential candidate -- it insults our intelligence.

This trashy non-story, at a time of economic anguish, matters to the media chiefly, I think, because my profession, generally hostile to conservatives, truly despises populist conservatives from the South. This is true even in Texas, whose newspapers, staffed largely with liberals, miss hardly a chance to throw a roundhouse punch Perry's direction (by way of enriching public discourse, you understand).

Racial conflict, real or fancied, plays a central role in grabbing media attention. To the East Coast media, most Southerners are latent racists. If they like Perry, he may well be one, too. (Follow the logic?) It becomes necessary to find out then if he is. Sniffing around usually produces the intended result. A hunting camp sign reading "Niggerhead"? Honey to bees, is what that is.

Barack Obama, to be sure, had his own brush with news stories concerning ties more intimate, and more deeply regrettable, than any evidenced by Perry at a hunting camp. Obama's pastor really did preach left-wing claptrap, some of it racist. Obama, in full hopey-changey mode, received the media's implicit blessing to throw the Rev. Jeremiah Wright off the railroad trestle -- without further inquiry as to why he hadn't previously discovered Wright's philosophical orientation. Hadn't he been listening, without obvious objection, to this stuff all along? Never mind: We were on a new course.

Come to think of it, that's the big objection to Perry, not to mention the other horses in the GOP presidential stable. They are bent, if not with perfect unanimity, on defining a new course for the country. I wouldn't suggest the media have decided Perry and the rest have to be stopped. If not, though -- I say this sadly -- you can't always tell.