Steve Lerner, former SEIU thug in a what he hoped was a private rant but one that was made public, talked about much of the civil disobedience we’re seeing with this movement today and why he’s at least encouraging it (if not actually involved in it himself). He says, “What’s changed in America is the economy doing well [and that] has nothing to do with the rest of us” and I’d happen to agree.
Joan Walsh of Salon.com continues: “It’s alarming: The banks are doing well, the stock market is up, and yet unemployment remains at dangerous levels, the number of discouraged workers is at a long-time high – and no one in power seems to care.” (Emphasis mine)
This is supposedly why all those idiots are out there in the streets protesting. I’ll get to why I call them “idiots” in a moment, but for now here’s why I have a problem with the protests themselves:
Why The Protests Are Stupid:
1) These are supposedly the bottom 99% protesting the hoarding of the top 1%. I get it, and it pisses me off, too. However what they’re demanding in order to correct it will ultimately harm the middle class for the simple reason that under Washington’s rules, many in the middle class are still classified as “rich” when they are hardly rich at all. Changes as this OWS group are supposedly demanding will hurt the business owners who are the ones who would otherwise (albeit reluctantly) give these bum protestors jobs.
2) They’re not protesting anything. Yes, I know there’s “Wall Street” in the title but you can’t protest a street. You protest a person or a law, so sorry losers – this is NOT akin to the civil rights movement or the employment safety laws which came about after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Those were protests against laws, or more specifically, a lack of them.
if these protestors were actually protesting something, they’d be protesting against the banker-butt-kissing, absolutely pathetic Financial Reform that they all explicitly or implicitly voted for. This, if these bums even had a clue, was what their beloved Democrat administration, full of Wall Street “fat cats”, passed as a supposed fix to the current regulatory system for prevention of the next financial disaster. No matter what the headlines read, however, this so-called “reform” did nothing but allow all the banks to keep their bonuses, hoard their cash, and lay off more employees.
3) There are no “bullets” in this fight. What I mean by bullets is that if these losers really want change, they need leverage, and the best leverage they have is where they put their money. Want to eliminate every unhealthy Big Mac from the marketplace? Do what people did to take healthy food off McDonald’s shelves – they stopped buying it).
If you really want this to be a real protest against Wall Street, organize a run on a bank. Pull all the money out of Bank of America, for example, and put it into local community banks. Leave a bunch of sell orders on the doorsteps of your mutual fund company and put all your money into Treasury Bills. Then you would at least be a force to be reckoned with, not a bunch of loser bums who got tired for a moment of drinking lattes and crocheting knit caps, or yelling at their Ma from the basement to bring down more meat loaf (think Chaz from “Wedding Crashers”). Or, as Lerner suggests, just stop paying mortgages altogether. Even though I believe this is wrong and ultimately counterproductive, the movement would at least be viewed as an actual people movement rather than a bowel one.
So let me summarize.
Why The Protestors Are Stupid:
1) They have no clue how to fight a war. They have an objective without a target, they have no leadership, no credibility, no leverage, and therefore no hope of permanence to anything that they’re trying to achieve. As I’ve said above, unless they’re protesting a law or a person that they want exiled, and they’re using something that has leverage to do it (bullets or dollars), they’re useless and they’ll get laughably crushed. (I’ve got my popcorn ready.)
2) These protesters are ignorant.
a) They continue to pretend that Wall Street is Republican. It isn’t. More than that, the current Administration is stacked with Wall Street cronies and yet the left and these protesters willingly give that a free pass.
b) They fail to realize that their support would be greater and would include actual Republicans and Conservatives if they weren’t so automatically against them for the wrong reasons. Guess what – most Republicans and Conservatives I know agree with what you think you’re protesting. They don’t like that the banks are doing well at the expense of the rest of the country, but they’re pissed at you for allowing your Administration to pass such lame reforms and then compensate for that by screwing the portion of the middle class who actually creates the jobs, pays more taxes, and takes far more risk in life to better this country than you do.
c) They have not thought through what their pollyanna demands would actually do to the country.
3) These protestors are hypocritical because they are a direct reflection of the very people they say they hate on Wall Street. The tragic flaw of the far right and far left is their sense of entitlement. These bums are supposedly protesting against greed – that Wall Street took something for nothing – and yet look at these protestors’ own demands: free education, free health care, free jobs, free this, free that. What are their demands if not greedy in themselves? Greed is simply taking more than you’ve rightfully earned because you feel entitled to it. Where does it (or should it) say that we are “entitled to” free education? Free health care? A free job?
As a point of comparison, Canada’s education isn’t free, it’s affordable. Also, Canada’s health care isn’t free, it’s affordable. Incidentally, Forbes recently ranked Canada as the #1 country for business. Why? They just lowered their corporate taxes, and they have far more predictable costs. Their GDP grew by over 2% last year. Let me say that again – they lowered their corporate taxes and have far more predictable costs, and their GDP grew. And guess what – they have a Conservative Prime Minister making this all happen.
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4) They’re BUMS (pardon the pun) and they do not represent everyday people (at least, I hope they don’t). In addition to the picture above showing a left-wing protestor defecating on a police car, check out this video from CBS Sacramento for proof.
This so-called protest isn’t a “revolution”, a “movement”, or even a rally no matter how much a tingle it puts down Michael Moore or Chris Matthews’ leg. it’s a bunch of bums with no results, purpose, or method in their sights that I spend as much energy laughing at as they spend walking the streets. Today they’re angry, tomorrow they’ll go back to their lattes and Xbox’s, and nothing will have changed.
