On The
Protest Movements
David Freddoso wrote a
rather critical article of Occupy Wall Street. It can be viewed here:
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/author/david-freddoso
This is both an
indirect response and a reflection.
Freddoso makes some
good points. There are many people who can't take part in these protests, and
to an extent, their lives ARE being disrupted by the protests. Furthermore, he
rightly points out that a significant number of protesters are aiming to
re-elect Obama. That is, without any doubt whatsoever, one of the worst and
most excruciatingly illogical things they can do. Obama has done nothing but
lie and do the exact opposite of what he promised. He, like many other
presidents before him and many current members of government, is nothing more
than a puppet for Wall Street, bankers, and corporations.
Unfortunately, Freddoso
fails many critical reality checks. Judging by his past articles and books, he
seems to exclusively blame Obama, and he heavily implies that the only people
who would want to protest the current socio-political-economic paradigm and who
think that economic inequality is a severe problem are radical leftists and
Marxists.
This latter point is a
sad attempt at smearing. The truth is that financial inequality in the US is
worse than in several third world countries, like Yemen and Tunisia. That,
combined with recent research that shows how income inequality is strongly
connected to countless social ills, should be beyond alarming for people,
regardless of supposed identities.
Additionally, through
exclusively blaming Obama, Freddoso makes the mistake, not unlike many others,
of assigning blame to only certain targets. This is wrong. The source of our
problems is not some bad politician, some random minority, some lousy policy,
some rogue bank or corporation, or even some elite group operating from the
shadows.
Our entire social order
is the problem.
The free market does
not work. Period. Regardless of government influence, monopolies and corruption
are not only natural, but also inevitable. True progress cannot occur when the
core values of society are profit and self-interest. It is beyond the scope of
this note to go into full detail, but the entire notion of fighting each other
for own very survival as well as any and every advantage we can get over others
must vanish if we are to survive as a species. Otherwise, as I and many others
who have awakened are painfully aware:
WE... ARE... SCREWED.
It is for this reason
that Freddoso's point about working people's lives being disrupted by the
protests really misses the mark. Like countless other defenders of the status
quo, he fails to realize that by continuing to work to death to pay our bills
and survive, we are playing right into the system's hands. We must stop feeding
it and reject it completely, by a wide range of actions, from refusing to pay
back banks to refusing to work to rejecting our politicians.
If we do not completely
reject our current order, we might as well continue to stomp on ants coming
into our cabinets. We can keep on doing it, but the ants will just keep on
coming until we finally get rid of the spoiled food behind the cabinet door.
