Skeptic Project

So, with attention beginning to actually pick up around the rise in Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States, the question is where you all fall.

For full disclosure, I have already written about this topic on my personal blog and I will say that I am full support of the protests as meaningfully carving out spaces for democratic discourse, but I lament its amorphous position as it stands today. I think to argue that lobbyists and financial interests don't exert undue influence over the political system is to want to throw certain realities in the trash bin. This cannot be taken as a statement that totalizes the financial sector as wrong or inherently bad. I believe corporations and financial institutions are inherently amoral and thus cannot be expected to behave within social mores without explicit regulation. Thus, the protests represent a full turn away from the kinds of hyperfinancialization that occurred throughout the 1980's and 1990's.

I am also not a great admirer of street protests because I feel that they are too often loaned not to careful and intelligent thought, but rather to crowd mentalities and banal rebellion for its own sake. But in this instance, I see an existing and hibernating intellectual articulation on the problems at hand that must come to the fore. I draw these views from ethnographic work carried out by Karen Ho in her book "Liquidated" for example. She uncovers some serious contradictions and issues at the heart of the financial center's engine room.

So, my hope is that these protests will transform into a meaningful, popular dialogue in the near future. I cannot say whether or not these protests will specifically bring about any change, but I do believe they can contribute to actually discussing many of the failed practices that have beset the country and its financial structures for several decades now.

an excerpt from my blog

What I find problematic, however, is the following. There seems to really be more of an amorphous shape to these protests rather than the kinds of directed and well focused protests this country has seen in the past. This is perhaps evidenced by the Occupy movements lack of central demands that appear actionable. I am not saying that what they want is not just- I believe that it largely is- but that what they are after is really unclear pragmatically. I will borrow a quote from The New York Times contributor Gina Bellefante as quoted on Wikipedia, "The group's lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face -- finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out." I agree with Bellefante's point here. The movement may capture the general ideals of a great many of us who have grown up in an America market by run-away corporations, but that does not mean our ideals are well articulated; yet. When writers look "behind the scorn" they most certainly do see precisely what it is that is bothering the protestors, but they cannot translate this into an articulated grievance- only a laundry list of complaints.

There is something to be said, however, for the fact that the amorphous demands that these protestors hold have actually converted in to action. While I agree with Bellefante at this point and time I also hold out hope that action itself may lead to an articulation of demands. And I also hold out hope that the protests themselves will become the trigger by which more people come to identify their grievances with the ways in which finance and governance intersect in this country in a very baffling way.

....

At this juncture I do not know if this movement will actually begin a substantive shift in the way the financial, political, and civic spheres interact, though I do hope there will be some lasting effects beyond the protests. These protests have the potential to represent a serious moment for this generation growing up in the world after 9-11 and on the downward slope engendered by decades of reckless faith in a system of markets geared towards wealth disparity. While I support the protestors and feel that they are embodying something very important, I do not think it has taken a meaningful shape yet. I hope that a voice will be found soon, and that a peaceful but powerful change will come.

Thoughts?

I think the message their putting on is a bit incoherent but the original message they were putting out was very simple, which was they had a problem with how finances are being done in America. In my opinion I think what they are inadvertently asking for is for a crash to happen, at that I couldn't agree more with. As far as any real change happening because of these protests, I'm highly skeptical about that mainly because through out history as far as I know no revolution has caused any real change until after something bad like a collapse happened. After the collapse you usually see a revolution take place but not during or before a collapse.

Just from a historical perspective as I said above I doubt it will go anywhere, but I do support them in a way as a collapse hopefully a fast collapse occurs so we can start recovering/seeing are problems. America also needs to reexamine how it conducts it's finances and to an extent we don't need to add more policy's and rules in wall street. We need more people possibly departments involved with hopefully people who have a real good understanding and background in physics and math, who are able to see these problems and stop these problems ten steps ahead of even the best smart guy on wall street but even then we'll eventually have new problems.

In general I think this is a worthy protest. I would assume politicians know this is happening put on another level the protest will not influence their decisions but if a politician is watching these protests they will sympathize with these people a bit like anyone else would. In a way it kind of reminded me of the teabaggers protest except teabaggers were only covered by fox news, were pretty much the opposite as far as views with occupy wall street, and their protest only lasted one day(can't remember maybe a few days); As occupy wall street is not covered by mainstream media, is a 180 compared to teabaggers, and is lasting for a few weeks now.

On another note, I know some of the people within occupy wall street and I had predicted that Alex Jones was going to say that occupy wall street protesters are NWO or something among that nature. Two days later Alex Jones did say that the people financing occupy wall street are in short NWO and are bad people. Alex Jones also said that teabaggers and Paultards are in occupy wall street but my friends over there are saying if that's true then their are a lot of sandal wearing, bongo drum beating teabagger/paultards out here. In general they pretty much don't like Alex Jones, teabaggers, paul tards, and zeitards. I've talked to a number of the supporters who identify themselves as democrats that support Obama in a lot of ways except for a few things be it jobs, war, bailouts or something else.

Global Banking Cartel Hijack 'Occupy Wall Street' 1/5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaydJiba1qY

live video stream of occupy wall street
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

What the hell do they care? They hate Wall Street anyway. The point is obviously being a contrarian.

Left wing teabaggers and they can kiss my ass.

Nope, their grievances have no merit because there are no concrete grievances. Its a mish-mash of populist bullshit, just like the teabaggers.

It is not my responsibility to decipher their goals and grievances. It is their responsibility to express them in a way I can understand. They do not do so, therefore I do not believe there are any goals or grievances worth my time to consider.

I think you're digging for meaning because you're emotionally invested in the idea that what they're doing is worthwhile in some way.

You've assigned a coherent message to the Occupy Wall Streeters just like right wingers assign coherent messages to the Tea Party. In reality, these messages only exist in your mind because it is what you want to see.

You focus on the hits (coherent signs, coherent speakers) and downplay the misses (incoherent signs, incoherent speakers) even though there seem to be more of the latter than of the former.

I actually don't think I'm doing anything at all. I find populist movements fascinating, and I absolutely acknowledge that they have a great degree of incoherence. I have stated this in my post here and on my blog. I just disagree with your ambivalence because I think it actually ignores the social phenomenon that is latent in the protests. Again, I have fully accepted the outcome being nil of these protests, but to suggest that there isn't something interesting is narrow minded, in my view. I actually don't think the Tea Party is a "non-event" i just dont agree with it as a movement. I do agree with several facets of the OWS protests (issues of corporate personage principally as well as a lack of legal limits and restrictions on lobbying), and perhaps it represents semantic slippage on my point to refer to it as a movement in any way shape or form. The crux of your statement seems to be in suggesting I am "invested" and that there is nothing beyond an ethos and no logos. That's actually a central concern I raised twice in regards to this.

Incoherence and diamonds in the rough are lost to a generation growing up on catchy jingles.

^ Occupy Wall Street is now supported by the the fart smelling Movement!


Occupy Wall Street - Where Everyone Has A Voice - Even The Fart Smelling Guy - October 3rd - Day 17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH4KqV8I2VA

Quote from Evil Elvis

http://the53.tumblr.com/

haha, you go folks, let the sandal wearing morons what you think ;)

While I'm not a supporter of OWS, that picture is stupid. Looks like something Bachmann would post to promote her "47% of Americans don't pay anything" nonsense.

EDIT: never mind it seems to change images on its own.

I'm not sure what 53% is all about unless those people are indicating they have more money than a normal person. I have to say when looking at the people who posted the 53% material most of them were fat and they didn't really look like they were rich at all which suggest to me their teabaggers. Matter in fact most of those people look like they would be poster children for Obama care.

Quote from Evil Elvis

http://the53.tumblr.com/

haha, you go folks, let the sandal wearing morons what you think ;)

I wear sandals as well and I also own bongo drums.

That's exactly what it is, a right-wing meme.

Yeah the other 47% are just lazy fucks mooching off the system. Just exactly who the fuck is supposed to be working the minimum/low wage jobs. Let me guess the illegals who you assholes don't want here?

Kaiser raises a good point that others are beginning to see as well. Does OWS have a list of demands? Any successful protest has a list of demands of things they want changes and if they are really good they will outline how to make the changes. Occupy Vancouver is taking place tomorrow and some of the people that frequent the political background in Vancouver have commented the very same thing, there is no coherent list of demands. They had a list of speakers (who many or may not have had demands) but then last minute said that the final decision of who gets to speak is not made by the speakers subcommittee but some other body. I'm going down anyway to see what I can see and maybe video some of the highlights.