Quote Of The Day

Image credit: Eric Walton/Occupy Together

I love this. Michael Moore, writing in The Nation about Occupy Wall Street:

It’s important to remember, though, that Occupy Wall Street is about occupying Wall Street. The other Occupies that have sprung up around the country are in solidarity, and while they attack the tentacles and the symptoms of the beast that exist locally everywhere, the head can be chopped off only in one place—and that place is in downtown Manhattan, where this movement started and must continue.

Our kids—the heart and soul of this movement—have watched us for years beating our heads against the walls of power, always marching on Washington, sending in checks to the environmental groups, giving up red meat—and what they got from this is that they are the first generation who will now be worse off than their parents. They still love us (which is remarkable when you think of the world we’ve handed them), but they are taking a different path from ours. Let them. The kids are all right. Do they know where their path will lead? Not necessarily—but that’s the beauty of Occupy Wall Street. The mystery of what’s ahead is the lure. Millions want in on that adventure because, deep down, they know they have no choice. And they know that there’s more of them than the men on Wall Street who currently occupy America. They have no choice but to win.

The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street

What I love about it is that if you read this article I wrote months ago:

You don't arrange a protest to deliver a doctoral thesis. You arrange a protest to deliver one simple demand to your rulers: Get it done.

Besides, there is a more specific message, and to anyone who is willing to listen for a moment, it's loud and clear. It's our first "bullet point":

• Stop letting this place suck the life from our country

Phrase that any way you want. Stop the greed. Stop the "I've got mine, the hell with you" attitude. Stop obsessing about taxes when we already pay less than just about any advanced country. Stop the ruthless pursuit of profit, no matter what the cost to the society you live within. Stop the endless control fraud with no one being punished except people who had a friend willing to tip them off.

They're protesting at the black heart of our nation's financial sector - the place where people did their level best to ruin our economy, were bailed out by the government to the tune of trillions of dollars, and gave themselves bonuses while exclaiming about how it's "class warfare" to make them pay more to clean up the mess they made.

The Place Is The Message

It's perfectly clear that many of us knew it was about the place. All the people who were asking what the point of it was didn't have a clue. I suspect most still don't, because when you don't want to understand something it's a whole lot less likely that you will. But that's what this lovely Darwinian world that is being handed to us by our rulers is really about: Adapt or perish. Our kids will adapt. They're strong, and I'm amazed how smart they are given how little we taught them.

They'll do all right. The useful idiots who can't figure it out will be gone soon enough.