Occupy Wall Street: The Young and the Clueless

"Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it." ~French Economist Frederick Bastiat, 1845, Economic Sophisms”

"There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity." ~President Ronald Reagan

For the past few weeks, America has been treated to a steady news coverage diet of Occupy Wall Street, a motley amalgam of former hippies, idealistic but misinformed college students, Marxist advocates, seekers of mayhem for mayhem’s sake, and the just plain clueless. Welcome to the Flea Party, the far left’s answer to the organic uprising of the TEA Party. However, that is where the comparison stops. Whereas the TEA Party uprising has been peaceful, the Flea Party has been a study in anti-social behavior masquerading as noble civil disobedience.

While most of the mainstream news organizations have tried to put a positive spin on these gatherings, pictures of the gatherings on YouTube, Facebook and other media expose the disingenuousness of the claim. In New York, the NYPD has arrested nearly a thousand protestors, many of which were arrested after walking down the traffic lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge, which rendered the bridge impassable to vehicle traffic. One NYT article reported that “None of the protesters interviewed knew if the bridge march was planned or a spontaneous decision by the crowd. But all insisted that the police had made no mention that the roadway was off limits”, which just proves that these people are too stupid to walk to the corner store without an adult present, and surely should not be offering commentary on the complexities of the free market.

Some have been arrested for attacking police officers, another was arrested for defecating on a police car, and yet another for defecating on an American flag. Ironically, the byproduct of that action produced more intelligence than the combined ruminations of the entire protesting assembly. Some of the protestors were having sex in public. Crowds would chant repetitiously the words of the speaker, as if hypnotized cult members. These protests have left mountains of trash in their wake. Protestors carry signs with such captions as “Soon, the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich,” “Money hungry fascist bankers”, “One Nation Under Greed”, “Kill or be killed”, and of course a wide variety of signs for various socialist, communist, Marxist and World Workers Party organizations. I could not help but be amused at two pictures in particular, each of a person lamenting the unfairness of their lack of employment, yet seemingly oblivious to the impact that the numerous face and body tattoos, facial piercings and general appearance might have had on their employment status.

These protests were filled with ironies. While these imbeciles raged against “corporate greed”, they got the word out by using the products of corporations such as smartphones (Apple, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc.), by tweeting (Twitter), Facebooking, digital cameras (Nikon, Sony, Kodak, Canon), video cameras (Panasonic), signs made from cardboard (Kimberly-Clark) with black markers (Sharpie), while wearing clothes made by large corporations (Levis-Strauss, Eddie Bauer, Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister).

A casual perusal of videos containing interviews with the protestors shows that the vast majority have little or no clue as to what they are protesting. Some openly admit they are there for a little fun by joining in the protest. Many lambast “corporate greed”, but then show that they have no clue as to how much profits corporations make versus gross revenues, or the amount of money they pay in taxes. Some express outrage that Wall Street corporations were bailed out, yet seem oblivious to the fact that one of the largest recipients of bailout money is Goldman-Sachs, of which Obama has placed literally dozens of upper-level former employees in important positions in his administration.

This group of unwashed rabble-rousers has a cheering section as well. None other than the Class-Warrior-in-Chief himself, President Barack Obama, said that "I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." In the same interview he also defended the bailouts as necessary, but that seemed to escape the attention of the majority of the protestors. When former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, she responded "God bless them … it's young, it's spontaneous, it's focused and it's going to be effective." At times the protestors were joined by liberal millionaires such as Kanye West, Tim Robbins and the bloated, bloviating behemoth Michael Moore (a man who has grown quite rich by making “documentaries” about corporate greed). Once again, the protestors seem oblivious to the irony of such solidarity.

The entire exercise would be comical if it were not such a devastating commentary of the travesty of ignorance that our education system has produced, with so many of the younger generation clueless as to the basic tenets of our free market economy and the prosperity it produces for all when unshackled from the chains of government. A recent government report on “poverty” in America found that the vast majority of America’s “poor” have air conditioning, at least one color TV, cell phones, microwave ovens, and a car or truck. These are items that would have been considered luxuries not too long ago. Another oddity regarding the poor is that they are statistically more likely to be overweight than those in upper income levels, exposing the tear-jerking yet fallacious narrative of Dickensian poverty in America.

The bottom line is that America is a land of opportunity still, and there is significant income mobility, meaning those that start off poor rise up through the wealth strata over time as they gain more experience and skills. Of course, that requires the whiny little ingrates (who are now demanding that corporations and the rich be taxed more in order to pay for their education, healthcare and whatever else they want) to learn a new four-letter word…W-O-R-K. It is amazing how there is a direct corollary between the amount of education and work one pursues and the amount of wealth one accumulates.

My advice to the protestors? Go home, take a shower, wear pants that don’t show your behind or your navel, stop turning yourself into a walking, talking wall of graffiti, get rid of the eyebrow rings, the nose rings, the lip rings, the angry glare, the bad attitude, the sense of entitlement, study hard, work hard, show respect and humility. You’ll be amazed at how many opportunities will open up as a result.