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The All-American Occupation: A Century of Our Streets Vs. Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street, the ongoing demonstration-cum-sleep-in that began a month ago not far from the New York Stock Exchange and has since spread like wildfire to cities around the country, may be a game-changer. If so, it couldn’t be more appropriate or more in the American grain that, when the game changed, Wall Street was directly in the sights of the protesters.
The fact is that the end of the world as we’ve known it has been taking place all around us for some time. Until recently, however, thickets of political verbiage about cutting this and taxing that, about the glories of “job creators” and the need to preserve “the American dream,” have obscured what was hiding in plain sight -- that street of streets, known to generations of our ancestors as “the street of torments.”
After an absence of well over half a century, Wall Street is back, center stage, as the preferred American icon of revulsion, a status it held for a fair share of our history. And we can thank a small bunch of campers in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park for hooking us up to a venerable tradition of resistance and rebellion.
The Street of Torments
Peering back at a largely forgotten terrain of struggle against “the Street,” so full of sound and fury signifying quite a lot, it’s astonishing -- to a historian of Wall Street, at least -- that the present movement didn’t happen sooner. It’s already hard to remember that only weeks ago, three years into the near shutdown of the world financial system and the Great Recession, an eerie unprotesting silence still blanketed the country.
Stories accumulated of Wall Street greed and arrogance, astonishing tales of incompetence and larceny. The economy slowed and stalled. People lost their homes and jobs. Poverty reached record levels. The political system proved as bankrupt as the big banks. Bipartisan consensus emerged -- but only around the effort to save “too big to fail” financial goliaths, not the legions of victims their financial wilding had left in its wake.
The political class then prescribed what people already had plenty of: yet another dose of austerity plus a faith-based belief in a “recovery” that, for 99% of Americans, was never much more than an optical illusion. In those years, the hopes of ordinary people for a chance at a decent future withered and bitterness set in.
Strangely, however, popular resistance was hard to find. In the light of American history, this passivity was surpassingly odd. From decades before the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century through the Great Depression, again and again Wall Street found itself in the crosshairs of an outraged citizenry mobilized thanks to political parties, labor unions, or leagues of the unemployed. Such movements were filled with a polyglot mix of middle-class anti-trust reformers, bankrupted small businessmen, dispossessed farmers, tenants and sharecroppers, out-of-work laborers, and so many others.
If Occupy Wall Street signals the end of our own, atypical period of acquiescence, could a return to a version of “class warfare” that would, once upon a time, have been familiar to so many Americans be on the horizon? Finally!
What began as a relatively sparsely attended and impromptu affair has displayed a staying power and magnetic attractiveness that has taken the country, and above all the political class, by surprise. A recent rally of thousands in lower Manhattan, where demonstrators marched from the city’s government center to Zuccotti Park, the location of the “occupiers” encampment, was an extraordinarily diverse gathering by any measure of age, race, or class. Community organizations, housing advocates, environmentalists, and even official delegations of trade unionists not normally at ease hanging out with anarchists and hippies gave the whole affair a social muscularity and reach that was exhilarating to experience.
Diversity, however, can cut both ways. Popular protest, to the degree that there’s been much during the recent past -- and mainly over the war in Iraq -- has sometimes been criticized for the chaotic way it assembled a grab-bag of issues and enemies, diffuse and without focus. Occupy Wall Street embraces diverse multitudes but this time in the interest of convergence. In its targeting of “the street of torments,” this protean uprising has, in fact, found common ground. To a historian’s ear this echoes loudly.
Karl Marx described high finance as “the Vatican of capitalism,” its diktat to be obeyed without question. We’ve spent a long generation learning not to mention Marx in polite company, and not to use suspect and nasty phrases like “class warfare” or “the reserve army of labor,” among many others.
In times past, however, such phrases and the ideas that went with them struck our forebears as useful, even sometimes as true depictions of reality. They used them regularly, along with words like “plutocracy,” “robber baron,” and “ruling class,” to identify the sources of economic exploitation and inequality that oppressed them, as well as to describe the political disenfranchisement they suffered and the subversion of democracy they experienced.
Never before, however, has “the Vatican of capitalism” captured quite so perfectly the specific nature of the oligarchy that’s run the country for a generation and has now run it into the ground. Even political consultant and pundit James Carville, no Marxist he, confessed as much during the Clinton years when he said the bond market “intimidates everybody.”
Perhaps that era of everyday intimidation is finally ending. Here are some of the signs of it -- literally -- from that march I attended: “Loan Sharks Ate My World” (illustrated with a reasonable facsimile of the Great White from Jaws), “End the Federal Reserve,” “Wall Street Sold Out, Let’s Not Bail-Out,” “Kill the Over the Counter Derivative Market,” “Wall Street Banks Madoff Well,” “The Middle Class is Too Big To Fail,” “Eat the Rich, Feed the Poor,” “Greed is Killing the Earth.” During the march, a pervasive chant -- “We are the 99%” -- resoundingly reminded the bond market just how isolated and vulnerable it might become.
And it is in confronting this elemental, determining feature of our society’s predicament, in gathering together all the multifarious manifestations of our general dilemma right there on “the street of torments,” that Occupy Wall Street -- even without a program or clear set of demands, as so many observers lament -- has achieved a giant leap backward, summoning up a history of opposition we would do well to recall today.
A Century of Our Streets and Wall Street
One young woman at the demonstration held up a corrugated cardboard sign roughly magic-markered with one word written three times: “system,” “system,” “system.” That single word resonates historically, even if it sounds strange to our ears today. The indictment of presumptive elites, especially those housed on Wall Street, the conviction that the system over which they presided must be replaced by something more humane, was a robust feature of our country’s political and cultural life for a long century or more.
When in the years following the American Revolution, Jeffersonian democrats raised alarms about the “moneycrats” and their counterrevolutionary intrigues -- they meant Alexander Hamilton and his confederates in particular -- they were worried about the installation in the New World of a British system of merchant capitalism that would undo the democratic and egalitarian promise of the Revolution.
When followers of Andrew Jackson inveighed against the Second Bank of the United States -- otherwise known as “the Monster Bank” -- they were up in arms against what they feared was the systematic monopolizing of financial resources by a politically privileged elite. Just after the Civil War, the Farmer-Labor and Greenback political parties freed themselves of the two-party runaround, determined to mobilize independently to break the stranglehold on credit exercised by the big banks back East.
Later in the nineteenth century, Populists decried the overweening power of the Wall Street “devil fish” (shades of Matt Taibbi’s “giant vampire squid” metaphor for Goldman Sachs). Its tentacles, they insisted, not only reached into every part of the economy, but also corrupted churches, the press, and institutions of higher learning, destroyed the family, and suborned public officials from the president on down. When, during his campaign for the presidency in 1896, the Populist-inspired “boy orator of the Platte” and Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan vowed that mankind would not be “crucified on a cross of gold,” he meant Wall Street and everyone knew it.
Around the turn of the century, the anti-trust movement captured the imagination of small businessmen, consumers, and working people in towns and cities across America. The trust they worried most about was “the Money Trust.” Captained by J.P. Morgan, “the financial Gorgon,” the Money Trust was skewered in court and in print by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, subjected to withering Congressional investigations, excoriated in the exposés of “muckraking” journalists, and depicted by cartoonists as a cabal of prehensile Visigoths in death-heads.
As the twentieth century began, progressive reformers in state houses and city halls, socialists in industrial cities and out on the prairies, strikebound workers from coast to coast, working-class feminists, antiwar activists, and numerous others were still vigorously condemning that same Money Trust for turning the whole country into a closely-held system of financial pillage, labor exploitation, and imperial adventuring abroad. As the movements made clear, everyone but Wall Street was suffering the consequences of a system of proliferating abuses perpetrated by “the Street.”
The tradition the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have tapped into is a long and vibrant one that culminated during the Great Depression. Then as now, there was no question in the minds of "the 99%” that Wall Street was principally to blame for the country’s crisis (however much that verdict has since been challenged by disputatious academics).
Insurgencies by industrial workers, powerful third-party threats to replace capitalism with something else, rallies and marches of the unemployed, and, yes, occupations, even seizures of private property, foreclosures forestalled by infuriated neighbors, and a pervasive sense that the old order needed burying had their lasting effect. In response, the New Deal attempted to unhorse those President Franklin Roosevelt termed “economic royalists,” who were growing rich off “other people’s money” while the country suffered its worst trauma since the Civil War. “The Street” trembled.
“System, System, System”: It would be foolish to make too much of a raggedy sign -- or to leap to conclusions about just how lasting this Occupy Wall Street moment will be and just where (if anywhere) it’s heading. It would be crazily optimistic to proclaim our own pitiful age of acquiescence ended.
Still, it would be equally foolish to dismiss the powerful American tradition the demonstrators of this moment have tapped into. In the past, Wall Street has functioned as an icon of revulsion, inciting anger, stoking up energies, and summoning visions of a new world that might save the New World.
It is poised to play that role again. Remember this: in 1932, three years into the Great Depression, most Americans were more demoralized than mobilized. A few years later, all that had changed as “Our Street, Not Wall Street” came alive. The political class had to scurry to keep up. Occupy Wall Street may indeed prove the opening act in an unfolding drama of renewed resistance and rebellion against “the system.”
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34 Comments so far
Show AllWe should be calling it: "Occupy America."
Yeah, because in that way, it would lose its focus, and would be more comfortable for the Democratic party to coopt. And of course everyone who doesn't think this way is a Koch shill. Am I right? Or are you going to say something worthwhile?
BTW the entire article you responded to was in support for focusing on Wall Street. If you disagree and have arguments, go ahead and make them, although I don't really think you do.
Wall Street is the hub of corporate control of governments all around the world. No progressive change is possible until the financial sector is under control the way it was from the advent of FDR's New Deal in 1934 until Ronny Raygun and his successors overturned the New Deal during the past 30 years.
Occupy All Streets.
What’s the difference between lobsters and Banksters?
It’s wrong to toss a lobster into boiling water.
An 'un-helpful' comment, considering Occupy's commitment to non-violence.
Are you trying to insight violence in this discussion, or are you just being cute?
Best luck and love to the non-violent Occupy efforts,
Alan
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
A cannibal was walking through the jungle and came upon a restaurant opened by a fellow cannibal.
Feeling somewhat hungry he sat down and looked over the menu...
Broiled Missionary: $10.00
Fried Explorer: $15.00
Baked Politician: $100.00.
The cannibal called the waiter over and asked, "Why such a price difference for the politician?"
The cook replied "Have you ever tried to clean one of them?"
yes, just as it is wrong to toss said lobster into boiling lawyers...
or Congressfolk...
but, wait, I repeat myself...*
*tip o' the hat to the great Mark Twain...
Regarding Steve Fraser's mention, in his paragraphs in numerical order 8 & 11,
that we are supposed not to mention "class warfare":
It is postulated to be forbidden for US to speak or act so as to indulge notions
of "class warfare". But those who oppose US claim THEIR right to speak of
"class warfare" as something they accuse US of advocating.
THEY can say it, but WE are forbidden to say it. Whose "class warfare" is it?
The "class warfare" that we in USA confront is war by the rich 1% such as to
"wage-slave-ize" the "lower-class" 99% of us -- as THEY see us. Just consider:
THEY (the 1%) have the temerity to accuse US of "class warfare" if we dare
to object to our impending "wage-slave" status. By a "wage-slave" I mean
anyone who is obliged to live paycheck-to-paycheck, spending all of one
paycheck before the next paycheck is received. [And we can be broken by
one pink slip.] Can it be reasonably argued to be so strange and disobedient
that we should object to a "lower 99% class" status. No. It is not strange or
disobedient. In principle, and as written in our constitution, We The People
OWN the nation. We only, and just circumstantially, grant to businesses and
rich owners of businesses the right to serve US. WE are not supposed to be
serving THEM.
aequum, I don't think Steve Fraser is really saying that the term 'class-warfare' is forever taboo and shouldn't be used --- although its use has been recently discouraged by the ruling-class.
However, the real taboo word that even Fraser curiously does not use himself in his article, despite the fact that his bio notes his co-founding status in the "American Empire Project", is the truly taboo word, "EMPIRE".
This curiosity is indeed strange and more than a bit disturbing, since the yet to be articulated singular, signal, seminal, undiagnosed, and under'lying' cancerous cause of all the 'symptomatic problems', issues, and blocking of the goals and demands that Occupy will eventually articulate is precisely that --- EMPIRE.
Alan MacDonald
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
Do not forget that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism in conventional socialist thought :-) But I think "class warfare" is in fact a bigger and more dangerous taboo word than "empire".
Atomsk, yes, you are correct that, "imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism" is a conventional socialist thought, and thus targeting Wall Street's perversion of later-day finance capitalism has some near term advantages of this Occupy movement.
However, I continue to believe that there are several near term (tactical) and longer term (strategic) values in focusing on Empire, and specifically global Empire. [Some of which I note in a post below].
"Class-warfare" is a term which the empire, and its media whores are not uncomfortable with discussing. In fact, like 'taxes' they love to discuss it.
While perverting the term to be verbal weapon when thrown at the non-ruling classes, the discussion of "class-warfare" mostly devolves into a 'he said/she said' fight, which the ruling Empire is not worried about --- given their superior media fire-power.
However, the word 'empire' is far more dangerous to the ruling-empire, because any discussion or debate at all of it possible being a reality that under'lies' the facade of putative democratic government, will inevitably become a deadly hand grenade in the FOXhole of the hidden Empire.
Absolutely no one in the fortress of the camouflaged Empire will come near to touching that subject, that hand-grenade.
It's fine to have an Empire State, New York, or an Empire Pizza, or Empire Taxi, but even suggesting, let alone seriously discussing, debating, opening the fact-book of empire characteristics, defining an Empire-index (unlike a GDP, or even GINI Index) will ever prompt one of the empire's professional PR pawns to engage in that discussion.
In fact, the only sense in which anyone IN the (well hidden) Empire will ever even whisper the term is in the vain of the old SNL "Land-shark" skit, as Obama did briefly after launching massive US and smaller supportive NATO firepower in the "Pentagon's New Map" war strategy in Libya, when he said, like the 'land-shark' knocking at the apartment door and answering the "who's there?" with a bold-faced lie, ---- "It's not the land-shark" ---- "We're not in Libya for Empire".
Even as good as Obama is in keeping a straight face while lying through his teeth, we are not likely to see, even him, try that again.
When the Empire (which doesn't speak at all), or any of its paid mouth-piece hirelings says anything about the possibility of a real underlying Empire being our phony/Vichy government the charade is going to be over a quickly as a grenade explosion ---- and they know it, and fear it like nothing else in the world!
Which is why the Occupy movement, if they wanted to field a candidate in 2012, could put almost anyone on stage in a presidential debate, regardless of how little money or backing s/he has, as soon as their candidate says to the D/R shills, "Where do you stand on the Empire that controls our country --- and you clowns?", the stage would become the death-bed of both Vichy parties.
Best luck and love to Occupy,
Alan
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
I just Googled "American empire". Came upon a website called The American Empire Project and they have posted Steve Fraser's article. They apparently think the article does address the empire problem, if tangentially, or is relevant to it.
The Project begins its self description with this:
"Americans have long believed that the very notion of empire is an offense against our democratic heritage, yet in recent months, these two words -- American empire -- have been on everyone's lips. At this moment of unprecedented economic and military strength, the leaders of the United States have embraced imperial ambitions openly. How did we get to this point? And what lies down the road?"
Thery have a book title listing including one by Andrew Bacevich "Washington Rules"' one by Chalmers Johnson, "Dismantling the Empire" one by Noam Chomsky, "Imperial Ambitions" and many others, all about the American Empire. Hardly sounds like "the love that dare not say its name."
The CBS News website and the Nation websites both have an article by Alfred McCoy called "The Decline and Fall oof the American Empire" that forecasts a quick end to empire: "a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting."
In my readings the notion of American Empire is not in any way a taboo subject but a rather commonplace subject of discussion, unsurprisingly, since it's quite obvious that we have had one for some time now, notably since the end of WWII. the fact that Obama denied it is also unsurprising.
Cathy M.
While it is certainly true that the readings that you have [and which I have too] regarding the American empire can be found among various authors, it can also be argued, and I believe quite compellingly, that that subject is rarely, if ever, found and discussed on any of the news shows and talk programs that comprise the corporate media. This would then mean that any discussion of whether or not America has an empire can indeed be seen as being a taboo subject among the talking heads who inhabit the mainstream media.
Cathy,
Your comments regarding the discussion of "empire" were both excellent.
Thomas Gilbert-
Cathy, it is very encouraging that you have taken the time to research the academic literature on Empire, and have so quickly informed yourself of the general scope, nature, and history of criticism regarding the impact of Empire (and Imperialism) on America --- you are obviously a motivated and quick study, employing Google and academic research methodology to inform yourself (and other here) about Empire in America.
However, merely finding and reviewing the American Empire Project is something that 99% of your fellow Americans have never done, nor have they typically had the chance to move beyond the dismissive aspect of US History texts, which compartmentalize Imperialism to a single chapter, typically called something like "The Age of Imperialism --- 1890's to 1920" which instills in students the strong, but wrong, impression that that era is over, and can be comfortably ignored as a dead letter in modern America.
Yes, Cathy, the literature on Empire is easily available to a motivated and intelligent person like yourself, and the more you explore all the authors and books that you referenced from the AEP, the more you and others like yourself can fully understand how the drive to Empire has effected the US and the world, and is continuing to evolve as a cancerous back-story hidden in plain sight in the burning kitchen of our own lost democracy. But that does not help the general population of America understand, recognize the dangers of unchecked Empire, nor deeply diagnose the pathology which is now causing such great political, economic, social, military, and cultural problems in our world.
When I describe the PR disguise of today's global Empire in so effectively employing the same technique that the Nazi Empire more crudely used in occupied France c1940, I did not mean to imply that this camouflage of the cancerous tumor of contemporary global Empire was "taboo" and out of reach to Chomsky, Zinn, Johnson, Berman, Negri, Hardt, Kolko, Wolin, Harvey, Bacevich, and many other academics experts on Empire, or yourself as a motivated investigator of this topic, but rather that until the word 'Empire' and the basic analogies of how contemporary global Empire effects the world of our political, economic, social justice, foreign policies (of war), international law, sovereignty, self-government, and the many other factors that Occupy Wall Street (and its aligned movements) are protesting, that the very term, and underlying impact of 'Empire' is essentially being well disguised, like a cancer, behind the much more visible political charade of multi-party Vichy governments, and thus is essentially a 'taboo' term, and one which is not connected with any sense of threat and danger by the general public.
Your own research, and Steve Fraser's ample access to deep academic research through AEP scholars, will hopefully insure that once aware of the unique knowledge of Empire that you both have, you will both endeavor to be more forthcoming in sharing such deep understanding of the nature, danger, and impact of Empire on the lives and problems of the 99% of world citizens who are far less aware of the causal relationship between disguised and undiagnosed global Empire and the 'symptom problems' that we are all so concerned about in our world today.
Best,
Alan
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
WTF is up with this patronising attitude? Seriously, what the fuck? I didn't go deeper into this discussion because I find it pretty stupid to debate whether "empire" or "class war" is a more "taboo" word (mainly because it is something you'd need actual data to discuss and even having that data would bring us no closer to actually understanding anything), but seriously: in traditional socialist thought, "class war" is always the more basic underlying concept, imperialism and empire always resulting (different ways in different times) from it. There is class war without empire, most of the evils of capitalism can manifest themselves without empire, and international monopoly capitalism can (and does, to a larger and larger extent) manifest itself without empire. In other words, the American Empire might collapse without changing the underlying political economy of the world and having any effect on "class war".
Writing such a patronising post without any reference to actual media analysis (if we're not talking about real world mechanisms but perception - "taboo") and numbers is plain stupid - mainly because you got the structural (political economic) stuff wrong, the other way around: class war always comes before empire. Of course you could still make sense: if you want to assert that the concept of "empire" is more "taboo" than "class war", find some research that operationalises this concept of "relative tabooness" and makes measurements for comparison: counts mentions in articles and news programmes etc, do not just make an assertion and patronise people who disagree with you. Sorry but your post is wrong on way too many levels now and your patronising attitude has no merit.
Atomsk, sorry to up-set you with the argument about the "relative tabooness" (BTW, cute word usage) of the term 'empire' compared to 'class war'.
While I do have some tactical rationale for this proposition, which I have mentioned earlier and elsewhere in CD, your very valid point --- and equally valid annoyance --- about such apparent 'word games' on my part is understandable (and I am not just being patronizing to you).
BTW, per your informed and humorous socialist comment, "Do not forget that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism in conventional socialist thought :-) ", I think you would be very interested in particularly the last chapter of David Harvey's fabulous "The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism" --- which is infinitely more revealing than his excellent 2003, "The New Imperialism".
Written in mid 2009 [published 2010 in England], Harvey's final chapter WAS a truly amazingly prescient vision of what the Occupy movement IS today (two years later), and why this search for a solution had to come about as it has. Hopefully, it will progress to a solution that includes both an appropriate strategic vision, and populist tactics that carry a non-violent banner comporting with that vision.
Atomsk, let us leave this matter of 'word choice' issues peacefully, and hopefully agree with each other that capitalism, class-warfare, and empire are closely intertwined elements in our current need for an epochal solution that avoids extinction.
Best,
Alan
Hehe sorry about being so aggressive and complaining about your choice of expressions (basically), thing is, I know I'm often much worse (which is probably the main reason I was so angry, a simple case of hypocrisy :-D). And thanks for the reading recommendation, keep them coming please!
"Atomsk, let us leave this matter of 'word choice' issues peacefully, and hopefully agree with each other that capitalism, class-warfare, and empire are closely intertwined elements in our current need for an epochal solution that avoids extinction." Completely agree.
"Where do you stand on the Empire that controls our country --- and you clowns?", the stage would become the death-bed of both Vichy parties."
Alan,
Why do think the above question regarding "empire" would have such an effect?
Thomas Gilbert-
Tom, because all the 'presidential' politicians in the Dem. Vichy party and the Rep. Vichy party are figure-head pawns and paid deceivers of the global Empire, and none of them can possibly engage in a serious discussion or debate about the power, influence, and control of Empire in the political charade that provides the 'cover', disguise, distraction from Empire that they are carefully selected and promoted to shill for.
In short, they are the political front-men and disguises for the Empire, and they know full well that their very comfortable existence, status, and very lives are dependent on keeping their paymasters and overlords and the global Empire disguised, or as Ford used to say in TV ads, "Job One".
Eisenhower, on leaving office, admitted that the Military Industrial Complex was real and should be of great concern to the American public.
JFK, before leaving office, hinted, particularly in his American University commencement address in June '63, that some aspects of the aggressive US foreign policy of wars were imperial, and that American democracy need be concerned with such powers.
But, since those times, no major public figure except the unelected Martin Luther King in his Riverside Church speech "A Time to Break the Silence", has fingered an underlying and undiagnosed Empire as being the causal cancer behind multiple problems of racial, war, economic, social justice, and cultural decline.
All of the 'symptom problems' that MLK was attuned to, as well as the severe economic problems of the '30s and today, and the foreign global war policies of today, are closer to the surface and more integrated than they have ever been. And thus, what is perceived by most Americans as the most powerful political figure in what they still think of as 'their country', openly discussing, or even responding to the assertion that there might be an Empire of unelected power which is causing all their terrible problems, would instantly spook the masses and spark immediate a Second American Revolution "Against Empire".
Best luck and love to the Occupy movement,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
Best,
Alan
Alan,
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my question.
Thomas Gilbert-
"it’s astonishing -- to a historian of Wall Street, at least -- that the present movement didn’t happen sooner"--Steve Fraser
~♦~ ~♦~
...and equally astonishing to an empiricist. also sad that a sense of "economic injustice" and not "social injustice" tops the list. yet, we can get our priorities in order. i thrill to hear those voices, too!
~♦~ ~♦~
"The political system proved as bankrupt as the big banks."--Steve Fraser
~♦~ ~♦~
you know, guys, as long as we accept, admire and desire a gaudy display of material wealth and all the status symbol trappings, we the people shall remain as venal and shallow as they. for generations we have ridden this carnival's merry-go-round--up and down, round and round; feet never touch the ground.
~♦~ ~♦~
"Karl Marx described high finance as “the Vatican of capitalism,” its diktat to be obeyed without question."-- Steve Fraser
~♦~ ~♦~
we naturally social primates find something comforting in group-think, that feeling of acceptance and often allow the group to override ones own moral compass. when everyone around you believes in a petty god who rewards those who never question the established authority of man and punishes any who dare disagree saying, "don't rock the boat!"
gee, i HOPE that this begins an era in which we cross the racial divide, the gender divide and the cultural divide realising we all ride this boat together. to speak against injustice doesn't rock the boat. the injustice rocks the boat! the boat's been rocking for centuries now, thrown off balance by a hydra hierarchal system of favortism. capitalism, fundamental religion and authoritative governors, all fighting for "my" place at the top of pyramid never see the destruction on the ground because their heads stay in the clouds. even our earth suffers from anthropocentric arrogance. NOW the time has arrived to awaken from our self-centered dream and appreciate the good things we have.
~♦~ ~♦~
"It would be crazily optimistic to proclaim our own pitiful age of acquiescence ended.
In response, the New Deal attempted to unhorse those President Franklin Roosevelt termed ‘economic royalists,’ who were growing rich off “other people’s money” while the country suffered its worst trauma since the Civil War.”-- Steve Fraser
~♦~ ~♦~
i felt such disappointment to lean that our "progressive" roosevelt signed a document which said, "I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I recognize and accept the supreme authority of the United States of America in the Philippine Islands." repressive cannot be a synonym for progressive! genocide against those the colonists met, slavery, the destruction or subjugation of many people from our own aMErican presumption of superiority all play against our better interests.
there's no sin in mistakes and misjudgements. the real sin is obstinate failure to learn from our mistakes! we may Now be taking the final exam for humanity! good luck everyone!
CD post re Steve Fraser and the strangely unspoken word “Empire”:
WOW! It is almost unbelievable that Steve Fraser, as co-founder of the "American Empire Project", never uses the world 'empire' in this article, when something as epochal as this "game changer" and "end of the world as we know it" is now occurring with the Occupy movements, insurrection, rebellion, revolution against .... something.
That 'something' that Occupy has not yet "articulated", and which Fraser so confidently fingers as Wall Street --- could actually be "the Street" --- or it could be something even more ethereal, more hidden, more disguised, and less 'diagnosed' than just the unapologetic looters on "the Street", or merely any one target in the purely financial sphere.
I am likewise concerned with Fraser's mention of emotive buttons like; "the American Dream", overuse of the words America and American (including the article's title, "The All-American Occupation"), and his strange concluding reference to saving, perhaps by more properly 'ordering' the "New World".
So, I am curious about what Fraser learned from all the academics' and intellectuals' books that the “American Empire Project” published, and what agenda he may be carrying forward regarding the evolution of that curious word that he chose not to mention in this essay.
One curious thing that I have noted is that the plethora of books on the distinctly “American” Empire seemed to have slowed or shied a bit after the awful attack of 9/11 on America. I suppose that this unexpected and tragic attack on America itself, and the consequent patriotic 'pulling-together' along with the world's immediate sympathy with America's victimization by 'others', may well have taken the focus off more books and articles about America even being an Empire.
But if the motivation and hubris toward empire was real, as documented by these scholars; Chalmers Johnson, Chomsky, Klare, Zinn, Turse, Bacevich, Bello et al, then did this urge to Empire simply disappear as the 'heat' against an American Empire was reduced? Or did the project of Empire merely assume different forms or personae?
Well, it seems to me, that in a reading of the newer works of several of these authors (who were part of the American Empire Project) as well as other academics who wrote on the topic of Empire, both before and after the 9/11 crisis (and the 9/15/08 crisis), that the informed research and discussion on Empire certainly did not go away, but rather changed with respect to American involvement and the inclusion of other former nation-states in our current post-nation-state world.
Empire research started to become more nuanced (to use a denigrated word) with respect to its 'global' nature, and also more focused on its tendency to better 'disguise' itself. Authors like Christopher Hedges in his outstanding, “Empire of Illusions” addressed the extreme levels that Empire employs to disguise and suffuse itself into modern life without overt propaganda. Authors like Michael Parenti, whose older “Against Empire” essentially started modern empire research, in his 2011 “The Face of Imperialism” diagnoses and discloses the global nature into which 21st century empire has morphed, and in which “Globalization” is essentially a soft propaganda cover-phrase for the harsher reality of 'global Empire'. While the ever insightful Morris Berman (who has chosen to live outside the nominal and current HQ of the global Empire) noted in his earlier “Dark Ages America” (2006) that “In the case of an ailing social order, the absence of an adequate diagnosis .. is a crucial, perhaps decisive, part of the disease” [Zygmunt Bauman], suggesting, that like cancer, the hiding skills of Empire are perhaps the most dangerous and effective camouflage of the pathology. In Berman's later and fabulous “Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline”, he most effectively diagnoses how the founding American Dream was fatally perverted by Empire and is now threatening the world. Nick Turse in recent articles explores and exposes the abuse of stealthy American 'super-power' globally, in the arc of instability, and the expansion of the global imperial project with the enjoining of an increasing number of putative 'democracies' (via Nato) aggressively recruited to the reconstituted global Empire.
So, in conclusion, I am left with the unsettling concern that Fraser's singular and distractive focus on only Wall Street, and only America, with respect to the elements that the Occupy movement is (or should) target in our coming articulation of 'goals', 'demands', and insurrection tends to blunt any discussion of any broader target --- and specifically removes the very consideration Empire, and particularly 'global Empire' for the range of what Rumsfeld used to refer to as “attractive targets”.
In point of fact, the corporate/financial/militarist 'global' EMPIRE that now controls our former country (and several others) by hiding behind the facade of its multiparty modernized 'Vichy' sham of democratic government,more effectively than the Nazi Empire ever hid behind its crude single party 'Vichy' facade in France, is the ultimate target that any successful Occupy movement in “The Coming Insurrection” [Negri] “Against Empire” [Parenti] will need to diagnose, expose, confront, and excise as an “Empire of Illusions” [Hedges] if a Global People's Dream of democracy is to have any chance of reversing the loss of a perverted American Dream and learn something from “Why America Failed” because of empire.
We, the 99% of Occupy and the world will not learn this about global Empire by focusing our efforts on what Fraser incorrectly or distractively describes as merely an American Wall Street visible 'element' of this broader and hidden empire.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
From Fraser's article:
"As the twentieth century began, progressive reformers in state houses and city halls, socialists in industrial cities and out on the prairies, strikebound workers from coast to coast, working-class feminists, [NOTE] antiwar activists, and numerous others were still vigorously condemning that same Money Trust for turning the whole country into a closely-held system of financial pillage, labor exploitation, and [NOTE]imperial adventuring abroad. As the movements made clear, everyone but Wall Street was suffering the consequences of a system of proliferating abuses perpetrated by “the Street.” "
You make the same mistake as many who are fixated on one idea to the exclusion of others: you take Fraser to task for not focusing on what you want to focus on. The subject of his article is clearly the Occupy Wall St movement in the context of the history of American protest against Wall St, not the history of American protest against the American empire. When Fraser "never mentions empire" - except he does in passing in the above quote - it is clearly not because he's engaging in some insidious conspiracy of silence, as you so hilariously suggest, but simply because he is focusing on his topic, as is recommended for all good writing. There is nothing in this article that suggests Fraser does not have the fact of American imperial ambitions as a backdrop to the story, both with regard to the protests in the past and in the present. The suite of ideas he discusses and his general outlook make it impossible to believe, for one reading his article without monomania, that the dire problems caused by our empire are not part and parcel of the Wall St. problem. No doubt Fraser applauds Eisenhower's phrase "military industrial complex." This idea is all about empire, even though the word is not actually used.
Cathy, you seem to be arguing that the word 'empire' need not be used, as strongly as I argue that the word 'empire' must be used in the discussion, debate, and promulgation of the goals, demands, and solution of the Occupy rebellion, as it grows to a global revolution "Against Empire".
I know, and have already articulated on CD, why I so strongly believe the laser focus on 'empire', confronting empire, and overcoming empire is essential to both populist tactical advantages and developing a deeper strategic vision solution of the Occupy kick-off to a successful revolution "Against Empire", against capitalism, and against war.
I would be greatly interested in your, or your sponsors', reasons for being so dead-set against the proposition of using the specific word, term, banner of 'Empire' (and specifically global Empire) as the fundamental and causal factor that Occupy should ultimately rally against.
I promise that I will not attack you for "monomania" for being as strong in your defense of the needlessness of using the term 'empire', as you have me for arguing to very PUBLICLY use the term 'empire'.
Best,
Alan
Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire
amacd, atomsk, hummingbird:
All perceptive comments. If some movement(s) can get a societal (anti-EMPIRE)
remediation accomplished, we should certainly agree that it is good.
My hopefully unbiased observation is, nevertheless, that militarists are almost
always contending for the nation's attention, and that so-called military options
are convenient reactions that are unthinkingly grasped by a reactionary segment
of the population. I wonder whether that grasp can be so easily broken.
I would rather see something actually accomplished about what I see as an
impending imperial seizure of all our wealth in this country. The financial
imperialists would have us become like old European kingdoms, where the
King owned all the land and castles, and merely let them out to his favorites.
Old King Louie ___ went so far as to say that he WAS the state.
Curb Wall Street.
occupy yourself.
In South America the rallying cry is expressed and originates with the indigenous peoples in "Good Living/Sumak Kawsay/Bem Viver/Living Well". In contrast to 'earning a good living', which implies addiction to climbing an economic ladder, the focus is on community, accountability, sustainability, rubbing an opening in the chalk circle of rhetorical devices to divide and usurp. Profoundly aware that process strengthens community, the goal oriented arguments such as the IIRSA (http://www.iirsa.org/index01.asp?CodIdioma=ENG) broad coalitions are struggling to subject the transnational industrial exploitation model to scientific scrutiny, resistence demanding due process and accountability at every level.
Keep an ear and eye out for folks to the south being subjected to free trade agreements. It behooves us to become familiar with Convention 169 of the ILO to which most nations are signatories.
WHY I OCCUPY
A hungry child continues to cry...
That is why I Occupy
The killing drones continue to fly...
That is why I Occupy
The Pentagon still continues to lie...
That is why I Occupy
45,000 uninsured continue to die...
That is why I Occupy
Wow!
You nailed it.
Wow!
You nailed it.
I am very much pro-OWS. I agree with just about everything that the core group is saying. There is a lot of hubbub about "socialism," but when you get beyond the fringe there isn't any socialism in the message (just as when you get beyond the fringe of the Tea Party it is devoid of racism, but the edge is full of it).
I don't think there is anything wrong with our system, especially when it's implemented as the Constitutional writers intended. We are WAY off track from their beliefs. The system was not created to be able to endure the flow of cash and the lobbyist system as it has grown since 1970. One thing that Al Gore pointed out in a recent book was that the Constitution almost certainly wanted to keep money power and political power separate. When the two get together the system blows up. A recent study (wish I had a link, but I don't) showed that since the 1970s Congress was almost universally following the will of the most moneyed interests. That's not supposed to happen and it wasn't intended to happen. The Founding Father's were rich, of course, but they were adimate that the richest would not dominate them and that institutions wouldn't get in the way of individual freedom.
So OWS doesn't imply any solutions? So wrong... the solution is to get the money out of politics and return it to the voters as intended. Since we've been saddled with corporate personhood since 1886, it will probably have to be constitutional amendment. But I believe if you give congressmen the freedom to do the greater good and make it real public service again the "system" would actually work. It would be easier to sort out the bad characters, too.
OWS to the White House
Testing, Testing,
Can you hear us now?
Testing, one, two, Three
This is all about Obama's SELL OUT to Wall Street!
Testing, Testing