"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." (Mahatma Gandhi)

"...it’s likely that the Occupy Wall Street movement will fade away, as populist movements commonly do."

Populist movements fade away when the underlying conditions are addressed. When people are desperate, their movements do not fade away. If people have no recourse and nowhere to go, their numbers will increase. This should be obvious, no?

"The big flaw in the Occupy Wall Street movement ever since it began some three weeks ago has been that the actual proposals for action demanded by its members have largely been incoherent, confused and self-contradictory."
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Pardon an editorial cavil, but speaking of big flaws: this lede is another example of a sentence that would be vastly improved if the word "alleged" or "ostensible" were inserted before "big flaw"-- or if "big flaw" were at least enclosed in ironic quotation marks, now often called "scare quotes" for some reason.

As written, the bald characterization of the qualities or conditions enumerated as a "big flaw" reads as a pejorative, and in any case begs the question.

It ain't necessarily so, and failing to refine the opening is the equivalent of a treacherously loose top step on a flight of stairs.

"The real war going on now is that between the generations."
Surely not? I thought it very clear that the "war" is between the 99% and the 1% (into whatever age group members of each side fall).

"The big flaw in the Occupy Wall Street movement ever since it began some three weeks ago has been that the actual proposals for action demanded by its members have largely been incoherent, confused and self-contradictory."

This is a problem that many people need answers right away in our instant grat culture. What's wrong with some time to digest and savor thoughts and emotions? Why must a movement answer to the demands of writers like this who insist on answers. Deal with ambiguity and chaos occasionally, it is natures way of evolving.

Not only youth are involved in this movement; we are all ages, colors, religions, genders.

"Afterwards will come the hard part of convincing those same ordinary people to again believe in the American Dream."

Heaven forfend. The "American Dream" is more a public relations scam than anything else, and its unquestioned acceptance played a role in the growth of casino capitalism, and the ugly consequences.

The author is also ill-advised to characterize the basic conflict as intergenerational, when it really is "class warfare" -- so called because some of the 99% are fighting back.

If the American Dream is consumerism, debt, and greed count me out. If the American Dream has evolved to cooperation, compassion, kindness, then a new day may be dawning.

All this is stuff we learned in 1st grade. Keep your hands to yourself. Use your words. Clean up after yourself. The original Golden Rule, not the one where "he who has the gold, rules". Sharing. The 99%ers get a gold star.

WILLIAM BLACK!! See Amy's interview with him.

Richard has it right about a basic appeal to genuine morality. What he is missing is huge. 1) This is less about message and more about process, the process is the message. 2) This is unlike any movement since the great depression because of numerous convergence of oppressive factors. 3) Because of # 2, there is greater potential for unification of allied groups than ever before. 4) The earth is dying. 5) There is no reason to think that freedom will return, or democracy, or the economy given the present systemic structures.

The right-wing of the Republican Party, FOX News and their minions can't cover up the obvious. As the movement grows around the country there are slow signs of coherency emerging. And watch out when they reach the point of crystal-clarity.
Only a fool or someone who is part of the problem would whine "class warfare" now.

Right on, Richard!

For a really good article putting this protest into perspective, please go to:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Occupying-America-Sowing-by-Lori-Spencer-111019-246.html
It will take time to sort out the wording of the objectives because this protest expresses the real morality and desire for fairness that the rich have squeezed out of the American Dream. It has become the American Nightmare.

This is not going to be fixed in a few days -- as this article points out, It took years for the Founders to sort out their precise goals. But they understood the need for morality and fairness and were willing to fight for it even if the exact solutions were not clearly phrased.

'New York’s Zuccotti Park, which has become the centre of what is now a worldwide movement' Richard Gwyn above

Rubbish! Nothing but 'American' Rubbish!

New York’s Zuccotti Park is a child of the Arab Spring that germinated in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

This bloody corrupt American exceptionalism that Richard Gwyn flounders in is flat earth excreta making a pig's pen of current events, and if it is allowed to carry on we will get nothing but the same pig's wallow at the end. Use it and you are unconsciously or consciously an agent of the corrupt regime these gatherings wish to destroy.

In other words, you either need to grow up Mr Gwyn or, more seriously, change sides. Either way you will stop being a reactionary and in any case you are doomed if you don't.

"The real war going on now is that between the generations"

Baloney. The grand-daddy of all wars is the class war. Period. And what's different today is that the people recognize this. Despite Gwyn, et al, trying to confuse us.

"As the weather gets chillier and as many of those taking part have to leave for other pursuits — such as trying to find a job — it’s likely that the Occupy Wall Street movement will fade away, as populist movements commonly do."

Baloney. Gwyn is merely trying to support his elite masters, so he can continue to reap a slice of the spoils.

"Afterwards will come the hard part of convincing those same ordinary people to again believe in the American Dream."

That's irrelevant kaka Gwyn is spewing to try and confuse/distract the people from pursuing their revolution. He is merely trying to curry favor with the elites of Toronto. How do you think the people's sensibilities were pummeled into paralysis if not in this way?

2:
So while the nation dithers and argues and fumes impotently and works against itself, more harm is done. A more ideal situation would be that things are changed "as needed", if not before, with the kind of fervor and dispatch the U.S. showed when on the march to war.

When things don't change, it is sometimes because they can't be changed. But the issues of the Wall Street protest movement are all issues that could be changed, and with alacrity, too, if the will do do so was present among the people who have the capability to make the changes- that is, people in high corporate, financial, and government perches.

The will to do so is almost entirely lacking- partly because there have been few, if any, consequences upon the 1% for their excesses, crimes, deceits, thefts, etc.; they have bought and bullied and worked hard to make themselves almost above the law, and those who might prosecute them are of the same level of social/financial class. And so, it is a "you scratch my back and I will scratch yours" situation , or an example of a kind of brotherhood, of intrafraternal love, and, My Dear 99%, this brotherhood is much stronger than any charitable feelings towards any of us out here in the land of the Great Unwashed. We who with our pennies here, and our taxes there, and our penalties here, and our interest payments there, have financed their very rise to wealth, are really not appreciated by them at all, except insofar as we continue to enrich them.

Because the wealth was built upon our backs- we the people who actually work and produce, I mean- it seems to me that without enough low-level backs to hold up the rich people's pyramid, it would start to crumble and collapse.

One key is to start to control our own consumer desires, because all corporations play us for suckers and know just how to make things that people will sell their first-born AND their beloved Grandma to possess.

We are a gadget-happy bunch of trade rats, and shiny things that blink are our undoing these days. As a people we have become a cyber-herd of remote-controlled minds, controlled by mass media input from outlets which are highly selective about their choices of information to give to us.

And of what is given to us, a large proportion is literally calculated to produce an effect, often an emotional effect, followed by action- usually spending, but not always- because when it comes down to it, Americans are not all that different from Pavlov's rats, and will salivate on cue, and so forth, and this has all been worked out quite extensively by the advertising industry as well as by government agencies, I think.

When I think of the Wall Street protest movement I can't help but think of the Bonus Army of World War 1 veterans, and how they were an even more peaceful and respectful bunch than we have in the New York gathering today.

But eventually, when they would not decamp, MacArthur and soldies were sent into the camps to clear them out by force if necessary, and that is when it got a bit rough. The result was refusal of the promised, legally obligatatory bonus the veterans were demanding (until some time later) and also expulsion by force.

Had there been more resistance there would have been more violence. The federal government is not in the habit of backing down to citizen protests- it takes a lot of pressure for a long time, and even then, citizen protests are not so effective if there is no real effect upon the people being protested against.

I know that things always need to change for the better, and that most if not all of us feel that changes are slower than they should be or need to be, and that it is mainly just stubbornness and greed and so forth that prevents effective change.

I also know that when there is a national will to do something, Americans can get stuff done in a way my old friend Doreice calls "going at it like killin' snakes".

So the problem is maybe largely 1. the lack of will among the rich combined with 2. the lack of real desperation, yet, among most of the 99%.

I mean, from my limited perspective, it seems that way. I realize it is much much bigger subject than any little essay I might write about it.

It may be we are still a long way from a critical mass of discontent. It would be nice to have good changes made because we all want to, rather than hang on like stubborn children until none of us has any choice left about changing because it becomes a life or death situation.

But knowing humans, I expect that is how it will go.

We are not stupid, but fall for tricks very easily, and fall for the same flim-flams again and again, generation after generation.

I think the education system could do something about it, but it too is subject to the big national hynosis and delusion within which the U.S.A. and so may of its people are lost.

Also, as a populace we have been kept from unifying by the divide and conquer effect from 9/11 and the wars, which have caused lots of internal strife that keeps us from effectively banding together as a people to confront the vastly outnumbered ones who we allow to oppress us by allowing them to manipulate our desires, and effectively hold us hostage because of our own individual wants and cravings and dependencies.

I know that good changes could more quickly were there the national will to do so; and I believe that the problem to examine is right there.

That is, perhaps we need to seriously ask the question of what our national will is, why it is so fragmented and riven by internal conflict more than it really should be, why Americans seem to be either angry, half-asleep, in denial, or Pollyannas; what role the huge surge in psychiatric prescription drug use has had on the national will; and finally, the real long-term effect of 9/11, after the yee-haw go get 'em phase I mean- and the effect of the bogus official explanation of it, and of the evil wars it enabled, which have plagued us and the world since then.

1.
I want to be as positive as possible, and I do wish the movement success, but also know that Wall Street and the NYC authorities are counting on the weather to put a stop to the demonstration, and it probably will.
The people now on the street will be able to find warm shelter when winter comes; most likely, every single one of them.
When things get so bad economically that people are forced to live out in the cold, that is when people will stay out in the cold, and not before.

The big players of banks and of Wall Street, and the government authorities, are being indulgent with the protesters, for the most part, because that is the easist path for them to take, and costs them nothing. It is not a concession, nor charity, nor brotherly understanding, but just more self-interest.

Same with the chimera that we want to believe is the media finally starting seeing things the 99% way. Nope. Maybe a little. But it's shallow, not deep, and its sincerity is questionable.

The method being used on us as American citizens these days is insulting and degrading, but sadly, it is also pretty effective; it is not too different from the methods used to calm a child before bedtime. "Take your medicine, say your prayers, have your warm milk, and enjoy your bedtime story time...."
" Hush now, child, and listen.....close your eyes. Once upon a time, there was a very handsome and wealthy king. But he was also a very sad King......"

And then comes "the nod": drifting off- (while wishing we could help that poor sad wealthy king, for some reason)- one more time, like every time, "We the People" slip off to that ephemeral and unclutchable "American Dream"-land one more time; and everyone feels sort of proud of themselves for no good reason, and basks in it, but the net result is that it's all just warm air: nothing worth doing really gets done for the 99%.

We are people who are sometimes trustingto a fault andother times paranoid of those who would benefit us all. We are a people, it seems to me, inclined to thank someone who stabs us with a 12" knife, and then claims salvage rights on our bodies and selves after pulling the blade out 6". If We the People were high school chicks, and the government was the football team guys, I have no doubt we would be called easy. (or much worse). Sad but true.
It's good to trust. Unforunately, being trusting has its drawbacks when untrustworthy people are around. And without a doubt, Americans have been trusting the wrong people for far too long.

So it seems to me that the strategy from the "powers that be" is one of humoring the protest, and convincing the the protesters that their positions are being taken somewhat seriously, all without any real, meaningful, actual concessions from the 1%.

We live in a bread and circuses society as surely as the ancient Romans did, and of course govenment calculates to a fine point the tolerance of the people, and generally judges it quite well, and controls it via the modern-day versions of tried-and-true bread and circus methods.

As long as Americans have television, gasoline, alcohol, access to guns and ammo, fast food, and professional and college sports, and texting, (not necessarily in that order ) there will be no revolution but a very slow one.

Maybe that is, in the long run, the best way, compared to a revolution of more brisance, such as the French or American or Russian revolutions, all of which were extremely violent.

Maybe slow evolution, with infinitesimal concessions and changes made so slowly they seem to be in geologic time, is best overall. Or maybe not. I don't know.

The down side is that the famous "fierce urgency of now"- which someone spoke about some time or other- gets lost in such slow social changes.

It seems that the hard truth about this country is that "the fierce urgency of now" only applies to war-making, or assassination, or executing some poor convict, or facilitating emergency bailouts and automatic forgiveness of crimes, within a morally bankrupt "old boy" buddy system.

And in the U.S. anymore, more and more it seems that you are either in the In crowd, or you are not. Migration from poverty to relative wealth becomes more difficult with each passing year as the classes become more rigidly stratified. This is something which we are accustomed to think of as very "anti-American", strangely enough, but it isn't a new phenomenon.It may seem "anti-American"- this stratification, that is. You could just as well say that it's as American as apple pie, and that would be just as true.
However, my "feeling" about it is that it seems to be happening at an accelerating rate.

Evolution, not revolution, may be best, and probably is- I really can't say I know a thing about it, to be honest!- but with snail-slow evolutionary change of economic or political systems, in the interim before effective changes that really help people are actually enacted, many, many people suffer or die- unnecessarily, it seems- because of long delays, caused only by politics and prejudice, in accomplishing any improvements towards more equitable distribution of resources among the people, or other beneficial social change.
(continued)

Our interests are the same

“He who serves all, best serves himself.” Jack London

Long Live OCCUPY WALL STREET-this IS America and DEMOCRACY at its finest!!

2.
Many years ago as a kid I had a recurring dream of some unknown but very real spot out in the West or western Midwest- for some reason I thought it was perhaps in Nebraska, for it was prairie/high plains/ big country without mountains, but not flat either, and someplace I had never been or seen, yet in these several dreams over the course of two or three yeares, I visited the poace several times, and I always wondered if it existed.

Now i think that dream had something to do with the American Dream, which was a presence, almost palpable, to kids growing up in 1950's America, combined with a dream about the vanished, or vanishing, western frontier, the presence of which, especially throughout the first 300-400 years or so of North American settlement, up until the late 19th century, had a long and extremely profound psychological effect and is one of the main building blocks of anything we might call "American" about ourselves today.

The frontier, before the railroads in particular, and before telegraph and other forms of communication,was a place for seemingly infinite opportunities for fresh starts in life; or it was a refuge from the law or from enemies or from creditors, and until recent times remained in that role of refuge for many people, for all kinds of reasons.

As they used to say, a man could wear out four or five farms and still be young enough to go tear up a new piece of land and wear it out too. The sense of infinite and perennial resources they had then is understandable to anyone with an idea of the forest, fish, animal, and bird life on his continent- it was truly a cornucopia, and a land of plenty, in ways most of us today don't know. (read Farley Mowat's "Sea of Slaughter" for a fascinating discussion of what happened to maritime resources early on due to European involvement in the New England and Maritimes and Banks regions- it's quite a shocking story, and a cautionary tale- or at least it should be.)

So the old belief in an ever available frontie with infinite resources of all kinds and alwaus the chance for a second start, a new home, a move down the road - and the power of a man to make these decisions "for himself - entirely, or at least mostly, on his own initiative.
It was capital-F Freedom to a much greater extent than was allowed in the Old Country.

That's the American Dream too, isn't it? Homesteading, or founding your own little Boonesborough even if it is just a shack on the edge of town with room for a couple of tomato lplants- that's where it's at.
And for most Americans I think for a long time, hard work was the ticket to much success, although for many others, from the first days, it was not freedom but bondage, as the sturdy yeoman farmer, out of a George Caleb Bingham painting in my mind's eye, was relplaced by the mill hand and the sooty child picking slate from moving belts of coal and gazing at us in the future with holocaust eyes, as if to say, someone do something about this, for the love of God, please.

And yet, in many ways, we denied that plea and all the ones like it, and yet, the country did thrive and prosper, and grow like crazy, under robber baron management and slavery, for a long time, and because slavery and industrialization were both, on the whole, apparently creating societal
improvements much more than societal harm, and were lucrative systems of exploiting various natural resources from furs to water power to timber to meat to minerals and so much more- because of these factors, the harm being done to workers, to public health, and to the environment, were put under the rug, so to speak, as they still mostly are today, because they are a lot of trouble to deal with in a modern and enlightened scientific fashion, and therefore the state of denial is psychologically essential because a man has trouble when he knows that the thing he likes so much because it is good is also something which is slowly killing him or his children or his neighbors.

Better not to think about such things- and in the past, one could always move on down the valleyor across the mountain, for the longest time.

The loss of that frontier changed the thing we like to call our American "character". As it was lost, we clung more and more to the mythical creations of the frontier, from the characers of Fenimore Cooper down to the ones of theTV westerns.

Now most westerns are supplanted by endless cop shows, most of them urban.

TV shows us how even in the past fifty to a hundred years we have become like more and more rats in a single cage. The Balkanization of the U.S.A.

In the city closest to me, due not to lack of space but the economic system, the poor people are crowded up and are shooting each other to death at a steady rate of several shootings per week, usually at least one daily, so as a war of attrition- of the people upon themselves- it may be worse than some of the stuff in the middle east, but "they gotsome crazy litle women there" so people keep on living there... that's the place I mean.

And I'm lke "Dang, this is America? What th..?!?'" like something Flakey Foont might come up with that he wants to go ask Mr. Natural about.

Goodnight. Obviously I am losing my mind once I mention Foont, that weirdo.... if i don't stop now I'll be telling a Fat Freddy's Cat story and that is to much to ask of such fine comments readers as yourselves.