What I want is a good postmortem on OWS analyzing what went right, what went wrong, what was accomplished, what was not, etc… Is there one out there?
Someone else started a debate with this on Reddit with me. This was our exchange…
Part 1
Occupy had an enormous amount of potential but turned out to be a wasted opportunity.
First of all, OWS isn’t dead, but if all you do is get your info from Google search results and mainstream media television, print and online, then I can’t blame you for thinking so. In reality, OWS broke off into numerous factions that are still incredibly strong today. That was the point of OWS. Propping up a third party that was doomed to fail in today’s political reality wasn’t a goal at all. The goal was the political education of a vastly uneducated and indoctrinated populace. You haven’t noticed the change?
Most of the goals of OWS have been met and it continues to impact the populace at large (the entire point of OWS). OWS isn’t dead, it’s diversified. Its influence has spawned groups of Americans all over the country to finally (finally!) attempt to tackle issues like vast wealth inequality, wars based upon lies and the murder of our middle class. Politicians in this current reality aren’t going to be your savior, sorry.
This is a long term strategy and it’s slow, but it’s working. To expect fast change in our current reality is foolhardy and uninformed.
as if protesting forever without actually taking action was somehow going to bring about change.
You radically underestimate the action of educating Americans beyond what they’re taught in school and indoctrinated with via mainstream television and radio.
ADVANTAGES OF THE CORPORATIST RIGHT:
• Far more retired elderly at home exposed to corporate TV media and radio that influences them to vote conservatively. (This affects other points below as well)
• People who commute further distances than those who live in (or near) cities are heavily exposed to and influenced by right-wing radio in their automobiles. Furthermore, the electoral system leans in the favor of these more rural dwellers who are heavily inundated with corporatist propaganda.
• Corporations are vastly more likely to fund anti-regulation, conservative agendas. The most you can hope for is something like MSNBC that leans socially left, but is (overall) conservatively pro-corporatist. The rich support conservative media (even when they run at a loss) because they understand the long-term profits of influence.
• More people still get their “news” from the corporate TV media than online alternative media sources (source). Also, many get their online “news” from corporate media that’s simply moved online. This influences these people towards a pro-corporatist agenda.
• Many moderates and left-leaning people work more than many people do on the right (for various reasons). This gives them less time than those on the right to dedicate themselves towards getting involved in national and local politics, voting, etc. in general. On the flip-side, this also exposes more on the right who work less to more corporate TV media and radio.
• The rich are far more likely to support Republicans, even though they’re not more likely to be socially conservative. That confuses people who don’t understand the difference. Most of the rich hold their noses and vote Republican (and give them money) because it supports their corporatist conservatism. In other words, they prioritize the profit they gain by not paying for externalities (pollution they create, public health care, public education, etc.) over socially liberal agendas they may agree with (gay rights, women’s rights, anti-censorship of sex/violence, etc.).
• It’s much easier to organize and get media attention when you have money and influence over sheep people who have too much time on their hands, too little education and too little critical thinking skills. On the other hand, trying to organize moderates and people on the left is like herding cats.
• They can and do use their control of mainstream media to use fear to suck money and massive power away from average Americans to support their monstrously corrupt and extremely profitable military-industrial complex. There has never been anything with this much vast power in human history. They can spy on many average Americans communications to thwart everything from business to activism. This kind of power is vast and undeniable.
• They have the money, power to lobby (bribe) and influence candidates to basically only fear being voted out of office and little more than that. Your little third party candidate doesn’t have the bribe money to stand up to this and many politicians and top advisors, etc. simply go into profitable business with the same corporatists they “legislated” after leaving office (and vice versa).
• They have vast money, power, connections and media resources to spread their chosen campaign over the airwaves. How many third party TV commmericals did you or any other Americans see in the last 20 elections compared to Democrats and Republicans? Exactly.
… And this list just scratches the surface of the power they have over third parties.
So… in this currently reality, what does your underfunded, true left (or true moderate), third party dream candidate have against that? Little or nothing because most Americans are’nt going to get exposed to their ideas or will only get a distorted, filtered view of them via mainstream, corporate media.
That’s our current reality. This is what we cope with and overcome. This is why there are only long-term strategies that will actually work against this vast, entrenched power.
If you don’t face the reality of our current, entrenched power structure… you’ll be doomed to keep spinning your angry wheels with lots of squealing and smoke, but no traction. - And that’s the difference between the teabaggers and OWS. The teabaggers created nothing more than a lot of squealing and smoke by propping up tea party candidates that only hurt America in the end. OWS is fomenting long-term revolution. This isn’t a video game. It’s not going to be quick, it’s going to take decades.
Let’s face it, it actually takes guts to push the establishment to the left and it very often requires civil disobedience for the mainstream media just to even bother covering it. You can gather five teabaggers in a park and it’ll garner far more mainstream media coverage than 5,000 left-wing protestors of wars, income disparity, etc. Why? Because the teabaggers aren’t a threat to the status quo. They aren’t a threat to the corporations that run the mainstream media.
That’s reality. And, it’s time to cope with it, deal with it and overcome it. While it’s certainly more difficult and takes GUTS to push the establishment to the left, there’s plenty of us still willing to do it and we’re never going to stop.
Sorry, there’s no quick-fix. It’s trying to build a representative democracy in a vast nation. Nothing “suddenly” is going to happen no matter what we do, but what we’ve been doing by embracing false equivalency is spinning our wheels. The teabaggers and those who support OWS and its vision have very little in common when it comes to tactics and lasting progress.
Suggested reading: Sun Tzu - The Art of War
With lots of commentary:
Pretty much just the translated book:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci211z/1.1/Sun%20Tzu.pdf
