Occupy Distraction

Some quick thoughts on continuing Occupy Wall Street developments. A few recent dispersals of protestors, especially the much viewed UC Davis pepper spraying over the weekend, have called attention to unhappy trends in policing over the past decade. James Fallows, Alexis Madrigal, and Ta-Nahisi Coates, all at the Atlantic, had good thoughts about it all. […]

More on How Occupy Wall Street and Liberals Will Lose

. Nothing that has occurred since my post on Thursday argues against its sad prognosis. Much argues for it. City governments are becoming less tolerant of the occupations, some of which are exhibiting more problematic behavior than earlier, with defiance of local ordinances and clashes with police growing in number and location. This makes the […]

How Occupy Wall Street and Liberals Will Lose

. I was against it before I was for it. Soon it may not matter. Occupy Wall Street was conceived and instigated by people who do not represent the so-named 99% in their greater and many specific political and social aspirations. Nonetheless, the movement has been able to focus rightful social anger on the causes […]

The Hope of Occupy Wall Street

. I don’t mean by that title the hope of those who have organized the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. In some respects that isn’t clear, in others all too clear. The people behind the effort – Anonymous “hacktivists” and other left-libertarians and anarchists – are people with whom I share no allegiance. I was disdainful of “occupation” […]

Obama and the Vision Thing

. The big news of the weekend – bigger than the rise of Pizza Pie Guy in the John Birch Society’s GOP’s hot-air-balloon derby – is the growing rebellion against Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street may have been organized by the vanguard of diffuse, unfocused anarchy-romancing antiestablishmentarians railing against “the system,” but they have been […]