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Who are the OWS protestors?

Who are the OWS protestors?


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Slartibartfast

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Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.
 
They're people who are mutually pissed off at the amount of influence businesses have over politics, but beyond that there's very little cohesion.
 
a lot of them are the college kids who thought they would be attending middle class, but instead found that it had been canceled.

large groups of people aren't the ideal think tanks for complex political and socioeconomic theory, but they usually know when they are being screwed.
 
Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.

By now, I'd say they're the unwashed masses.
 
they are people who have been told that 'the system' is bad, and that 'they system' is responsible for bad things. so now, their lives have a high occurence of bad things, so naturally, they blame 'the system'...... the problem being, nobody ever actually explained to them specifically what that 'system', precisely, was or how it actually harmed them. they just know that life's not fair, they're not happy about it, and they're gonna blame somebody.
 
They're people who are mutually pissed off at the amount of influence businesses have over politics, but beyond that there's very little cohesion.

I will have to disagree. They are not protesting those poltiicians that enable and accept this "undue" influence. There is no mention of such as the top Senators receiving campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie at the time of the crash were .......... drumroll .......... Democrats, with Obama and Clinton, Kerry and Dodd at the top of the list. Instead they are protesting against big business and rich people. :roll:

They are the unwashed moocher masses, whose only complaint with Government is that it is not big enough, and redistributing more to them. Bank it.
 
A mix of the first two.
 
it's interesting that your statement could be modified to dismiss any movement.

if i wanted to minimize the message of the tea party, i could change just a few words :

they are people who have been told that 'Obama' is bad, and that 'the government' is responsible for bad things. so now, their lives have a high occurence of bad things, so naturally, they blame 'the government'...... the problem being, nobody ever actually explained to them specifically what that 'government', precisely, was or how it actually harmed them. they just know that life's not fair, they're not happy about it, and they're gonna blame Obama.
 
Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.

Short answer is, both. The nefarious few organizers are leading the confused.
 
I will have to disagree. They are not protesting those poltiicians that enable and accept this "undue" influence. There is no mention of such as the top Senators receiving campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie at the time of the crash were .......... drumroll .......... Democrats, with Obama and Clinton, Kerry and Dodd at the top of the list. Instead they are protesting against big business and rich people. :roll:

They are the unwashed moocher masses, whose only complaint with Government is that it is not big enough, and redistributing more to them. Bank it.

People have been trying to get politicians to behave, without success, for a couple of decades now. They are now moving one link up the chain of the problem.
 
People have been trying to get politicians to behave, without success, for a couple of decades now. They are now moving one link up the chain of the problem.

What ? They are moving downstream, not up. Further, the only way they can change monetary influence is to have politicians change the laws and the process, which is again asking the fox to watch the hen house. This is not about changing the process of influence. It is about free-stuff.

I think that I am hearing more platitude-type statements regarding OWS that make absolutely no sense than any even Obama utters.
 
What ? They are moving downstream, not up. Further, the only way they can change monetary influence is to have politicians change the laws and the process, which is again asking the fox to watch the hen house. This is not about changing the process of influence. It is about free-stuff.

I think that I am hearing more platitude-type statements regarding OWS that make absolutely no sense than any even Obama utters.

Its one link up. Its the corporations that are bribing the politicians through campaign contributions to do their bidding. Electing new politicians does not seem to stop this process (plus the supreme court made it far worse last year), so a change in focus is needed.
 
Its one link up. Its the corporations that are bribing the politicians through campaign contributions to do their bidding. Electing new politicians does not seem to stop this process (plus the supreme court made it far worse last year), so a change in focus is needed.

So they are going to threaten and intimidate capitalists from influencing policy ? Going to get them to pay more in taxes so that it can be redistributed to them ? With the Unions helping with the intimidation ? The goal of these moochers in OWS is to get more free stuff. That's it !!

Meanwhile, a legitimate political protest movement has been enormously successful in changing-out politicians, and altering the landscape. They will be doing it again in 13 months.
 
So they are going to threaten and intimidate capitalists from influencing policy ? Going to get them to pay more in taxes so that it can be redistributed to them ? With the Unions helping with the intimidation ? The goal of these moochers in OWS is to get more free stuff. That's it !!

Meanwhile, a legitimate political protest movement has been enormously successful in changing-out politicians, and altering the landscape. They will be doing it again in 13 months.

Where did I say threaten and intimidate or try to get free stuff? That comes out of your imagination not mine.

The simple fact is, if this is what is necessary to get the focus of politicians and effect the fundamental changes needed to fix our country and restore institutions to their necessary balance, then so be it (and like it or not, unregulated capitalism has been shown not to work, so lets not repeat those mistakes again in another century). It would be better if politicians had been listening to the citizenry all along instead of the elites.

So while you may be upset about this or that not meeting your moral standards, if your moral standards do not produce a functional system, then your moral standards not useful.
 
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Where did I say threaten and intimidate or try to get free stuff? That comes out of your imagination not mine.

The simple fact is, if this is what is necessary to get the focus of politicians and effect the fundamental changes needed to fix our country and restore institutions to their necessary balance, then so be it (and like it or not, unregulated capitalism has been shown not to work, so lets not repeat those mistakes again in another century). It would be better if politicians had been listening to the citizenry all along instead of the elites.

So while you may be upset about this or that not meeting your moral standards, if your moral standards do not produce a functional system, then your moral standards not useful.

Such as what then ? What changes are they going to get private America and corporate America to make to "get things in balance" ? You sound as absurd as these flakes in OWS !!

Here, in the words of Ed Rendell, ex-Governor of PA:

Probably a good analogy, Laura, is 1968, when someone finally channeled college kids' energies into electoral politics. And they went up to New Hampshire and they put on ties and jackets and they went door to door and they talked about the war and Gene McCarthy got 43% of the vote and brought down Lyndon Johnson. So yeah, I think that's Rich Trumka is trying to do. And again, look, I don't agree with their message. I mean the guys in Philadelphia said they're going to be here all winter. Well that's silly. You've made your point, you've gotten about all the publicity you're going to get. Now get on with your lives and if you really care about this stuff, organize at the ballot box. You know, we can yell and--our side, we can yell and scream about the tea party, but the tea party folks understood how to make change in 2010. They got out and voted.


..... There's no question. What happened--the protests--the anti-war movement in 1968 was doing well electorally until the convention in Chicago. And everything blew up at the convention in Chicago. Poor Hubert Humphrey had absolutely zero chance coming out of that convention because the protests turned ugly, it was violent, it wasn't productive, it wasn't peaceful anymore and it turned people off dramatically. And I think there is a risk here. There's a real risk here if it goes that way. And that's why the Rich Trumkas and all those people should be talking to the protesters and saying 'look, you made your point. You don't think by sitting here you're going to bring about change in law by just sitting here. No legislative body is going to be blackmailed. But you've made your point, you've gotten publicity for the things you've wanted to say. Now let's get out there and organize. Go home, clean up, organize, and go.'



Ed Rendell To Operation Wall Street Protesters: Go Home | RealClearPolitics

Which gets us back to the problem that the Democrat politicians were the biggest recipients of money from the bailout money recipients. Except that if the real goal is even greater redistribution than we now have, then all you see fits like a glove. Demonize the rich even more, then get government to take their money and give it to you. Now all is in focus. All makes sense.
 
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Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.
I don't think (most) of them are anti-capitalists and I don't think (most) of them are confused. Most of my knowledge of OWS comes from the Chicago offshoot - Occupy Chicago and those people have very clear grievances. I think it's a bunch of groups who are united in their frustration with the amount of influence corporations/wall st. has on their respective organizations, professions, classes, etc.
 
Such as what then ? What changes are they going to get private America and corporate America to make to "get things in balance" ? You sound as absurd as these flakes in OWS !!

Here, in the words of Ed Rendell, ex-Governor of PA:



Which gets us back to the problem that the Democrat politicians were the biggest recipients of money from the bailout money recipients. Except that if the real goal is even greater redistribution than we now have, then all you see fits like a glove. Demonize the rich even more, then get government to take their money and give it to you. Now all is in focus. All makes sense.

We had responsible capitalism in earlier decades and at the same time we were an extremely prosperous nation. This can be done without any major revolutions in our system. The problem right now is that we are worshipping selfishness and it is harming the nation. As the regular joes get more poor, more public spending is needed to prop up the system (because market economies do not work without sufficient demand, which is the current root of our problem), which is why we are seeing increased public expenditures and the call for greater taxation.

It is a problem that can easily be solved through balance in incomes (not meaning everyone makes the same income or close to it, but we don't need the immense stratification we see right now) so that money is able to properly flow.

This goes back to my statement about useless morals. If we continue to worship selfishness and a winner take all attitude, we will continue to suffer economically as a nation.
 
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OTHER: They are the misinformed morons and worthless sacks of flesh and oxygen that are destroying this nation. They're the sons and daughters of the last generations misinformed morons and worthless sacks of flesh and oxygen that have been destroying this nation, and they're the future parents of the next generation of misinformed morons and worthless sacks of flesh and oxygen that will continue destroying this nation.
 
Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.

that's some bi-polar view of the issue you got there.
 
Firstly, I find the reversal of roles from threads about the Tea Party to be interesting and really stupid. Oh, of course the Tea Party was full of a bunch of uneducated rubes who hypocritically bash some government spending while enjoying the fruits of some government spending in other areas that often have little or nothing to do with what they're bitching about. Now of course the Occupy movement is full of uneducated rubes who hypocritically bash some corporate actions while enjoying the fruits of some corporate actions in other areas that often have little or nothing to do with what they're bitching about. Many protestors are hypocritical, and many posters are consistent. However, more than a few aren't.

The movement is very broad. My center-left friend, fellow Libertarians, and myself were at Occupy DC, and all of us like a market-based economy and some big business. Many protestors are fed up with corporate welfare. Many want corporations (and capitalism for that matter) done away with entirely. There was a lot of great organization and poor organization, especially a very bizarre "general assembly" that I attended for a few minutes. The entire movement seems to be based on fighting corporate abuses in some way; of course many people see these abuses differently. What some might see as a problem with deregulation, others may see as a result of too much government intervention. Just like the Tea Party, some people are crazy; some know what they're talking about, but everybody is pissed off.
 
...Just like the Tea Party, some people are crazy; some know what they're talking about, but everybody is pissed off.

I'll bet if the TP and the OWS folks sat down and discussed it, they would actually find some common ground. They are both pissed off at Wall St. and their never-ending abuses...paid for with tax-dollars, while the American people get screwed.
 
As I said elsewhere, the Occupiers are a rag-tag, disjointed mass of neo-hippies and anti-capitalists, with a muddled message and no proposed solutions.

As much as they claim to be the 99%, I'm not sure they represent the majority of Americans. Most Americans do not think most corporations are evil and that the capitalist system should be scrapped. While most Americans realize some reforms are necessary, they also know where their paychecks come from, and who produces the products and services we all use.

Personally, I would be much more impressed if the Occupiers went out and got occupied. Don't camp out in a New York park, trying to get screen time on Rachel Maddow's show while you scream about Goldman Sachs. If you truly care about the millions of Americans who are hurting, go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen, at a food bank, at a school. Be a tutor, a mentor, a Big Brother or Big Sister. I'd be much more likely to listen to their message--assuming it were focused--if they did something like that than if they just spend endless weeks in drum circles and consensus-building call-and-answer sessions.
 
We had responsible capitalism in earlier decades and at the same time we were an extremely prosperous nation. This can be done without any major revolutions in our system. The problem right now is that we are worshipping selfishness and it is harming the nation. As the regular joes get more poor, more public spending is needed to prop up the system (because market economies do not work without sufficient demand, which is the current root of our problem), which is why we are seeing increased public expenditures and the call for greater taxation.

I beg to differ. What you are calling 'responsible capitalism" was actually a system that operated with very little outside competitive pressures. Our economy ruled the roost, and our dog still wagged its own tail. In business, this is known as "sales fixes everything". But we have lost our competitive edge for a variety of reasons, none of which are remedied by redistribution and more taxes, btw, and also are running out of borrowed money by which we could pretend we had no problem ! We can no longer "prop it up", which is a good part of the current mess ! We must mend the foundation !

It is a problem that can easily be solved through balance in incomes (not meaning everyone makes the same income or close to it, but we don't need the immense stratification we see right now) so that money is able to properly flow.

"Balance of incomes ..... so that money is able to properly flow" ... please explain this babble !

This goes back to my statement about useless morals. If we continue to worship selfishness and a winner take all attitude, we will continue to suffer economically as a nation.

We are where we are because government interjected itself too much is trying to balance results, rather than increase opportunity and enable reward. Our two biggest drains are the semi-ponzi schemes of Social Security and Medicare, and now Obamacare. Liberal nanny-state "balance", underfunded-from-the-beginning-wealth-redistribution from tomorrow's generation back to todays ! They dwarf all wars in cost. All bailouts. All everything.

Show us "winner take all" economics ! What we have is liberal-take-all-your-money politics !

Please, no more of the useless platitudes. Roadmap out at least half an explanation of what and how. Thanks.
 
You simply cannot describe a group of hundreds of people in a single sentence. No answer is right. They share a common bond in being angry and willing to demonstrate that anger, but beyond that, not much in common. It's funny listening to people downplay the group, when some in the OWS probably have a lot more knowledge than they do. They are probably better educated on average, but with less life experience on average, than the tea party, but even that varied widely.
 
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