Here Come the OWSers! (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Oct. 3, 2011 -- All last week across the media landscape, in pod, blog, flat-screen, and crunkly old newsprint columns, fatuous professional observers complained that the Occupy Wall Street marchers "have no clear agenda" or "can't articulate their positions." What impertinent horseshit. I saw a statement on one OWSer's sign that said it all:

$70,000 College Debt

$12,000 Medical Bills

I'm 22

Where's My Bailout?

What part of that is unclear to interlocutors of what we called "the establishment" back in the day? That would be the day of the Vietnam War and the Aquarian Upsurge. One difference being that in 1968 we at least had some solidarity in the older generation coming from figures of gravity like Senators Robert Kennedy (bumped off), Eugene McCarthy, J. William Fullbright, George McGovern, Rev Martin Luther King (bumped off), and even one U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. Today, the entire "establishment" is a clueless, hopeless blob of self-interested, craven opportunism. Even the arty fringe -- the people who pretend to be an avant-garde --are nothing but narcissistic self-branding operations masquerading as culture leaders.

The worst offender this past week was the prating empty vessel Nicholas Kristoff at The New York Times who affected to offer the OWSers his own tidy agenda of nit-picky, arcane tax reforms (e.g "Close the 'carried interest' and 'founders' stock' loopholes") and limp-dick banking regulations (e.g. " ahead with Basel III capital requirements"). David Plotz and his Gen X sidekicks at the Slate Political Podcast were equally mystified. I have some heartier suggestions: bring the full weight of the RICO act and the federal anti-fraud statutes down on Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, Angelo Mozilo, and a host of other impudent schmekels still at large in their world of Escalade limos and Gulfstream vistas. Or, if that's just too difficult, how about a handy lamppost and about 40 feet of stout nylon cord?

It is cosmically ironic, of course, that the same generation of Boomer-hippies that ran in the streets and marched through the maze of service roads around the Pentagon has become a new "establishment" more obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious than the one they battled with more than 40 years ago. I guess they just don't see that their time has come to get right with reality -- or get shoved aside and trampled. The essence of the OWSer's argument is pretty simple: they've got a raw deal; somebody dealt them a bad hand; someone ran their society into a ditch and not a goddammed one of the older generation will set in motion the machinery to correct the situation, or even acknowledge it.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/here-come-the-owsers-james-howard-kunstler.html

[ixion]

1. k/r... Kunstler pulls off the gloves

and the gloves he usually wears are pretty thin, anyway.

Give'em hell, JHK! :woohoo:

[WhiteTara]

2. I'm still running in the streets Mr. Kunstler

Perhaps you are talking about your friends, but mine are still in the fight...old, tired, sore feet and all.

[zalinda]

4. Yeah, I don't know of any one who protested about Vietnam

who sold out except maybe politicians. The rest, if you didn't notice in the OWS pics are in the streets, along with the youngsters. The ones who seem to be missing are the people in their 40's and 50's, the ones who benefited from the protests.

zalinda

[CanonRay]

3. He gets it, how come the rest of my generation doesn't?