Via the Washington Monthly, I learn that Andrew Sabl decided to visit Occupy Wall Street personally, and that his first-hand impressions match up pretty well with what I’ve been able to glean by keeping abreast of news accounts and reading the General Assembly minutes the protesters put up on their website.
Arguing that “[t]he [concerns] of Occupy Wall Street are both valid and popular . . . . The people occupying Wall Street are total flakes. The second fact in no way discredits the first,” Sabl goes on to draw an analogy between OWS and Kevin Costner’s character at the very beginning of Dances With Wolves, whose “impotent flamboyance” causes Confederate Troops to break their cover in an attempt to kill him while simultaneously inspiring others to actually fight the battle that Costner’s character cannot.
Just so, Sabl argues, with Occupy Wall Street: they’ve managed to draw out the 1% who would much rather focus on “the deficit” and “out-of-control government spending” than on things like “the economy,” “income inequality,” and “jobs.” And while OWS’s fetish for having no leadership, no structure, no organization, no formal demands, and no allegiance to any actual political group will forever prevent it from being able to take effective action on its own, that doesn’t preclude other, more formally organized groups from doing so.
More below the fold.
