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10/3/11

The 99% Is 75%

The other twenty-five percent recognize reality of the New Era...

Sheep who want shepherds rather than personal responsibility.

Personally I have little in common with the Occupy Wall Street movement, a consortium of "unions, students, teachers, veterans, first responders, families, the unemployed and underemployed." These are not my people and I doubt they represent all of the groups they list as "...the majority" and "...are the 99 percent" who will "...no longer be silent." I would venture that a large segment of "99ers" whose unemployment is running out is among them. What I think is they belong in the seventy-five percent majority of Americans, that number my purely anecdotal guess, which doesn't yet fully understand the 21st Century has arrived but not in its fullness. They are still looking backwards to institutions, government, public education, banks, politicians and private employers for overhaul and reform when by the nature of this disruptive period these entities are on the verge of collapse.

Your right to protest is honored, your protest may not be honorable.

What I do support is their Constitutional and common law right to assemble and protest by exercising their free speech peacefully. It seems to me that has been breached by the New York Police Department but there is a disconnect that bothers me. The place of umbrage is while I support their rights they totally miss the point of those of us who pursue the cause of liberty and free speech. To them we are out on some right wing limb and they do not see the correlation to their dependence on Statism. What the NYPD has done to break up their protests is the very thing that many of us warned about post 9-11 when the federal government subsidized police departments all across the country in obtaining equipment and training in the name of anti-terrorism. It has created a militarized de facto national police force that was never intended for our country.


Mainstream America is still listening to the Mainstream Media and watching reality TV shows. Their gut instinct tells them something is terribly wrong but they cannot articulate what. It is a result of years of dumbing down the population by the very public schools and institutions they are now beholden to. My calculation is the majority of my rough estimate of this three-quarters of the population will not go quietly into a new era and adjust their expectations about how they obtain consumer goods. They feel entitled to a "middle class lifestyle" and that is their "right." Since the mid-nineties anyone who knows me has had to listen to my saying that our biggest concern should be what happens when the mass population figures out they actually have to work for something when the bubble bursts. Then I was referring to the tech/telecom bubble. The majority like bubbles since they easily provide them consumer goods even though they become fuel for the "one percent," really the institutions they're rallying against now, to ensnare them into debt and a contemporary version of servitude. This escapes those demonstrating on Wall Street.

Being one of 99 percent will be the loneliest thing they ever do.

What they also misunderstand is globally we are in the midst of a 500 year crash of civilizations event that breaks up empires and reshapes the world. They just want their SUV. It is fair to make comparisons to the Great Depression and use the history of it and previous Panics as a guide for what will happen next on the economic markets front. What is happening though is bigger than a Panic or Depression and much larger than the social changes of the sixties and seventies. Loosely about twenty-five percent of us understand that and recognize we are not only in an economic crisis but a disruption of high magnitude that may take more than a decade to play out. It is economic, political and social; permeating all areas of our culture and lives and will create the New Economy but won't be one the "99 percent" envision. You will have the right to be entrepreneurial, creative thinking, a free agent to live and earn a way of life of your choice. You will not have the right to be entitled to a desultory lifestyle based on what was considered "middle class."

"He who is not busy being born is busy dying."

Those of us who understand that we must go on with our lives know that in disruption there are opportunities if you choose to seek them. A chance to reinvent your life depending on how hard you work and what you want to surrender to rise above current conditions. We channel our energy towards that rather than banging a drum asking to be dependent on a reformed government and institutions to make us happy. These are difficult times but not insurmountable if you are willing to take a long term realistic view of what you want to do with your life and are willing to get on with it despite obstacles. This is a forward looking view recognizing that we may have to endure another bubble (the education bubble comes to mind) before we get to the other side. Post WWII institutions and method of governing must fail in order to restore what America was originally and is meant to be. It is a new reconstruction, a tough one just as Reconstruction was after the first Civil War. This war will not be fought geographically but between those with internal motivation versus those who expect external awards. It will be a new structure based on an old one although a more advanced version that is resurrected as the false storefront of the twentieth century collapses.

3 comments:

  1. I have to admit at the outset: I had never heard of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement until I read your post tonight...and I still can't say I know too much about them other than what I've managed to glean from the website your post directed me to. I expected truly angry mobs willing to call their leaders by name. I expected pics of tear gas and beatings. I at the very least expected someone in the group to be able to NOT be fooled into thinking Radiohead would show up for an impromptu concert based on, apparently, nothing. Instead I got a lot of hyperbole-and I thank the 99ers for that; I've always wanted to type that word and yet have until now lacked the perfect reason to. It seems that for some of us life has gotten so unbearable that we, er, they are forced to assemble in feeble protests of...something. Damned if I can figure out what. the most "militant" thing on their website was a pic from, I guess, inside a jail cell. If you look closely, you can see the clean shoes on the photographer (the oppressed photographer)...and you can see that because the photographer in question managed through all the torture to be sitting down with his or her camera. Which happens all the time in terrorist situations. Ask any survivor of Stalin's or Hitler's horrors to show you their candid snapshots of their plight and I'm sure they'll have armloads of old 4x6's to document the casual goings-on back then in the good old days, before things got so awful. People really did have it easier back then, I guess. First of all, they didn't have to worry about someone with a brain and a computer and a mischievous streak convincing the whole damn lot of them that Radiohead would show up. The permanent inner turmoil that would must surely be insurmountable. But beyond that, the real tyrants of old never put any of their targets in such terrible positions that (given the chance to record the atrocities) they would have to EVER show the world the unspeakable horrors that rest in those several pictures of people with lots of balloons.

    I have been sarcastic throughout this, and I'm not sorry about it. I realize it doesn't serve as much of a comment on your post, JR, but I hope that my feeling that "gatherings" like this are patently ridiculous shines through all my right-wing coldness somehow. :D

    It IS a great post, sir, and I reserve the right to actually comment on it if I get over the Occupy Wall St. scene. It could be a while.

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  2. Mike...I can't quite figure out what "they" are so angry about especially when there are very real things to get angry about. It seems that what they are upset about isn't clear, therefore your sarcasm is warranted and understood by me. Although I think in some ways the NYPD has over-reacted the demonstrators don't know what real oppression is. Rather, their oppression seems to be in their own mind.

    What is most annoying is among the litany of seeming grievances there is no coherent theme nor any sense of direction about resolution. It just seems they're mad and going to demonstrate about it, quite smugly I might add.

    What this is doing however is speed up the process of divisiveness and collapse. Perhaps that is what their aim is. I'm waiting to find out.

    There's plenty on our old stomping grounds YouTube about this movement. Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  3. What gets me is that so many people are down on the rich. Why? I think they are jealous they didn't do it themselves. I'm not down on the rich; they have seen what they wanted and gone after it. It is not their fault that there are loopholes in the tax code that give them an advantage; I celebrate their free thinking that they saw and took advantage of them; I would too if I was able to. Once a co-worker said "why don't you bring me some vegetables from your garden?" I said "why don't you give me your grocery money?" she looked a little dumbfounded; it never occurred to her that I would not give away what I had worked for. Far too many people in this country are sheep, have been dumbed down and take it for granted that something outside themselves will fix it and take care of them. I agree with you, this may take a decade or more to play out. I think the key will be those that take personal responsibility for themselves and their lives and do something about it. Like I've told my kids for years "You make your choices and you take your consequences"Great post.

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