Occupy the Fed? Occupy the Banks? Occupy a Voice?

While attracting a host of comments with each post, James Howard Kuntsler shares thoughts on the Occupy awakening he sees as happening. In reverse chronological order, here, here, and here. And he says the message of some of the young people politely but resolutely making a public statement is not as obtuse or disorganized or inconsequential as mainstream media would paint. From the earliest of the three posts, the last link given, Kuntsler sees a coherent explanation of what is cause to complain within one succinct sign of one individual Occupant:

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 US 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. "[move] 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?

I wish them well.

If they last out the winter, they will be less easily dismissed by those running government at all levels.

USA Today photo - accompanying this report