A Strange Sense of Optimism

For the first time in years, I am actually feeling a glimmer of hope about politics in this country. I’ve been writing on this blog for five years now, and it has generally been about depressing things. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has changed the picture.

I have forgotten where I read it, but a media watchdog recently noted that while a few months ago the number one word in the headlines was “deficit,” now it is “jobs,” along with “inequality.” The talking heads on the news purport not to understand what OWS is about, but as a friend of mine pointed out, they are occupying Wall Street, not a shoe store. It seems that a large and growing portion of the population understands what OWS is about. This growing portion of the population overlaps with the percentage facing financial ruin and watching the agents of that ruin getting bonuses instead of indictments.

A man named Edward Dowling once said, “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” That widespread delusion is eroding, and an understanding of the true mechanisms of our politics is spreading.

My optimism doesn’t include the idea that OWS will sweep the country, driving the forces of evil before it. I think that OWS will both succeed and fail, in unexpected ways.

In some ways it has already succeeded. The flavor of the month in the news media has been shifted 180 degrees, and may remain the flavor for a few months more. It has also broached the idea of class in this country in a way that is concise and powerful and hard to ignore. Class consciousness has always been lacking on this side of the Atlantic. We have always cherished the myth of equal opportunity, even as it was disproved before our eyes. However, socioeconomic class is one of those big and true ideas that is analogous to a parachute. Once the ripcord is pulled, it blossoms, and once out it is hard to stuff back in the bag.

The fact that the words “class warfare” are being tossed around tells me that an alarm has sounded somewhere in the halls of power. The term is used as if class warfare is a new issue, initiated by these unruly occupiers. However, people are starting to slowly warm up to the concept in terms of “Oh, so that’s what has been happening to us.” The 99% vs. 1% meme is a useful one, as it draws the line in a reasonably accurate way between those who make their money primarily from work and those who make their money primarily from investments, and the stark difference in economic interests between the two. It also draws a reasonable line between that fraction of a percent who donate large sums to candidates and those who don’t.

I don’t expect an uninterrupted path of growth and success for OWS, however. The financial power will get over its surprise, find its center, and start to counterpunch. Police brutality will be the least of it. The inept blusterings on Fox are just an overture. We can expect more sophisticated propaganda to come, along with dirty tricks and opposition research. Every minor failing of the movement and its participants will be trumpeted in the corporate media. We’ll see smears. We’ll see internal divisions, grandstanding, and ill-considered strategies. We’ll see provocateurs and disruptive idiots. I’ve been involved with groups that work by consensus, and although the process insures that everyone is dedicated to a policy or a tactic, it takes time, trust, and cooperation. The process can be fragile, especially among people who don’t know each other.

In the end, the biggest enemy of political movements is everyday life: families that need support, jobs that need energy and attention, getting the kid to a doctor’s appointment, washing the dishes, getting a moment to relax. The economic distress that provoked the movement denies people spare time and energy. OWS is also facing a long winter outside. The movement is based on physical presence, so a symbolic or virtual presence won’t do.

And yet, and yet, some mainstream politicians, including a few on the right, are trying to maneuver their way into a semi-neutral-plausible-deniability-triangulated-meaningless-pseudo position of support. I believe the phrase is “recognizing the frustration” of the people involved. By recognizing the frustration a politician can sort of get behind the movement without actually approving of anything specific. It reminds me of a saying about the aftermath of WW2 in France: Somehow it turned out that everyone was working with the Resistance. The finely tuned political senses of the hackoisie are detecting, what? A shift in the wind?

Afterword:

Your Minor Heretic is involved in one facet of the movement; the formulation of a couple of constitutional amendments that would eliminate corporate personhood and get the big money out of politics. This is organized though Cenk Uygur’s WolfPAC, allied with OWS. Visit the forum here.

The Librarian keeps me informed about the 99% Declaration, a set of principles being formulated by a working group of OWS. When I read them I thought, “This is exactly what I’ve been thinking for years!” There is a plan for a national convention next year to ratify the declaration and present it to Congress. When the hacks ignore it, Plan B is to run a slate of third party candidates against them. Visit their site here.

And, of course, there is OWS itself.