None of You Are the ‘Any Percent’
In a season of already depressingly moribund talking points, the nascent 2012 presidential campaign has contracted an infectious case of percentage affliction. The most touted media case is the “We Are the 99%” meme being spouted by the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their sister uprisings around the globe. (This, of course, seeks to pit the majority of beleaguered commoners against the perceived 1% at the top of the economic food chain.) But they are hardly the only ones.
Another conservative effort seeks to beat the drum of “We Are the 53%.” This misanthropic effort allows for a clear distinction between barely more than one half of the public and another massive segment who not only get to vote, but might have otherwise sympathized with you. I even have a friend in the Garden State who foisted the idea that some of us may be the 64%.
No matter whether you fancy yourself to swing from the starboard or port side of the political ship, each of these viral themes suffers from fatal flaws, in both practical and political terms. Since we prefer to demonstrate that we can take it as well as dish it out, let us start with the right-wing propaganda.
When it comes to the 47% of people who pay no federal income tax at the end of each year, it’s difficult to think of a worse target to select. I’m not sure what Erick Erickson was thinking when he cooked this up, but a significant majority of these folks are either students, the infirm, or — to a vast degree — seniors on fixed incomes. If there is a worse demographic soup to pour political poison into, I’m at a loss to name it. This ignores the fact that these same voters enjoy these benefits largely because of initiatives primarily sponsored by the GOP to begin with. Further, pretty much all of those people pay other taxes at various levels. Nobody is getting off for free. The less said about this the better.
As to the liberal 99% argument, it’s difficult to even select a starting point to begin destroying this meme. By any sort of “We Are the World” measure, the rest of the planet would laugh at the majority of Wall Street protesters. If you have the free time required to go camp out for weeks on end near Wall Street… if you have clothes on your back sufficient to protect you from the elements… if you had two meals of more than 400 calories each in the last 48 hours of your protest… well, you’re probably in the top ten percent of the population of the planet in terms of actual wealth.
It’s also clear that you, as a protester, have very little understanding of precisely what it is you are railing against. (Or, more correctly, what is causing the injustice you perceive.) You live in a society founded on the essential principle that the government turns everyone loose to gather as much wealth as they are able. Do you now express surprise that some people actually went out and did just that?
You are fighting against the end result of a system performing exactly as it was designed to do.
But to get to the fine points of this debate, unless you are one of two hypothetical people at either end of the financial scale in America, you are not part of any given percentage. You are one of roughly seven billion people on the planet, each making their own way and every one both richer and poorer than someone else. If you’re having trouble finding a job sufficiently lucrative to pay off the student loans you incurred while obtaining your degree in philosophy, don’t pretend that you are in the same boat as a high school dropout child of incarcerated parents who is panhandling for change by the Lincoln Tunnel. If you have made frugal choices and managed to save a portion of your paychecks to the point where you might secure a stable retirement, don’t act like you speak for the folks who go to cocktail parties with Bill Gates.
Everyone is different. Society isn’t cut into strata so much as it is composed of a mass of fish of infinitely varying sizes.
As to the great unwashed masses assembling in parks around the world, one of the chief complaints against you is the lack of a larger than life, visionary leader to bring you out of the desert and into the Promised Land. Trust me… this vacuum is your greatest asset, though not for the reason you might imagine. The last thing you want is a modern day Robespierre, lining up the rich in tumbrels heading for the guillotine. Any student of history will tell you how that worked out for the rebels in the decades which followed.
You may be up in arms against the system, but the lack of such a system for those used to living in its cozy confines is generally far worse. The question I would put to you today is, what is it precisely that you are protesting? Capitalism? Democracy? The fact that some do better than others? The choices you made when working within a system which inherently allows for the possibility that some will not achieve greatness, or even fail spectacularly?
For the vast majority of us the system isn’t fair. It never has been. But you are not part of some imaginary mass which can set things to rights by tying a few well heeled witches to a flaming pyre. The system may be flawed — or even broken — but you can realistically only fix it from within. Throwing it down leads to chaos. And if you think the actions of the privileged few are objectionable in the current state of affairs, you’ll be severely disappointed with what the powerful do when things go to the Mad Max end of the scale.
Great post. I especially loved the last line
The student section of this protest would do far better staying on campus and protesting the pathetic excuse of an education they receive for their student loans. Like others have mentioned, anyone who borrows $100,000 for a degree in “womyns’ studies” deserves to be shackled to an anchor of debt as a hard lesson in common sense. As for any who are truly out of work but otherwise ambitious, move to the Capitol and find out where your representatives exit in their Escalades (they won’t be marching out the front door, like Nancy Pelosi with her big prop gavel. They only do that for show).
Otherwise, all this is is your “woodstock” wannabe weekend with the stupid drumming and the lame “human microphone”. And the sometimes unfiltered anti-semitism is, frankly, chilling. There are things from the ’30s we wish to avoid besides the Great Depression . . .
College tuition? It’s a ripoff! Postpone college until the bubble bursts!
I suspect that, if you were to pin down one of the OWS “99-percenters”, and ask them to actually articulate what they are so pissed off about, it would get you one of two answers;
1. “I don’t know- I’m here because all my Facebook friends are”; or
2. “I am better than everybody else, everyone has always told me so, and I should be catered to, fawned over, and obeyed! But nobody is doing it! That makes me mad!”
This is a “movement” composed of the clueless, and the spoiled. The former are here for the dope, the girls (and/or boys), and the spectacle, to quote Tom Kratman, the latter are here to throw a tantrum, which has apparently worked pretty well for them since the Terrible Twos.
What they all have in common is that they have been taught that holding their breath until they turn blue gets adults to give them anything they want. Which causes me to wonder if they have ever encountered an actual adult.
Considering that a lot of their “teachers”, from colleges and such, are at these shindigs as well, my guess would be more on the “probably not” side.
clear ether
eon
Oh, well said eon! Made me laugh and also shake my head at how right on you are!
I would say that, it’s just more of our current mode of “living by cliche”, again being passed off as meaningful and valuable thought.
But, . . . The God’s of The Copybook Headings, . . . with horror and slaughter, return, . . .
They always do, . . .
That they do.
I see these children (yes, I know some of them are Baby Boomers who have grown old without ever growing up) as in rebellion against reality itself: against the laws of mathematics, of logic, of common sense, of ethics and morality. Everyone and everything else must conform to their every whim, but they consider themselves bound by nothing.
It’s nihilism, and it will end badly for everyone. The only question is just how badly.
Here’s the Rev. Terry Jones’ take on the OWS mobs: [LINK]
Isn’t it funny, throughout history as with here, now, that those who demand anarchy and chaos are usually the last people who would fare well under it.
Are there flaws in the system absolutely. But the founding fathers actually created one of the greatest forms of government the world has ever seen. The vast majority of people that are protesting think the world is fair and owes them a living and that somehow it isn’t fair that some people are sucessful and have become wealth. Personal responsibility and choices are what each individual is given a chance to exercise under our form of government. The right to suceed and the right to also fail. The reason you might not have a job is not everyone likes your braided dreadlocks and your body piercings and if you had read a book on starting a business instead of being glued to your X-box for hours you too might have found sucess. The “greatest generation” in thier desire to make life better for thier children have raised a lot of spoiled brats that have no desire to work hard or make sacrifices to be sucessful. It’s much easier to bitch and moan about those that are.
Great read. Who knows? Some small good may come of them gathering together. Maybe a few of them will make lasting relationships that aren’t virtual.
The one point that any true conservative should agree with many of these protesters on is that Wall Street should not have been bailed out. Period. Conservatives who focus on the bad loans made under the Community Reinvestment Act fail to see that this was the compromise the banks and Wall Street made in order to abolish Glass-Steagall which allowed them to gamble with our banking deposits. They ran their commercial banking (savings, checking and loans) as a vehicle to fuel their investment banking arms which is how we got all of these outrageous mortgages turned into assets (good or bad, as the title chain varied in quality) backing the mortgage-backed securities.
The only conservative response would be to order the Treasury to send a bill to these banks for the TARP funds and order the FDIC to take them into bankruptcy proceedings if they cannot pay.
Sensible. Refreshing. Thanks!
Great insights. Really good article.
Here’s something from a military blog:
“I am the 1%
Entered Army at 17
Worked thru college with 3 jobs
Minimal loans paid off in 4 years
Started companies, worked to top of ladder
Now, only 1% of U.S. has served
Only THIS 1% never whines
We work, raise families, contribute to society every single day
AND we defend your rights, too
Even if we would never agree with them
I am, a 1%-er
(from Blackfive.net)
Now that DADT has been repealed due to loud, insistent demand, I look forward to hordes of lefties clamoring to serve under Obama in Uganda, Southern Sudan and Congo in our latest intervention.
I went and observed one of the satellite protests in Edmonton, Alberta. You can find my account on my blog (strategyandsurvival.blogspot.com) complete with pictures of their protest camp.
Generally what I observed were a lot of half-educated or (worse) miseducated young people, who have no real understanding of the issues at stake or any desire to do anything more than feel some non-coercive collective solidarity.
“the government turns everyone loose to gather as much wealth as they are able.”
The government doesn’t “turn us loose.” We ARE free. Our government does not bequeath our freedom; we the free bequeath our government.
Get that right.
Why is it that nobody, nobdy, wants to say what these protesters really are? They are nothing but a bunch of communists. Period. When you get a mob together screaming that hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars of student debt should just be forgiven by the banks, when you get a mob shouting that they WANT free just about everything, from medical care to housing (and never quite mention who is going to pay for all of it), and when you get a filthy group of people demanding that one segment of our population be practically eliminated and that all of their money be given to them, I’d say you have a bunch of communists gathering in lower Manhattan.
Where is the outrage over this from the rest of America? Communism has been tried and was proven to be a dismal failure, yet these jerks want it. Socialism in Europe has been shown to be a major failure and those countries that embraced it are now bankrupt, yet these people want it. Whether it is called “social justice” or the “redistribution of wealth,” it IS communism, plain and simple. And to protest your views is one thing, but to set up a small Hooverville in lower Manhattan screaming about communism, well, that’s quite another. If these people really represent a substantial section of our country, with Democrats and Obama supporting them, those fools do not understand what they are doing. Civil wars start this way and many people tend to die as a result of the stupidity of a few. More people in government should be denouncing these nuts in lower Manhattan, before real problems start happening, like the riots in London. This is NOT the time to allow communists and possibly anarchists to have free rein in a large part of a major city. Nothing good will come of it.
You sound like you are 120 years old. republicans hate Muslims now, not “commies”, You need to update your enemies list.
How about “I give my 100%”? That should exclude all the neo-hippies and would-be Anons who have been camping down at Wall Street for weeks. I have a job, I give my all to it and to my family and friends, and I refuse to be beholden for more because these schmucks want a $20 minimum wage. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone.
Outstanding…indeed, I am only me, unique among 308 million others. Or as the writer aptly puts it, one of some 7 billion inhabiting the planet.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along. I’m not 53%, I’m not 99%
Bing or Google .0000003125% and you’ll understand.
Please let me elaborate on my strong agreement with what Clark wrote. Here is an email I sent to Jazz Shaw just now:
Thank you for the article. I agree with you in general.
re: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/none-of-you-are-the-any-percent/
You wrote: “You live in a society founded on the essential principle that the government turns everyone loose to gather as much wealth as they are able.” Our rights as free men are natural and inherent. If you like, those rights are God-given. It isn’t so much that the government turns us loose as that it recognizes that we ARE free by nature and it has only the powers that the Constitution grants that government. The government under the Constitution does not grant us freedoms. Rather, it recognizes those freedoms and exists to protect them. Pardon the rant and the repetition, please.. I have seen too many statements of the error that the American government grants us rights. It only recognizes our rights (on good days, anyway); it does not create rights. The danger in thinking government grants us rights is the implication that it could withhold or destroy those rights. The people grant the government certain limited responsibilities and powers; that’s another matter. I would revise your statement to say “You live in a society founded on the essential principle that the government recognizes the inherent rights of all citizens to be loose to gather as much wealth as they are able.”
Ted Shepherd
(who swore to uphold the Constitution on more than one occasion)
Bravo, Ted Shepherd. Too many people (and nearly all politicians) make the same error you corrected here, although I hope that Jazz simply failed to proof his first draft rather than actually believing what he wrote. On the other hand, if this type of statement is what comes naturally to him and other conservatives, then we are living in Pogo-land. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, even in the habits of phraseology.
As I recall, someone tried to run for POTUS recently claiming there were two Americas. I never could figure out which America he thought I was living in. For that matter I don’t think he knew which America he was living in. The current POTUS clearly has no idea which America he was elected to lead.
Maybe John Edwards would have done better with his base if he had put in a percentage. They seem to like that sort of catagorization.
Even though it makes me appear not to get the point, I still like to call the OWS the Whiney Nine per cent just because I think it’s roughly accurate. And no, I don’t mean the unemployed as not all of them are whiney.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s the America that still believes in upholding the Constitution, the rule of law, and the consensus of ethics and morality that Judaeo-Christian civilization was founded upon.
And then there’s the other America, that considers all of those things to be obstacles to their aims.
You can guess where I fit into this picture.
Well seeing as how none of what you said in the first sentence is true, I am left to guess where you would indeed fit. Enlighten me.
My Lord I am a fortunate man.
I began my day with a brilliant piece by Michael Ledeen and close my day with an equally brilliant and entertaining piece by Jazz Shaw.
I love PJM
There is certainly some wacky stuff going on in these demonstrations, but their sense that there is something wrong in the system echoes parts of the Tea Party complaints against the elitists. There are a lot of unemployed folks out there who probably feel a pull toward these protests. The fear on the right is that these (so far) innocuous demonstrations could grow into a large populist protest. Culturally, these folks seem like spoiled brat quasi-hippies, but similar folks eventually caught the pulse of the nation in the anti-Vietnam demonstrations.
We are not there yet, but stranger things have happened.
Good article, but I think you’re taking stupid little sound bites way too seriously.
The “We are the 53%” slogan is a tongue-in-cheek rebuke of the “We are the 99%” idiots, who use their slogan with complete sincerity, if not complete honesty. It points out in an charming and funny way, how dubious is the claim that your side represents 99% of all people when AT LEAST 52% of that population “belongs” to the “other” side (stipulating, of course, that no one really “belongs” to anything nor are there only two “sides”).
To me the slogan “We are the 99%” should be ridiculed mercilessly. It should be rewritten more honestly.
Like so:
“We are the 99%, at least given our understanding of mathematics as taught in American public schools.”
“We are the 99% who got trophies just for showing up when we really sucked at the [name of activity being featured].”
“We are the 99% of college graduates who were passed from grade to grade, earning straight As and getting lots of self-esteem, without learning much, other than progressivism, collectivism, and political correctness.
Etc…
I’m sorry you had such a bad college experience/ went to such a bad college. If you had gone to a decent one and paid attention– hell, even if you had gone to a subpar college and went beyond the readings from class– you would have learned to think for yourself. You probably would want your children to go to college so i am not sure why you are railing against something that gives people a leg up in society. So I guess all of those HYP grads are mindless little collectivists that can’t write or think for themselves?
These fools are 99% alright; The 99% in the extreme left side of the intelligence bell curve.
And to show how BLISSFULLY STUPID they are, they make a poster of how much they owe for a COLLEGE EDUCATION that DIDN’T TEACH THEM ANYTHING!
When I was their age, we had to get drunk or stoned to act as stupid as they do when they’re straight and sober.
Our government is doing a fine job of rearing a couple generations of brain dead PhD’s that can only hold a government job, and owns a large piece of their future earnings.
They could also be considered the 99% useless.
Oh, and by the way, I just received a link to a column by Warren Kinsella in the Toronto Sun, in which he claims that Jesus would have “joined hands” with the Occupy mobs.
I was deeply offended.
What Jesus Would Not Do
The Many Faces of Domestic Terrorism
The incidence of domestic terrorism in America, the commission or threat of violence against civilians by political, religious, or other ideological fanatics, actually pre-dates the establishment of the United States.
Domestic terrorism has many faces, all of them ugly, all of it carried out by U.S. citizens.
Defined by the FBI in 1994 as,”the unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives,” that definition of domestic terrorism was expanded by the Patriot Act to incorporate actions of “mass destruction, assassination, and kidnapping occurring within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
The British may have construed the Boston Tea Party as domestic terrorism even before the term existed. However, most of us are more familiar with contemporary incidents, those perpetrated by the KKK, the Black Liberation Army, the Jewish Defense League, the Weather Underground, the Unabomber, the Fort Hood Muslim, and the deadliest of all, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombers.
Depending on one’s sociopolitical perspectives, almost any domestic crime can be considered an example of domestic terrorism.
Thus, the 2009 senseless murder of the abortionist Dr. George Tiller by Scott Roeder, a man crazed by the inhumanity of late term abortions, has been termed by some as domestic terrorism. Conversely and perversely, gays who proudly attack a gathering of normal people with bricks are accorded an MSM pass. (http://tiny.cc/ifhnt)
Go figure.
On the other hand, transparent efforts at coercion by the Wall Street Occupiers, efforts clearly aimed at intimidating our government and civilian population “in furtherance of political or social objectives” aren’t being classified as terroristic by our governments or by the mainstream media.
If violence and murder constitute the requisite distinctions in determining what is and what is not domestic terrorism, what of the threat of violence and murder posed “in furtherance of political or social objectives”?
No murders by the OWS protestors have been reported so far but widespread violence has been committed against the public weal and against public sensibilities, overt threats have been directed toward individuals, institutions, and Jews in general, and rapes, thefts, and clashes with police. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5758.)
I think some of you are missing the point. OWS does have legitimate grievances; I would say they are protesting the system which allowed a few individuals to amass obscene amounts of wealth by less than honest methods. They are not against making money.