The entire Occupy movement summarized in one sign
Photojournalist El Marco has returned from a trip to New York during which he documented the final days of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. His newly published collection of Zuccotti Park portraits contains many unforgettable images (one of which we already featured here), but one particular image summarizes the entire Occupy movement — and the entire entitlement mentality as well.
I hereby present the photo I have titled “JFK’s Greatest Nightmare:”
Alternate title: Cloward-Piven’s Revenge.
Winning the Most Clueless “Useful Idiot” of the Decade award is “Colleen, age 20, from Johnston State College in Vermont,” a Zuccotti Park Occupier who informs us that…
…because, y’know, that first Cultural Revolution worked out so well.
Look deep into her eyes: Is she the stupidest person on Earth, or does she actually know what she’s advocating? The brainwashing of our modern educational system goes deep, my friend, deeper than we can even fathom.
Want more? Because these two pictures are just a sampling of El Marco’s amazing Zuccotti Park portait gallery. Click this link to see the whole thing:
Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries
UPDATE:
To clarify matters for those few folks who think the question mark at the end of the “Ask not…” sign means the guy holding it is being sarcastic and is secretly a Tea Party counter-protester, or something along those lines: Sorry, no dice. As you can see at the bottom left of his sign, his name is “Marvin Knight” and he’s made plenty of other appearances at Occupy Wall Street carrying other indisputably left-leaning signs. He’s even been quoted in MSM articles about OWS saying things like this:
Marvin Knight, a 68-year-old pensioner who lives in Brooklyn, joined the Wall Street protests on October 3. Holding a large, handmade poster that read, “Jesus is not for corporate greed,” he said he lives on Social Security retirement benefits of less than $800 a month.
“I am here to protest this capitalist system we have here, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and there’s no end in sight,” Knight said.
There’s no way to wriggle out of this one: He’s an authentic and sincere Occupy Wall Street protester, and he’s completely serious about his sign.
I see that penmanship and punctuation have long been abandoned by our educational system…
Punctuating block[head] lettering with a coma.
Brain drain. What brain drain.
We ain’t bin dumming down, we bin dumming up.
See da’ pruf rite hear.
Thanks NEA.
Did she actually spell revolution as Revalution?
No, she’s just too dumb to realize that the L goes up a little higher. Ha!
nit pick all you want. Here we grab two pictures out of thousands upon thousands protesting and wow! got great post showing that the 99perecnet are all wrong.Fools. Pay your taxes GE doesn’t.Middle class? you are on way out. school loans? lousy jobs out there for you and your parents defaulted on what once was your home…But sneer on. We
will see you in the next war that we get into.
There’s so much to sneer at:
Those “OWS” protesters are a sewer of anarchists, nazis, rapists, felons, thugs, vandals, and thieves.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/occupy-thugs-threaten-and-attack-reporters-vow-more-wide-spread-violence/
Their crime wave is incredible: http://biggovernment.com/jjmnolte/2011/10/28/occupywallstreet-the-rap-sheet-so-far/
They’re not interested in true reform. If they were they would confront Dems like Barney Frank, Maxine Watters, and Chistopher Dodd over the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Frankenstein which FORCED banks to give loans at subprime rates, to people who couldn’t afford it. When the housing market collapsed, it was due primarily to the Dems’ stupidity. They refused to implement regulations which would have prevented the collapse. They should also stand right in front of the White House and call out Obama for his disastrous Keynesian economics. But they won’t, because some of them want socialist big government regardless of its proven failure, some of them want an overthrow, and the rest don’t know what the hell they want except free handouts from people who work for a living.
Secondly, take a good look at the founders, supporters, and groups behind OWS. Anyone who believes such a collection of moonbats is good for the country has a crap factory for a brain.
You’re not the 99%…of anything.
“It is time for a cultural revolution” Mao would be proud.
maybe we could get rid of the teacher’s union like that. didn’t he get rid of a couple thousand teachers? better be careful what you wish for.
Yes – he (and Stalin, and Hitler) also “disposed” of the so-called academics, as well
She might want to ditch the glasses. Didn’t Pol Pot’s disciples execute people who wore glasses because they looked intellectual?
Has it ever occurred to you that this woman is not referring to Mao’s “Cultural Revolution”? That maybe we do need a revolution in our culture? That we need to stop valuing and promoting and excusing greed? That consumerism is empty and unsatisfying. Any of you out there considered that? Most of you are too busy spewing hate and ridiculousness.
Perhaps you should move to Venezuela. What you seek is there now. Oh, and don’t let the door hit you in the … on the way out.
“Cultural Revolution” ? – LOL – so you are going to impose your elitist values on us? Oh how democratic and progressive from these so-called “intellectuals”.
The only “culture” you’ll find at an #Occupy encampment is the microbiological variety. Probably drug-resistant at that. The proper way to deal with it is to don a respirator and a hazmat suit.
Guideline #3? ad hominem attacks not allowed…unless you’re a pepperspraying goon.
How about re-education camps; is it time for that?
Befroe you can re-educate, you have to educate.
“Anthem of the heart
anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge
For eyes gone blind.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj1HacZ4ht4
We should count ourselves lucky: the other slogan she considered for her sign was “It is time for a final solution,” but decided at the last minute that “cultural revolution” had more zing to it.
The historical ignorance (or brainwashing) of these people is so bone-deep that I feel they are beyond redemption.
Really? How do you know this?
I’m thinking zombie is being sarcastic.
No, no, that was just a joke — sorry that wasn’t clear.
Just pointing out that the level of ignorance one must possess in order to carry a “Cultural Revolution” sign is about equivalent to the level of ignorance needed to carry a “Final Solution” sign.
Zombie (I assume this is that Zombie) knows better than most of us about which he speaks from his reporting from Occupy Oakland.
I just love the hats.
It was clear. I spit out my coffee.
Well it made me giggle. It is very clear. Thanks.
How does he know this?
Did you miss the part about the sign’s content and the alternate content?
Can you even read simple English?
Beat me to it.
One might almost believe the education component of the “Long March Through the Institutions” strategy adopted by Bill Ayers and company has been successful.
Bill Ayers, and his worse half, and the rest of their cronie’s are from Woodstock.Does any of this ring a bell? The fox are in the Whitehouse!! “Kat”
I like ‘invincibly ignorant’.
Love me some Rush!
Nicely done…
Great Rush reference. My personal favorite regarding the OWS crowd:
Waiting for the winds of change
To sweep the clouds away
Waiting for the rainbow’s end
To cast it’s gold your way
Countless ways
You pass the days
You don’t get something for nothing
You can’t have freedom for free
You won’t get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dreams might be
http://youtu.be/096LhjGNNCk
My favorite is “The Trees”. . .
“for they passed a noble law,
and the trees were all kept equal,
by hatchet, axe, and saw.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXeUvDOMgGY
New Class Traitor, You nailed it perfectly! Best post I’ve seen in a long time.
Your rules of grammar and syntax are just tools to oppress the 99%!
Next, you’ll be criticizing my choice of puke green jacket, yellow
scarf, and brown hunting hat. I hate you all!
Looks as though people have been cleaning their acrylic/polyester 1970s leftovers out of their closets to donate to the Occucampers.
That hat doesn’t even go with itself.
I would be surprised if she was aware of that other cultural revolution.
Bingo — no way this muttonhead would have a clue.
I’d be surprised too. Public schools aren’t going to teach the youngsters what communism was all about.
Pray tell–What was communism all about?
Murdering people who might possibly pose a threat to the Party.
Are you really so lazy and ignorant as to be unable to look that up for yourself?
My wife grew up under the Soviet system, she wants to kick every OWS’er in the head.
My wife lived through the Cultural Revolution. She saw and heard things that haunt her to this day. As a little girl when it first started she would walk down the street after or before school and see people hanging from trees. She said the military would leave them up as a warning to others. While standing in line with her grandmother for some pork meat she would hear screams from a nearby building. Latter she learned those were the screams of people getting their hearts cut out. She said millions died mostly from starvation. Mao did not care as he thought there were too many people anyway. Sound familiar. The left talks a loving line but they are brutal deep inside. My family is ready for war against this scum and their filthy commie leader Obama. I suggest all freedom loving people get ready for these people don’t want you to have a free choice they want to tell you how to live and what to think.
I stand right beside your family when the fight begins. Just remember there are far more of us then them, many of us had military training and believe in the 2nd amendment.
I think we are going to have a revolution, all right. I just think that it isn’t going to be the one these folks expect or want.
I suppose they mean the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which killed millions of innocent Chinese.
Time to clean the AK.
Show of hands – how many think this gal’s heard of The Cultural Revolution?
– Kampf?
What’s on the other side? “Time for a final solution?”
What the hell is a “Cultural Revaution”?
Maybe it isa “Cultural Revaluation”?
That would come just before a foreclosure!
I don’t know- I’ve been out of work a long time, and right now I’m pretty interested in what my country can do for me.
The guy has a pretty snazzy hat too.
Sign #1 — the complete selfishness and self-absorbtion of people today.
Sign #2 — the utter lack of knowledge of history by today’s yoots. Whatever college indoctrinated her should give her a full refund. And her propogandists (they should not sully the title of professor) should be kicked out of the halls of academia.
Are you sure that the first one wasn’t a clever anti-OWS sign?
There is a question mark, after all.
It was a sarcastic anti-capatalistic sign.
Wall Street big business wanting the patsy American government to do something for it.
This. We look at the sign and assume that’s the attitude of the protester. However, I’d bet the point he’s trying to make is that he believes it’s the attitude of corporate recipients of government assistance; in other words, it’s an ironic way of saying, “End corporate welfare.” Not sure what he’d think about Solyndra, though.
Who’s gonna be their Che Guevara? The Red Guard cadres who go around shooting intellectuals in the head? The know-nothing Pol-Pot wannabees at the #Occupy events don’t seem to know it’s the folks with the glasses who get it first.
Meanwhile – Here in L.A. – we walked through the OLA camp and some 50 year old man in a tutu ran up to us asking if he could paint our nails. He told us his teenage daughter, who he basically has abandoned in Texas, is better off without him. And his friend told us it’s a “spiritual revolution…” you know between “good” and “evil” spirits and if we just stick to the “movement” we can change the evil spirit’s minds. Occupy Retarded.
I am sure this guy is representative of the whole movement. Or haven’t you heard? OWS wants to force men to wear tutus and paint their nails. And you kept asking if there was a message! silly you!
That cultural revolution she so advocates would likely lead to her death in the rice fields. The useful idiot intellectuals that don’t know how to plant and sow are the first to die in the cultural revolutions that she somehow doesn’t know have already been fomented.
One picture is worth several billion unintelligible words.
Is being a yutz the way you establish your “99%” bona fides?
Historical ignorance indeed… Mao killed some 30 million people during his Cultural Revolution, and imprisoned people because of their professions. My uncle, an engineer, spent years in prison for… well, just because.
85MM. He starved 60MM. Some hero. He was also a pedophile.
Mao may also have inspired the Occupoopers in a different way. According to Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao didn’t bathe for the last 21 years of his life. (Mind you, he did get regular sponge baths from young nymphettes employed specifically for that purpose.)
BTW, the fellow in the first picture has a question mark at the end of his statement (ask what your country can do for you?) I wonder if he’s not trying to make a point about the self-centered nature of the “protest” and not just happened to have used incorrect punctuation?
Hmmm. The man with the Kennedy quote adds a question mark. Is he actually mocking the OWS crowd?
The cultural revolution lass is an idiot. As is the guy with the beautiful revolution sign–apparently war IS the answer for some problems.
The question mark makes me think that first guy is a Tea Party mole. I mean, the occupiers can’t be *that* un self-aware, can they?
Nope, I’m Tea Party and that’s not how we roll. We’re a lot more classy than that.
mrsizer, nicely worded there on what needs to happen!
i know that the OWS movement understands that the government is making promises that they will not be able to keep, but they don’t understand how to fix it.
the TEA party understands the same things, but they are looking for the fix. the answer is getting the small businesses up and running in america, creating more jobs and independence, and shrinking the government.
this is not going to be an easy transition by any means but it will have to happen, or we will not like what will happen with the continued rise of government.
you can see your freedoms starting to slowly erode already— with the increased power in the dept of homeland security, taxes being proposed on what we can eat (and michelle meeting with olive garden to take away my breadsticks), the TSA, red light cameras, spraying occupiers in the face,cap and trade, supercommittees meeting behind closed doors, legislation that isn’t even read before voting, etc.
I’m thinking that the question mark on the first guy’s sign means that he intended it ironically as a putdown of the OWS movement. The question mark implies intended irony.
No, I seriously doubt that. He thinks the sentence, containing the word “Ask,” counts as a question. He obviously is punctuation challenged.
I’m not getting that; not saying you’re not right, but I don’t see the slam-dunk proof. For one thing, unlike most people, he knows how many dots go in an ordinary ellipsis. True, in this case, there should be another dot as a period. But I think it’s open to interpretation. Nonetheless, it is a perfect distillation of the so-called movement.
Cassandra, I don’t think I’d give this guy’s punctuation the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, there’s that matter-of-putting-hyphens between-some-of-the words on his poster, which is just-weird.
That said, I agree with you: I’m not convinced the poster isn’t ironic.
There’s a name scrawled at the bottom. It looks like “Marion Knight,” though I could be wrong. The best-known Marion Knight is better known as Suge Knight, onetime hip-hop mogul.
I suggest the added evidence, in the update section in, the post undermines your position that the subject is deliberatly being ironic. In fairness and some charity, he may have seen the light and is repenting.
The only way his sign is ironic is if he is referring to what Barney Frank and Mario Cuomo achieved when they were overseeing Fannie/ Freddie and HUD, respectively. Their uninformed altruism of creating a higher percentage of home ownership by forcing banks to extend credit to uncreditworthy borrowers created the mess that is this recession along with bad actors in Wall St. For him to have that insight would be truly amazing and I would hope that the spread his knowledge to the other misinformed useful idiots. Sadly, partaking in a 1%~99% protest negates the suggestion of irony. He really is asking for a nanny state.
Maurin Formedthanieux : Nom de Guerre of the month !!!!
I haven’t seen this much dissection since high school biology. You watch a lot of CSI, right? I’m going with Zombie…”ask” means there should be a question mark at the end.
Ask is an imperative, not an interrogative.
When hearing a stampede, think horses before zebras. The guy is most likely grammar-challenged & is without a lick of common sense.
For what it’s worth, I read this the same way Cassandra did.
Did El Marco have a chance to talk to the man and ask him what his sign meant? (It’s none too clear, regardless of which interpretation you take.) Possibly he was thinking of bailout recipients or “Wall Streeters” as those who were asking what their country could do for them, some such thought.
He probably thinks that’s what JFK actually said.
You think that guy has a clue who JFK was?
i believe that this guy misspelled “ask”. ebonics would spell it and say it as “AXE” not……
I agree. I think it’s an ironic put-down.
I agree with Zombie, the sign’s meaning is questionable –and if that’s the case, why is he standing behind it?
Because it would lose all meaning if he stood in front of it.
Haha, good one!
My theory is that this dude supposed that any sentence containing the word “Ask” must require a question mark at the end. IOW, he doesn’t even know what a question is.
Bone-headedly-brainless spineless weasels, historically ignorant morons, and crappy dressers to boot. Screw ‘em. Y’all go home to Momma and Dada.
The answer is, no. She is not the most stupid…it’s an equality of outcome movement. She’s equally stupid and proud of it.
At least they are too dumb to use guns.
Don’t count on it! Besides just pulling the trigger in a crowd they are likely to hit someone.
Zombie -
Well, I just went over to El Marco’s site and viewed his post. It is excellent work. I had no idea there were other people doing work as good as your work Zombie. You have stiff competition.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
I think I can see that way to the back of her skull
If you held her ear up to your ear you could hear the ocean.
These two examples of racial amity actually believe they are intelligent. Sheer, unadulterated STUPIDITY abounds at Occupy Mob locations.
“Look deep into her eyes: Is she the stupidest person on Earth, or does she actually know what she’s advocating?”
More than you can imagine. Among the first to be targeted in the Cultural Revolution were those who wore glasses.
Was it only Pol Pot that killed anybody w/ glasses, or was that Mao’s gig too?
Mao wore glasses, so that wasn’t his thing.
While she might be hoping for a spot on a rape/torture squad during her Cultural Revolution, I strongly suspect she’d be lucky to be shipped off to slave labor on a farm.
I feel like I’m in a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon:
“Hey Rocky, watch me pull a peaceful cultural revolution out of my hat.”
“That trick never works.”
“This time, fer sure.”
“Roar, Up against the wall motherf****ers”
LOL! That’s awesome. There is so much cleverness among conservatives, and liberals provide such great material to work with. Be nice to see a conservative version of SNL or something. Never happen, but it would be a killer.
Max, while it’s true “Mao wore glasses”, don’t forget that the underlying premise of these people is that some animals are more equal than others. They NEVER think that the “revolution” will devour them, until it’s too late.
That was Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.
Despite max’s assertion that Mao wore glasses and Uncle Grumpy’s agreement, I’ve never seen a photo of Mao with glasses. I just did a Google Images search with several variations of “Mao” and “glasses” and the only ones showing him wearing glasses where apparently photoshopped since they showed him wearing 3D glasses.
In fact, I think he stayed away from glasses owing to vanity. I distinctly remember seeing an interview with a woman that had been assigned to read to him when he was in his declining years and could no longer read unassisted. I have to assume that he could have obtained glasses easily enough if he’d wanted them; instead, the regime obtained people to read for him. I remember how disappointed the woman who read for him was when she discovered that he was not the brilliant fount of wisdom that the propaganda had described but just a frail old man.
So, to answer the original question, I doubt that Mao particularly persecuted people with glasses like Pol Pot did. On the other hand, the Cultural Revolution DID persecute musicians. Many gifted musicians had their instruments destroyed and were then dispatched to the countryside to work as common laborers for many years without any access to instruments because they were considered intellectual. As I understand it, this was the essence of Pol Pot’s persecution of eyeglass wearers too: glasses were thought to indicate intelligence and a middle class outlook and such people were considered a threat to his regime. Mao just used musical instruments (among other things) as the same kind of “sign of the devil”.
In Toronto we have these protests going on as well. I thought I would give these people a chance so I went down to check it out for myself. Big mistake. I saw two signs beside each other that said said “Stop Harper” and “Nationalize the banks”. I tried pointing out to them in a civil manner that they were advocating giving control of the banks to the gov’t that they want to stop. Instead of any type of intellectual conversation they just yelled at me and told me I need to stop being so narrow minded. The irony was too much to handle.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your country can do to you.
These liberal arts majors are pathetic. Their signs are crude, illiterate, lacking in creativity or originality, and are incoherent in their message.
If these protestors were engineering or science majors, their protest signs would be well crafted, literate, witty, and creative.
Lets have a Tea Party in the middle of them..
As Milton Friedman observed, JFK’s immortal words present a false choice: the Constitution doesn’t ASK the citizen or the country to do anything FOR each other. It simply STATES what they CANNOT do TO each other – and that’s been pissing-off totalitarians for two centuries, thank God.
The sign in the very back of the “cultural revolution” pic looks like “FRACK IS WACK”. Could it be a sign of support for hydro-fracturing methods of natural gas extraction? Is he a “protest warrior” in the midst of all the insanity? One can only hope…
The tea parties were a lot cleaner than these occupations. When we left the National Mall on 9/12/2009 the area was cleaner than when we arrived. When we left the Lincoln Memorial on 8/28/2010 there was no litter. Sanitation crews spent hours cleaning the massive mess left by the occupiers in a tiny space by comparison.
http://www.amazon.com/Parties-Occupy-Wall-Street-ebook/dp/B006CA0368/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1
Not just that, Will. The Tea Party protests had a start and an end, not to mention a point. The TP folks also stayed in local hotels. They ate at local restaurants and diners. And the local economy benefited from Tea Party dollars. How is OWS impacting local economies?
Just remember the narrative: Conservatives are violent, intolerant, fringe personalities being manipulated by wingnuts to create an astroturf faux movement. On the other hand, OWS is a truly spontaneous and honest reaction of normal, reasonable and thoughtful Americans exercising their free speech rights and protesting the evil of inequality forced on our culture by corporations and rich people. /sarcasm
It’s easy to be stupid and lazy and demand that you deserve more. Any dumbass can get a tent and join a hobo tent city. What’s hard is working long hours at a crappy job to make ends meet and be responsible to yourself and your family. Work hard enough (AKA Sacrifice) and you might learn. You might develop skill. You might receive a wage increase. You might receive a promotion. And you might go into business for yourself. Problem is, none of this is even an option for the OWS. To them, it’s about income equality, regardless. My question to OWS, is if we embrace income inequality solutions, why would ANYONE work for a living?
OWS is as “spontaneous” as the random convergence of SAM suppression missions, fighter escort groups, and B-52s over Hanoi 39 years ago at Christmas.
I think some of OWS is spontaneous. There are the obvious professional protesters out there and then you have the hired help and the homeless hanging out to fill the crowds in exchange for free food, but some of it was pretty spontaneous.
I’ve always contented that there is a core of similarity between the original tea partiers and the truly anti-corporatist Occupiers. Those similarities are hard to see beyond the extremes of both movements, but they are evidenced by the joint participation of the libertarians and Paulites and the commonality of anger at corporate bailouts while the rest of the nation is getting squeezed.
It’s time we started making the Occupy supporters and organizers pay for the costs of #Occupy.
Last issue of National Review had a picture of a snotty young woman holding a poster saying “Happiness is your right”. Priceless.
Another clueless leftist who sees no distinction between the idea that the PURSUIT of happiness is your inalienable right and the idea that HAPPINESS is your inalienable right.
Am puzzled as to why some of those OWS protestors don’t get together, form a joint stock company, enlist some investors, employ some decent copywriters and market for sale, some decent signs for everyone to display. Like “Capitalism sucks” tee shirts for $50 each.
That would imply that they have some brains and actually use them!!!
I wish I was as lazy and ill raised as this pack of flea bitten morons, oh that’s right the 99% have to go to work to pay for the lazy 1%. I guess I am enslaved to this group of people because I must meet their demands or suffer the consequences of their rage.
I have a question.
If he’s making such a terrible anti-JFK statement, why is there a question mark at the end?
I recently visited my local “occupy” group….all two of them….and presented them with the classified ad section of our local McClatchy News Media rag and informed them that there were plenty of jobs available. Those two recoiled from me like I was poison and wouldn’t debate me on the availability of jobs. I think I represent the mindset of the REAL 99% and say loudly to the protesters “quit crying and go to work!”
That dumb chick doesn’t have any clue what the cultural revolution did to China—among other things set it back about 40 years. These people need to mind their own business.
I was at a small social event last weekend where I was asked what the gist of these people’s movement really was. This guy and his poster say it all.
Let’s negotiate with OWS and offer them all free, one-way plane tickets to China, Cuba or any other Communist country of their choice.
I doubt that the commies would accept them.
Gimme gimme gimme. Gee, I thought corporate greed was limited to corporations, bankers, and the rich. Obviously greed has mutated, and infected this poor dullard. We are all at risk.
The OWS is dead and is now being buried, the Liberals are in mourning and they still don’t know what to do.
LYSOLED
With authorities in Syria and Egypt killing Arab Spring protesters in droves the Left in this country are horrified by fleabagging Occupiers getting peppersprayed, when they should have been Lysoled.
Just remember these ignoramuses would be the ones loading you into the cattle car, separating the women and children, taking your business away from you so they can relish the spoils for at least a few years, (it would last that long because you had worked so hard to establish a beautifully run business so that even a chimp could run it). When they ran it into the ground they would all be so angry and just start a mass killing spree in the camps.
So the gal with the sign may look totally dumb (wearing her down filled cozy jacket with wind protection brought to her care of those horrible one %) but they are incredibly dangerous. I always like to think of the scene in Dr Zhivago in the beautiful home now completely destroyed and filled with people who have no appreciation for anything.
Do to the Communists what they would do to us.
Mac..your spot on insofar as these drones being dangerous, especially if they were to get the force of a sympathetic government behind them. As Mao the fat man said “morality begins at the muzzle of a gun”. Keep your head low and your powder dry my liberty loving, self reliant friends.
“taking your business away from you so they can relish the spoils for at least a few years..”
I read of a guy who ran his own small printing business in Chile back when Allenda was whipping up the classware schtick. His two employees showed up one morning, stuck a pistol in his face and told him the shop belongs to them now. The business didn’t last a week. When the printers broke down, which they couldn’t repair, they smashed them.
That is ridiculous.
They should be very glad for police protection and no being any real inconvenience to the many.
They love their staged photos and drama, but they forget that their pictures are everywhere. I suspect that many will be shunned or worse depending on the final outcome.
Driving across mid-town Manhattan Saturday night, I came upon a an indistinguishable but large, might even say massive group of people splayed out amongst a rain soaked sidewalk. Large umbrellas and parkas and clothing reserved for the nastiest concrete canyon rainstorms, would have convinced anyone the huddle masses of Zuccotti Park had moved north to spite the 5th Avenue merchant class. Nope, just folks in line for Black Friday sales at Saks 5th Ave. New York is so weird but so true. The normal and the new normal side by side. Same as it ever was and will be.
Driving across mid-town Manhattan Wednesday night, I came upon a an indistinguishable but large, might even say massive group of people splayed out amongst a rain soaked sidewalk. Large umbrellas and parkas and clothing reserved for the nastiest concrete canyon rainstorms, would have convinced anyone the huddle masses of Zuccotti Park had moved north to spite the 5th Avenue merchant class. Nope, just folks in line for Black Friday sales at Saks 5th Ave. New York is so weird but so true. The normal and the new normal side by side. Same as it ever was and will be.
Ask NOT what your country can do for you…DEMAND it!
Secret to a good cultural revolution: first, go find some culture…
What is at the root of much of the wrongheadedness of the OWS movement is that schools no longer teach students to think critically and analytically (heaven forbid anyone should be critical). In fact, our colleges and universities have become little more than indoctrination camps, where the indroctrinees pay for the privilege.
As a result we have an over abundance of people who can only see the outcome they desire with no concept of the consequences of their actions. That is to say, when they arrive at a conclusion that feels good they stop the thought process. Or, worse they could simply believe, as did Mao, that the end justifies the means. The solution is what your grandmother called “thinking things through”. But that is so last century.
As for the notion that the Constitution is outdated and should be a “living document”, you must realize that a living document simply means that whomever is in power can change the rules. I believe you will find “living document” included in the handbook of tyranny.
Chester, if that was the only problem, or the origin, it would be great. Unfortunately, it is the end result of the problem, not the beginning. Not thinking critically and analytically; and not having a concept of the consequences of their actions assumes that they have knowledge, experience, and a basis to think, analyse, and possibly foresee the consequences.
One of the major problems in the Western world today is (aside from projecting its own liberal/secular/”human rights” oriented beliefs on societies that have a completely different anthropological, social, and cultural history), and assuming others will react as they do, is that modern Western society (especially as manifested through OWS) has almost no idea where society, history, or “things” originate from. Call it the “Money grows on trees, and doesn’t everybody live in a huge house with 3 cars?” syndrome.
Modern urban society is so developed, structured, engineered, “disciplined”, specialised, relatively law abiding, and unaware of what it took to get to where it is today, that it automatically assumes that it always has been, and always will be… Clean water flowing everywhere; unlimited electricity, telecommunications, and media; endless food; transport, sewage, and relatively uncorrupted public services is not the condition of the majority of the planet.
They forget that the US is only 5% of the world’s population-and they effectively want “spread the wealth, by spreading the poverty” everywhere.
The sheer scale of effort and cost; hundreds of years of technical development, thousands of years of human thought; trillions of dollars, billions of man hours invested preclude the OWS types from understanding where they are in the world.
I doubt many of them have travelled or even backpacked to 3rd world countries, picked fruit, seen an animal be born or die, dug a ditch, or been in a life and death situation.
Another link in the chain of ignorance is that there really is NO CONSEQUENCES to actions; natural biological consequences can be prevented (birth control, antibiotics, etc); reversed (abortions, high tech medical, etc), rectified or repaired (I now read about COSMETIC SURGERY ON PETS… Jeez!); and so on.
No warlord who chops your head off due to your family name, or rapes you because you are from the wrong tribe… Not that this desirable, but it certainly is an aspect of life in many parts of the globe.
So, before thinking and analysing, it helps to deal with reality, and understand the basics of life…
One of my favorite “Party tricks” (if and when I get invited to a party, which is not often anymore!) is, when hearing a deluded liberal ranting about “Human Rights”, “Government not providing enough”, etc, is to ask 2 questions (quite civilly, and I even specify that it is not a socially unifying war or major disaster scenario):
a) If the electricity, gas, and/or water was turned off for 3 days (or better yet, longer), how long do you think you, your family, or urban society would remain ‘civilised’?”
Add to that (after the first silence and beginning to see mental cogs turning!) “How about a breakdown in telecommunications, and/or an inability to transport or wide scale contamination of food…?”
How long could they last in a wholesale Katrina scenario? They start sweating…
b) Then: “Assume that you have the physique of Schwarzenegger; the reactions of Michael Jordan; the brain of Einstein (or as per your own choice). You are alone; naked; in the jungle, forest, desert, or prairie. You get bitten by a snake (or step on a poisoned thorn, drink microbe infested water, develop a severe infection, etc). How many ‘Human Rights’ do you have? Where is your ‘Entitlement’ to medical care?”.
Invariably, at this stage, anyone with even a modicum of sense has started thinking, and completely changed their political and philosophical ranting. I have seen one or both of those questions completely change (and usually stimulate) a discussion.
BTW, much of this scenario is/was quite common, even in the US, only 40-60 years ago.
Try it! It is a lot of fun.
BTW, as for “Occupy Wall Street”?
I wouldn’t occupy; I would have heads on spikes and the death penalty for the Sub Prime Mortgage Lenders and Brokers, the Investment Bank CDO packagers, the Hedge Fund managers and market manipulators, the Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac housing market inflators, and anyone else on the inside that “Breached Public Trust”; overleveraged and abused a system that is essentially a huge structure of intangible products, abstract investment concepts, and social trust.
I ESPECIALLY would go after the POLITICIANS that created, expanded, and enabled such a Rube Goldberg like financial house of cards, which has poisoned the entire world.
It is not just overindulged children who need to deal with reality; it is also the power hungry, ignorant, incompetent, dishonest, corrupt, fantasising political “leadership”.
Wow that was good, many of my rambling thoughts put together beautifully.
Thanks
Thanks-they are a lot of my rambling thoughts also, which eventually get linked because of sitting around while not being invited to parties… Plenty more where they came from!
It is pretty easy to peel away the “veneer of civilisation”, and get to the “Origin of the species”, because most people only think in the frame of reference that they have been brought up in, with the conditions that they are used to.
Just ask yourself: “What would happen, and/or how would that work, if there were no supporting facilities of modern society, just me as a biological entity?” The next step is to ask: “How did that originate and develop?”
It very quickly puts things in perspective; “Human Rights” become “Social Privileges”, and as an inevitable corollary, “Human/Social Responsibilities”. I suggest you try my “Party Trick Questions”. You will be amazed how quickly the response narrows the discussion gap and the responder’s immediate change of perspective. Good luck!
If you haven’t read it in a while, reread Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (or read it for the first time if you haven’t read it before). The parallels between the OWS crowd and the looters in the novel are chilling. Both groups demanded that all their wants be fulfilled at any expense without regard to anything else. Morality and reality were not considerations in any way, only the immediate fulfillment of demands was even to be considered.
OWS is real. It is growing. Critisising their clothes and spelling–is that all you got? How about countering their message, and yes, they have one, you know, the one about plutocracy, oligarchy? Or, do you like plutocracy and oligarchy? Are you under the mistaken notion that YOU benefit from it? The posts here, for the most part, are venal and petty. And comparing the OWS to Nazis–come on! But I guess that’s all you got.
I wouldn’t recommend that Marvin Knight live in a place like Texas. I doubt he would find much sympathy there, and rightfully so.
And I’ll bet if you asked Marvin Knight, he’d be certain to tell you that the Quote he has altered was originally made by some Extreme Right Wing Mean Spirited Republican, (and had nothing to do with the King of Camalot) that’s why he had to correct it.
I’m 64, and used to be a lefty. I seem to be noticing that lefties my age are getting very angry, and will blow up at the slightest disagreement. Used to be that they would give sardonic smiles as they looked into the future, then put on another Holly Near record. Now, as death approaches, and lifelong vegan diets have not prevented chemotherapy, they are feeling cheated. As proud as they may say they feel about #Occupy they know these people are morons, that that people’s microphone thing only proves it. They also know that this will not lead to viable candidates in future elections as anyone who embraces this “movement” will get burned. So they simmer until it all boils over. Kinda sad really.
With his hat, I’m thinking that man’s sign ought to read, “Ask not what your pizza can do for you, ask what you can do for your pizza.”
Isn’t that LeRoi Jones?
Why Ms. Colleen is not in school is most telling. How does her actions, coming to NYC from VT., provide for the overall betterment of this country (USA) at this time? The logic does excape me.
I wonder who will end up with the $600K the useful idiots collected, thank you very much?
kennedy’s statement was a fail to begin with
the paternalism of “what your country can do for you” hampers the individual to reach his own destiny
“what you can do for your country” seeks to reestablish government as the master
when this becomes the better compared to the “occufails” impressions of the role of government what does it say about us, as citizens, and our actions/inactions in letting things get this far out of whack?
The protest group here in the UK claim to be sharing the fight with those in the USA. But in reality, it is ‘rent a mob’ in action. Today’s report informs us that they have closed St Paul’s Cathedral, as they have camped outside it; many of the tents are unoccupied at night; the local council has had to put in boxes to collect the used needles; drugs, alcohol are common; they have defaced this historic cathedral; urinated and defecated all over the site; they have interrupted services in the cathedral with chanting, swearing and shouting.
If they had an argument, by their actions and their refusal to leave the area has alienated them from everyone, and lost them their argument.
That guy and his sign go well together, stupid useless loser, with the appropriate headgear.
It’s all extortion – give us money or we’ll disrupt your lives. I thought that was illegal.
The fact that Little Miss Buttonhead thinks she’ll be in charge of the death camps instead of fodder for them is just pathetic. Or maybe she is just that ignorant to not be able to puzzle out what those words mean when you put them together.
One of the most unreasonable premises of the Right is that someone’s economic status should influence their political thinking. Or is that an absurdity of the Left? I begin to lose track. At any rate, these advocates of revolution would soon run and hide should any real shooting start. They are sadly clueless as to the horror that follows a violent government take over. Thank God for the 2nd amendment.
If I read it correctly the sign behind Miss Staring Vapidly reads “Frack is Wack”. Could it be that the fellow holding it really understands the importance of hydraulic fracturing to our energy portfolio and actually supports “energy independence”? Might he be the OWS equivalent of a Protest Warrior? It bears asking…
A refreshing comment by daxypoo. One should be more restrained about asking the country for favors than is this dimwit Marvin Knight, but no one should blindly offer his services to the country, JFK to the contrary. That is, not without a clear understanding of what services the country is demanding, for they can be stupid or immoral. In my books that includes service in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and even Vietnam.
Still, we should be grateful to Knight for revealing the Occupiers to be the narcissistic extortionists they really are.
“I want a bailout from my student loan for 6 years of college, and obtaining a useless degree in a supposed discipline that nobody really wants or needs!!”…
I think any employer would be jumping for joy at any of these spoiled degenerates walking in their door looking for a job…
My first take would be at the least a headache of an employee to more likely a major liability!!
See the new update to the post:
UPDATE:
To clarify matters for those few folks who think the question mark at the end of the “Ask not…” sign means the guy holding it is being sarcastic and is secretly a Tea Party counter-protester, or something along those lines: Sorry, no dice. As you can see at the bottom left of his sign, his name is “Marvin Knight” and he’s made plenty of other appearances at Occupy Wall Street carrying other indisputably left-leaning signs. He’s even been quoted in MSM articles about OWS saying things like this:
There’s no way to wriggle out of this one: He’s an authentic and sincere Occupy Wall Street protester, and he’s completely serious about his sign.
Matt Drudge has a very powerful photo now- a sneering young fellow with a large Starbucks in-hand, pointing accusingly at… whomever he is pointing at.
(“Occupy main street” is the headline, but I can’t find a source for the photo.)
I wondered about his message for a sec on accounta the question mark. Thanks for making it quite clear to all.
The schools have become indoctrination centers from kindergarten through college…observe the result. College students embracing mass murderers of tens of millions. Seeking to emulate North Korea, Cuba and other failing dictatorships with no clue as to what will follow. Ignorance is not always bliss. Sometimes it costs you your life.
I almost feel sorry for this Colleen person. Well almost.
And why is she being referred to as “Useful Idiot”? In fact I never cared much for this term. People like Colleen are not being used at all, they know exactly what they’re doing and they will suffer the consequences of their evil doing one way or another. The correct term (in my opinion) for these people is “Useless Idiots” for one simple reason – They’re utterly useless.
Boy, I wish my SS was $800 a month!!!!
If Marvin thinks so highly of a socialist System then go live in one!!! Leave this country!!!!!!
What I don’t understand is how do all these OWS live???? How are they paying there bills or are they all homeless.!!!
Sick of this whole bunch of worthless human beings!!!!
No ad hominem arguments, that’s the rule here. Do you not undestand that term?
Occupy Toronto protester makes library claim…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VsVDftLb4
Cultual revolution? What is the ‘culture’ of these morons? They are apparently too stupid to understand how to operate a firearm. First really cold stretch and these sad, pathetic excuses for Americans will either be home with mommy(daddy is probably nowhere to be found),in a subterranean steam tunnel to keep from freezing to death or, frozen stiff.
That’s all you have? Insults? Does that work here in this form? And WHO are the hatemongers?
President John F Kennedy would be sick to learn that Barrack Hussain Obama supports this filthy group of ner-do-wells
You can actually look into the eyes of these morons and see the BACK OF THEIR HEAD !!!!
The cultural revolution – Wasn’t that about eliminating college professors?
Ya just gotta love his Marvinisms, but I’m not sure about the mushroom hat…
Reading this page I am amazed that so many people don’t realize that the USA is a plutocracy. As far away from democracy than the USSR. The american dream swung above you – slogans punched out by a computer paid for by the tycoons and probably suffering from the cruel capitalist system more than anyone else.
America’s Shame: I see what you don’t. Perhaps you should look a wee bit harder. It is one of the main reasons the Tea Party exists. Call it “plutocracy” or “crony-capitalism”, but the Tea Party sees it and wants it gone.
Take the money away (Taxed Enough Already) and take the influence away (bye bye Dept of Almost-Everything) and you take away the plutocracy. Best (arguably) of all, you don’t need violence (or occupation or revolution) to do it.
What about controlling money spent on elections like most democracies? Most our (israeli) politicians have been arrested on just this – spending more than allowed on elections. What about bringing politics to the people instead of the lords of the manor. Isn’t this what democracy about. “the rule of the majority – protection of minority” – like health!
More on Mr Knight—————> http://www.flickr.com/photos/naomiwolf/6350914849
Colleen actually knows what she is advocating. Every Hollywood actor and producer who made pilgrimage to Cuba; every writer and politician to kowtowed to Chavez; every playwright and reporter who praised Stalin; every student and Democrat who admires Mao, every single one knows what they are doing. They dream about it, wish it, will it, desire it, and unless checked will implement their schemes of mass murder, exactly as they done in the countries they admire.
A clueless tea partier was reluctantly informed that his sign, “Pay Caesar’s things to Caesar, God’s things to God” meant, “Pay your taxes”.
Obviously the “Ask not…” sign is meant to project the attitude of the 1%, not to advocate a general entitlement. Maybe the editor here is the stupid one not to be able to see this?
TEA PARTY VS OCCUPY
http://www.popmodal.com/video/10508/TEA-PARTY-VS-OCCUPY
Your blog won’t render properly on my blackberry you might want to try and repair that