Nate Silver, as always, has something useful and informative to say about the Occupy movement. After looking through hundreds of local media reports for global protests this past Saturday, he’s concluded that there were somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 protesters in the United States. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle had the largest protests. For a city-by-city breakdown of attendance last weekend, look at this graphic. Meanwhile, several European cities kicked our Yankee asses with hundreds of thousands of protesters each.
Silver floats the idea that it’s mainly nonpartisan liberals out there:
I suspect that more than anything, however, it reflects the politics of the protesters. Specifically, they tend to be more liberal than they are Democratic partisans. Take liberalism, subtract the Democratic Party, and the remainder might look something like Occupy Wall Street…
So perhaps the protesters are more ideologically minded than they are interested in partisan politics. In fact, they may be relatively disengaged from “politics as usual.” In a somewhat informal New York magazine survey of 100 protesters in Manhattan, only 39 percent reported having voted in the 2010 midterm elections.
All of this could create headaches for the Democratic Party — and for the protesters — if it tries to co-opt the Occupy movement.
Read the whole thing.
So, 151 comments later, how many of you actually gave some thought to another perspective? Furthermore, how many of you RESPOND rather than react? I count a handful at most. And no Fnarf, that definitely does not include you.
@133
Ah. Yes. The James Bond Super-villain method of social change!
The only way to get universal healthcare IS TO BLOW UP THE MOON!
No you don’t really want that. When has that worked. Ever? Please name three examples of complete economic ruin where things got better for people afterwards? Argentina? Nope. Russia? WAY no. Go ahead. France after the Terror? Suuuure. After two decades of Napoleon plundering and slaughtering his way across europe. Germany after WWI? That turned out well.
I’ve lived in failed states and places where the economy has completely crashed. You know what happens? Unless a society can leverage some ultra-valuable resource extraction economy or a war as a quick fix, they don’t really rebuild after major crashes. Not in the way you think. Not better. Certainly not in a timeline measurable in anything short of decades.
Here is what happens. Poverty becomes even more entrenched. Wealth disparities increase. Oligarchy tightens it’s grip. Shit get’s worse. People starve. Wars break out. Millions die. YAY!
You better think things through a little better.
@153 Crashing the system didn’t necessarily mean catastrophic failure. Like I said, I am more interested in holding Obama accountable so that a second party emerges. I don’t think President Romney means the end of US. I do think we’re headed that way, so incrementalism is not going to work. Even that argument is flawed because on many fronts it hasn’t. By endorsing the neoliberal econ policies (he even admonished OWSers not to antagonize the fraudsters on Wall St.! this man will never have a moral center) and neocon military policies the administration has kept us straight on the Bush course.
But Ok. let’s assume that political and economic collapse does not happen. That somewhere we stabilize as a second world industrial nation (that doesn’t make things–we already are an extraction economy, btw). What is your solution? Do we continue climate change, empire, or police statism? There is a precedent for this–the United Kingdom. They eventually chose (after centuries of resistance) to at least stop the colonialism thing. But it requires Americans to be honest, and I don’t see that happening now, especially with this type of thread as evidence.
So all the things you said: Oligarchy tightens it’s grip. Shit get’s worse. People starve. Wars break out. Millions die.
Is that going to be prevented with the course we’re on?
“Even that argument is flawed because on many fronts it hasn’t.”
I meant “hasn’t been incremental improvement.”
@154
Of course it stands a better chance of getting better by trying and working for change rather than throwing your hands up and praying for collapse. Think about it.
Look. We’re going to have start off agreeing to some sort of institutional consensus of what our reality actually IS before continuing this discussion.
You will have to first agree that the existence of industrial corporate capitalism and neoliberalism, as flawed as they may be and as corrupt as they have become, have led to more technological inovation and thus more general prosperity than ever before in recorded human history. The way things are now is now how things have always been. Human being made rational (and irrational) choices to change how they did things. And things are better.
Ideas like human rights, women’s rights, humanism. These are very recent ideas that have gained traction as a the result of all that human prosperity. The’re gaining traction in new places right now. These ideas are growing. People are CHOOSING them. Because they work.
It’s no accident that human populations held either very low or fairly steady for tens of thousands years until the last four centuries.
Now suddenly we have too many people. A problem nobody dreamed of four hundred years ago when life expectancy was thirty. Sure. Lots of those people suffer. But it used to be those people just died slow horrible deaths. It used to be all humanity could look forward to was suffering. Now at least there is demonstrable hope for many people, maybe not most people, but better than before. I dunno about you but I find that encouraging.
For god’s sake. India and China now have middle classes.
Look we can fix the system. It’s young, comparatively. It has bugs. But it’s fixable. It may end up looking nothing like what we have now. But praying for the asteroid isn’t helping anybody.
Even the our most dire problems are fixable.
Correction: “the way things are now is now how things have always been.”
Not how things…
Correction: Even the our most dire problems are fixable.
Ugh. I give up with this edit interface.
Maybe if the server crashes the interface will come back better…
@161 I know. Just ask the 16 year old American citizen killed by his own government for being the son of his non-criminal dad how great America is even compared to Russia, who’ve had their share imperial incursions for sure.
@157
“Of course it stands a better chance of getting better by trying and working for change rather than throwing your hands up and praying for collapse. “
Did I say that without later qualifying it? Please don’t overreact to my already hyperbolic statements. And again, where are the attempts for progress over the past few years? I see reinforcement of the status quo and more police statism, not incrementally less.
“human rights, women’s rights, humanism.” I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these things are going away and the current government is making what amount to cosmetic changes. Things like recognition of rights, even amongst so-called left folks is abysmal.
There’s plenty to pat ourselves on the back about. Some of which is happening now and much of which happened in the past with more robust institutions (especially academic institutions that used to laugh at the University of Phoenix model but now embrace it).
I told everybody here that I had ‘real’ hope. I just meant not the kind you buy for $25 and a refrigerator magnet. Believe me, I’m an engineer. In my short life, some innovations have really surprised me and that technology is one of our hopes. BTW, it’s also been quite devastating itself. And we have this thing called the natural world that is dying. People may be dying less but this thing we call progress is killing the place we live. Will we be able to innovate fast enough to make up for the fact America has done absolutely nothing effective for climate change and is planning to ramp up coal and oil? I’m hedging my bets on that one.
Here? You’re serious? Women have fewer rights today than they did sixty years ago? You cannot support this statement with any sort of fact.
We are currently in a cycle of conservatism. If you look at history humans trend micro-economically to conservatism, socially speaking. Especially when change is on the horizon. But over the long haul we tend to grow rights and to tend grow social capacity. We adapt. We have adapted before. We will adapt again.
Man you ARE full of hyperbole. And all over the place.
The natural world is not dying. Individual species are dying. Probably lots of them. However, the principles of natural selection and evolution are still in effect. The carbon cycle still functions. The natural world is going to be just fine. The earth has gone through a half dozen (or more) near total extinction evens where 99% of all species get wiped out. And yet here the ‘natural word’ is. Alive and well.
Human civilization I would say is threatened with contraction due to global warming, but very doubtful extinction. Global warming is not even close to the type of traumatic extinction the earth has seen in times past. And we still have time to fix it. We even know HOW to fix it. Running out of oil will help significantly. There’s your James Bond Super Villan scenario, if that makes you any happier. Peak oil.
I don’t think there is any room here for further discussion if your going to kling to these fringe cases and extremes. Buck up, man. It’s really not that bad.
I know a lot of people that voted for Nader. I know they definitely weren’t going to vote for Gore. They weren’t fans of the DLC, or Joe Lieberman, and maybe they didn’t see how terrifying Dubya and Cheney could be. Or maybe they didn’t think a savvy guy like Gore could actually lose a campaign against a homicidal maniac born with fetal alcohol syndrome, or a guy who never polled more than three percent. Gore lost the race because of Gore. And turns out, Nader was right about everything. Ouch. The Democratic party is diseased beyond healing. Weak, ineffectual, and paralyzed with fear. Yet, oddly, the party leaders have no fear of blatantly throwing their base under the bus every single chance they get. Their lack of efficacy stems not only from their battered wife syndrome, but also from their enablers who keep voting for them. A wounded party that is plainly going to stick by its abusers until it is beaten to death. That’s fine, but I see no reason to invite myself into that suicide pact with my valuable vote. American people are under no obligation to participate in either party’s insanity. We shouldn’t throw our votes away by handing mandates to a party that ignores them. As much as it pains me to risk giving power to the Republicans, I think change will come sooner whether Dems are in power or not. The right is far more obsolete than the left. That, plus the right-wing’s blind hatred will not only help them eat themselves alive, it will facilitate a far more motivated opposition of young voters than Dems ever will.
The likelier scenario is the occupiers succeed. With or without help from the Democratic party, change will come. For some, the motivation to halt this destructive greed and fraud stems from nothing less than the need to save their own lives. “Beware the ones who have nothing to lose.”
“”We’re fucked?” “Evidence already points toward things getting worse?” This passes for insight? Who isn’t saying that? Ron Paul is saying that, LaRouche too. Hell, Glenn Beck says that.” <- True, but when respectable people with the ability to see all sides of an issue say it, as they have begun to lately, is when it actually becomes noteworthy.
Ok. I imagine this type of hubris is not new. Gee gosh golly, then I’ll buck up. Thanks Slog for the dumping. It’s been fun!
Yes, I’m serious. Rights are eroding. If you don’t know this, you’re not paying attention.
Here’s a sample:
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-securi…
http://themacadvocate.com/2011/10/11/yes…
http://reproductiverights.org/en/press-r…
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/se…
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financial…
“the principles of natural selection and evolution are still in effect.” Umm..OK. If I’m responsible for “fringe cases and extremes,” then you’re responsible for making equally unqualified statements like this. But I’ll take your word for it. Oh the natural world will be fine, per se, with or without us.
@165 “As usual,” Why do I need to come up with a solution when the government doesn’t even take it seriously? First, I’d like it to actually be a recognized problem with more than a mere pittance of attention and rhetoric that it gets. Then we can talk about solutions.
@166- Success would be the implementation of serious regulation in financial markets, restriction on spending in political campaigns and a tax code that is as progressive as it was in the late 60s.
@170 But, that’s dreaming!
Bye people. It was fun but I really do need to take a break from this. Thanks for your benevolent and enlightened teachings!
All of this could be fixed if there was a mandatory authorization vote for each tax giveaway (exemption) with a required 2/3rds majority vote of the Citizens at every Presidential General Election.