Thursday, October 6, 2011

OWS (analysis)

This is like watching the start of a raging fire. With the beginnings of smokey smoldering embers then a small flame you can watch as it spreads quickly. This morning I watched as America gradually took to the streets. At first glance 488 cities around the country were counted then 497 followed by 537 and on and on. At present nearly 600 cities are involved in this movement. Some had only two people at a meeting place but it was still early.

This is not some temporary anomaly either. This is the result of the desperation and frustration experienced by millions in this country. I can only imagine what the people of the countries in the middle east felt like having endured such economic and oppressive conditions for decades. And I know they experienced much worse not being able to say a word of descent about it. It makes one wonder what the tipping point is for an individual. At what point does a society say enough? We are at that juncture. The sleeping apathetic masses have awoken and they are peaceful but not happy campers. The problems and questions are many and the solutions and answers few. They are fed up with being the pawns of a political chess game where no one wins. And those decision makers at the top fail to realize that amassing all the wealth does not mean they won the game because when that happens the game is over. When they have it all and everybody else has nothing the great world wide economic machine stops. This is a world wide crisis. This is a very large game of chicken. Four nations are on the verge of collapse and the lending nations are debating whether to bail them out. Ironically Russia has forgiven much of it's loans and paid off much of it's debts. It can thereby sit back and watch the meltdown should it happen.

We will have to wait and see if any propositions come out of all the demonstrations but one thing is for certain, we can not go on much longer on the present course. You can no more cut your way to prosperity than you can eat yourself skinny. There are solutions and they don't involve setting up yet another wasteful government agency. We as a nation have been down this road a few times in the past and it didn't take a lifetime to fix the problems. We (collectively) have the solutions. We just need to get them out there. I'll throw my ideas out here in a later post. In the mean time stay warm and keep calm.

3 comments:

Randal Graves said...

Don't worry, the flaws inherent in the very structure that enables these periodic bouts of fiduciary fuckery won't be fixed, so you can just rerun this post in 20, 40, 60, 80 years, assuming we all haven't cannibalized each other by then.

Demeur said...

Yeah but I think you'd wouldn't be too tasty with fava beans and too brainy for my tastes.

pygalgia said...

On Occupy: I've posted my thoughts on my time at Occupy Minneapolis. Hope you'll read, and look forward to more of your thoughts.