Occupy!

I've been scanning reports, and listening to interviews with the Occupy movement.

As with many things, there is some meat in there I do agree with.

It's not corporate and political corruption I have a specific problem with, as is most often stated by and about the Occupy movement.

Corporate rights and power are definitely an issue with me. Our nation does and should exist for the citizens, not for corporations. The Supreme Court made its biggest and most fundamental error, in my opinion, when it started granting rights and personhood to corporations.

In this, limited, specific idea that corporations are a problem, I agree with the Occupy movement. How and why corporations are a problem I don't think we agree on.

We certainly do not agree whatsoever in politics. The Occupy movement wants to replace representative democracy with mass "consensus" democracy. Pure, undiluted, addictive, mob rule.

Their answer to our current political system isn't to look at what is broken and what has worked for so long, but to chuck the whole thing. In listening to interviews, I have gathered evidence of reasons that vary from a complete lack of knowledge on what our political system is, a refusal to play on a gameboard where individual X doesn't get to make the rules. And, most damning, a Harrison Bergeron styled insistence on forceful inclusion of anyone deemed under-represented by specific social goals, sociological theories, or census.

Many of the most basic points and goals are covered simply in becoming active in local politics- and moving to reverse the Nixon era changes that catapulted NATIONAL level parties to prominence.

Of course, in suggesting this, I have run into the seemingly endless stream of rationalizations. "local parties don't matter" - "local parties won't listen to us" - "we can't compromise with politicians" and so on.

And so, the answer- throw away our current system, from the municipal to the federal level, and play by their rules.


One poor girl stated "this is new, no one knows how big it can grow. Nothing like this direct concensus democracy has ever bee tried before." (she's an organizer of one of Nevada's Occupy movements).

I suggest a reading of history. mid 19th through late 20th, centered in Europe, while incomplete, should suffice to educate.