The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Natural Enemies? No! Natural Allies
A headline in today’s New York Times reads: “Occupy Wall Street Not Like Us, Tea Party Says.” The subhead then goes on to read: “Where Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party differ is in where they place the blame.”
Nonsense.
The Tea Party blames government for the country’s present economic problems. The Occupiers blame the heavies in the financial community. But these aren’t separate, distinct entities competing to set the country’s economic policies. For all practical purposes they are the same fused entity. Its Wall Street wing determines policies that serve it own interests by placing its representatives in key government policy-making positions; its elected Washington wing adheres to these policies in return for ideas it is incapable to generating independently, and for money to get itself reelected.
The primary aim of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is thus the same: to break this link. Tea Partyers don’t want (or shouldn’t want) government that is smaller, but government that serves the interests of themselves, of Main Street, not Wall Street. The Occupiers don’t want (or shouldn’t want) a Wall Street that is diminished in its fundamental capacities to funnel capital to worthwhile economic purposes, but a government that makes sure this happens, rather than letting The Street fly off into inherently destructive directions.
The reason Tea Party populism is currently being distorted is because it has been captured ideologically and financially by Wall Street. The reason Occupy Wall Street might soon be ideologically and financially distorted is because elements of the don’t-rock-the-boat crowd in Washington are retooling their rhetoric in hopes the boat doesn’t get rocked too much — or at all.
So my advice to leaders of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements is this: Unite. And throw out all the bums!
More from this writer at wallstreetpoet.com
Share This
Related Posts
-
A Father’s Day Barbeque—Washington-Style
Posted on Jun 15, 2013
-
The Democratic-Tea Party Alliance Makes Governing More Difficult
Posted on Jun 4, 2013
-
‘Hypnotized’ Western Public Wakes Up to Obama Abuses (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany)
Posted on May 25, 2013
-
House Fishing Expeditions- Hoping to Hook a Big One
Posted on May 21, 2013
Yeah, but….but ….but….the shear greasiness of mingling with Tea Baggers…..perish the thought. Shower for ten weeks straight at even the prospect!
Tea baggers want poor people dead. There is no common ground with Social Darwinist jack-asses.
and thus, with such attitudes, Allen, both heads of the cancerous dinosaur win, by keeping people divided along artificial lines invented more in madison avenue than in reality.
Right on point, Mr. Silverstein. The TP’ers are lobbing grenades at the government, and the Great Unwashed are taking on Wall Street; not unlike the Russians fighting Germans while U.S. troops were landing at Anzio and fighting the Italians. We joined up with the Ruskie’s to defeat common enemies who were in cahoots with each other. Congress and Wall Street’ers are joined at the hip by the millions of dollars that buy votes, induce bailouts and keep executives out of prison.
Allen’s group of extreme radicals will never be part of any solution because they have their feet planted in concrete. They are immovable; they are narrow minded; they won’t listen; and they are to be ignored.
How about a “Wall Street Tea Party” with a platform that supports that we are “Taxed Enough Already” and that we need to “regulate and punish greed”
Well…you know, it would be nicer if the Justice Department actually prosecuted antitrust cases once in a while, if “Too big to fail” was talking about linebackers (Football) or Goalies (Hockey) instead of being more code for “Too big to succeed” (Bailouts), if “Bailout” meant only either jumping from a failing airplane, or scooping water from the bottom of a row-boat…
But as long as the truth that “Liberal” and “Conservative” politicians are the same frelling people, from the same schools, with the same donors and with a shared goal of keeping us sheep in the pen for shearing, as long as politics remains a “Sport” where team loyalties carry more weight than objective results, all we’re going to get, is what is already gone so wrong, in larger and ever more baroque and overcomplicated forms as the schills on both sides of the aisle insist on differences that don’t matter whilst screwing us over with their commonality of method.
I’m given to understand that TSA/DHS is running a pilot programme in Tennessee-stop-and-search on the highway now. I guess they couldn’t humiliate enough people in the airports with their security theatre.
This is a prime example of ‘bipartisanship in fact’, or collusion between the leaders on the left, and the leaders on the right, against the rest of us, just like Tarp, and the Bailouts, and the corporate handouts, and the theatrical but completely artificial ‘supercommittee’ that will never cut anything for fear of offending some big-money interest group-just another form of theatre there, every president since Reagan in my lifetime has ‘gone after subsidies’ and every congress since Reagan has ended up staunchly defending them-even expanding them. It doesn’t Matter whose party is in power.
They’re the same frelling people.
Well then let us continue with the only tool at our disposal in these situations, the only tool the masses have every had when being totally screwed by those in power. Their fear of us all showing up on their doorsteps and destroying them. Let them know we are on to them. Support your local OWS
The only “allies” claim that can be attempted is that both are populist, which is so extreme it’s at the farthest left (99% vs. 1%) primarily and almost exclusively. The far left also despises the Tea Party and Partiers and thus by extension, as well as for other reasons again, the people.
The Tea Party began with Santelli’s well-known rant, then grew in scope to include ordinary people everywhere who resent the gross intrusion and misconduct in, and the bloat in and of, government, especially Washington, and of the non-populist people who support and seek more such grossness.
This short, genuinely populist movement, never limited to the activists, was similar to the broader longstanding desire of so many for reform, notably fiscal reform, especially spending reform.
As Obama and Congress misbehaved starting in 2009, the authentic popular resentment grew. Even other, conservative parties became encouraged by popular resentment. Confusion and dishonesty by the left was elevated as a consequence.
The farther left has been often evil about Tea Party and sk many other ordinary people. It goes beyond the typical reaction to the majority, that can be written off to typical adversarial stuff from error and an inferiority complex. It has been more vicious this time, maybe allied (the real alliance: you’re welcome) with the idiocy about Obama before, and silly disillusionment now. There is still the surrogate for the vast majority for these left losers to kick.
Opposition has been also laughable at times, such as the farther left earlier false equivalent, the Coffee Party.
The Occupiers, meanwhile, are fringe extreme left members, almost all, the opposite of populism and the mainstream majority, unlike the Tea Party so many of the Occupiers no doubt hate.
Most are the typical anti-G8 crowd. The only stupid populist claim is if these kids are mainly American. They are extremist fringe kids. Older people? The early photo of Susan Sarandon says most. I can say that most older people are the types going with the kids to the 2000s “anti-war” rallies…the extreme part of the lower twenties per cent who say they’re liberal. Anti-G8 90%+ and anti-war, that’s Yue Occupiers. They are no movement, have far left, not popular, support, unlike the mainstream majority with the short, truly populist Tea Party. Occupy is extremist fringe.
The logical alliance for Occupy
if a claim is sought is with their closest European members of their fringe family, the crazy rioters in Greece where long needed reform and eventual austerity are hated crazily, too. They’re nothing like the Tea Party of 2008-2010 or the rest of us.
There you go again, mixing apples and oranges. Yes, they are both fruits and have seeds, but unless you put then in a Sangria (with some orange chunks) they are completely different.
OWS, liberal Dems, TPer, conservative Reps.
What’s so complicated, these aren’t jelly beans?
Good grief, after reading some of these comments, it’s hard to imagine the populace at large has much of a handle on what’s really going on or who is responsible for it, although I think Cannonshop and slamfu are on the right track. One thing is certain, most citizens in this country are being taken to the cleaners – regardless of who they think deserves the blame. Of course much of that blame falls directly on the voters for allowing themselves to be conned into tribalism.
Since davidsummers isn’t here at the moment, allow me to put in a plug for one of his favorite (utimately sensible) themes: Instant Runoff Voting.
Duck, don’t forget the cosmic, super-industrial strength blender.
The other problem of course is that the Tea Party movement as it currently exists is overwhelmingly dominated by social conservatives and is basically just very conservative Republicans. While that may not have been true in its earliest days it certainly is now.
CS-
Compromise is fine, Democrats have been doing it already, but there is no more room to compromise. Republicans, with their blind intransigent behavior, have forced the president, whom is morally obligated to help these desperate people, to acquiesce to immoral Tea party demands. Entitlements for Social Security, Medicare, school programs, etc.. are bare bone now. It is inhumane to allow people whom are barely surviving to starve while others making more than $250,000 a year get away without paying a very affordable increase in tax.
I’ve seen people starving to death on mass, many years of it. If it is allowed to happen in this country, the richest on earth, simply because of greed, this country has no moral right to exist. So wave that flag up your arse “Cannonshop”.
Agree with Jim S, for the most part the Tea Party has become dominated by social conservatives. Since the OWS likely is dominated by social liberals (and with time that may well become its public persona), the two will probably never see eye-to-eye.
Further, I’m guessing in general the OWS takes the traditional liberal approach of seeing the government as the solution and not the problem.
Allen, switch “Conservative” and “Liberal” in your diatribe, and you get the same line the side you oppose is using.
Spend some time, go visit Redstate or Pajamas Media sometime, it’s the same worn out rhetoric with the labels changed.
It’s the two-man Con, and lots of people on BOTH sides of the aisle have bought into it-two people, pretending not to know and/or trust each other, convince the Mark (that’s us) to buy into a particular load of B.S.-whether it’s tricking a guy into buying a $150 Violin for eight grand, or tricking we-the-people into surrendering our judgement, rights, freedoms, and finances, it’s the same game, and the only loser is US.
CS, is correct……………
CS-
No. There are two sides. The capitalist evil side, that says their way is the way because they have found a way to take more than their share from the rest of us….and US. The Capitalist side does nothing to address the nation’s problems. Problems they don’t have. Problems they buy their way out of with money they unjustly took from US. A methodology that does not pay, or share, a fair amount with those whom are supposedly their partners, but rather enslaves a population to a national abeyance. The Capitalists use their greed skills to make null and void freedom. They ARE the enemy of man….and…of God.
Duck is incorrect….and plucked.
Pluck you too (couldn’t resist)………
I have to say, some of the comments above miss my point when I wrote that the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are “natural allies.” This doesn’t mean they agree on everything. Or even on most things. That one group isn’t very conservative and the other very liberal. But so what?
During WWII the U.S. and England were allied to the Soviet Union. Leaders of the U.S. and England detested communism, and Joe Stalin didn’t much like our system of government. Yet they allied against Germany because Germany was the most immediate threat to the basic existence of all the allies.
The populist left and the populist right in this country today share the notion that Wall Street and Washington are fused in a way that works against the well-being of the country generally. They can ally themselves to combat this fusion. That accomplished, we can then move on to arguing over other less pressing issues.
And in passing…Some of the comments above used nasty and unwarranted terms to describe either the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Streeters. Disagreeing does not mean you hate the other party. And trust me on this — the reason such hateful language and such strong feelings are often expressed is because some vested interest is jerking the strings to keep people who should work together from doing so…
Your point is a good one, Michael. I just don’t see the two groups working together. Even though it might be in their best interests their other beliefs are too divergent.
Libertarians have a lot in common with both groups. I just met my first OWS (okay, Occupy Indiana) people this weekend, and it was a very pleasant, if brief, conversation. It didn’t hurt that we were both programmers. In case you missed that, a core TPer and a core OWS (OI) person can agree quite well.