Clueless in Lower Manhattan

Wending my way north after viewing the new 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan a couple of weeks ago I had to pass by Zuccotti Park and the then relatively new ragtag army of Occupy Wall Street.  Frankly, I didn't take them seriously.  Their signs and chants were puerile and idiotic. "People Not Profits", "End Corporate Personhood", and "Unf**k the World" (huh??)   were my particular favorites. Virtually all were bereft of anything resembling linear thought or common sense and I dismissed them as the product of  freeloading nitwits who were there primarily to score dope, members of the opposite sex,  or perhaps both provided they were convenient and free.  Since returning to the West coast I have watched as this brand of mindless lunacy  grew larger and spread to more cities however nothing has changed my mind about the character of the participants.  "Useful idiots" I believe was how Marx referred to these folks, the saddest of whom are the grey haired re-treads from the sixties and seventies who STILL don't get it.

Someone once said--and I would give them credit if I knew who they were---"There are three kinds of people in the world:  :  those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, AND those who say, "WHAT HAPPENED???"

Clearly what we have with the OWS crew is a whole lot of the "What Happened?" troops who feel they have somehow been screwed out of goodies to which they are entitled as American citizens.  They, of course, are wrong.  The only thing that an American citizen is entitled to is the chance to succeed or fail at whatever it is they choose to attempt.  Success requires work.  There is nothing in our Constitution about a guaranteed job, income, home, car or standard of living.  If you don't understand that, blame your parents and teachers and then GET OVER IT!  In spite of what you may have heard life isn't fair and never has been.

It is ironic to watch as these misguided demonstrators bitch and holler about Wall Street and the big banks.  If blame were really the name of the game, they would pack their sleeping bags and banjos and head for Washington, D.C.  The current occupant of the White House has taken more money from the Wall Street bigwigs than any other politician in history.  The same goes for the gang of cheerleaders in congress who have pledged their fealty to the protesters.

The housing mess??  The sub-prime mortgage disaster was Bill Clinton's fault.  In 1995 President Clinton changed the Community Reinvestment Act to enable ACORN to run a politically correct extortion campaign against mortgage lenders, compelling them by force of law to make unsound (sub-prime) loans to poor minorities who never stood a chance of repaying them.  This got Clinton votes and placed the taxpayers in a no win jackpot.  George W. Bush continued the same cynical vote getting scam.   Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and their disingenuous cohorts in congress cooked the books and  milked this fraud for what they thought was their share of  the votes of the uninformed.  The banks, forced to make loans they knew weren't viable,  looked for ways to turn a profit for their stockholders.    Exotic packages of these horrible loans were sold in secondary markets as they attempted to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility.   We all know how that worked out.  (By the way, I guess Chris Dodd must have forgotten that he promised to make public the details of his sweetheart home loan from one of the biggest offenders, Countrywide Mortgage.  Must have slipped his mind when he decided to head for a retirement hideout instead of seeking another free ride in congress.)

It used to be that most everybody who was literate read a daily newspaper.  In addition they caught a couple of radio newscasts during the work day and watched a nightly news round-up on television in the early or late evening.  In short, they knew what was going on around them.  No more.  Sadly, today we have a preponderance of younger people who have little or no curiosity about what is going on and take pride in telling you that they read no newspapers, neither listen to or watch any broadcast news and actually brag about getting their "take" on what's happening from the Internet or Comedy Central.  Didn't H.G. Wells predict all of this in his book, The Time Machine? 

What we seem to have in this Occupy Wall Street phenomenon is a mob of largely young ill informed unfocused nincompoops who are wildly indignant about, well, nearly everything.  They feel as if they are owed something from so called "rich guys" and they are going to have a hissy fit until they get it, though they aren't quite sure what "IT" is.  For them, I fear, there is no hope.  They will become lifetime members of the "What Happened" club and are probably destined to feel cheated for the rest of their lives.

And then there are those who give me hope.  Look at this sign put together by a young lady who obviously has been blessed with an abundance of common sense and probably has equally enlightened parents.  I love the sign!  She knows that only she controls her future and that even if all the banks in the country were taken over by the government and the bankers sent to jail it would still be up to her to succeed or fail.   She, and those like her, will make things happen while the OWS crowd remains dazed, confused and most assuredly BROKE as they perpetually asked, "WHAT HAPPENED?"

My money is on this kid!