Before I explore the American implications of these protests let me just say I am fully aware this has now become a global movement. Not surprising given that the roots go from Greece to Spain to Egypt to Madagascar (seriously). Maybe it is not even American at all; America is just the latest object the waves of change have crashed against after Mohamed Bouazizi sowed the whirlwind by dousing himself in gasoline to light a fire for justice in Tunisia. Then again much of the fuel that turned one epic act of defiance into a revolution came from Wikileaks publishing secret U.S state department cables on Tunisia's mafia style government - cables allegedly submitted by an American solider, Bradley Manning. So many heroes exist that have contributed to the world waking from its corporate coma, too many to count let alone celebrate, then again what does it matter what you say about people?
In any case, and accepting all exceptions, I believe Occupy Wall Street is America's last chance at avoiding violent civil unrest and a genuine social collapse. The last chance for constructively engaging a population and a people thoroughly disgusted with their institutions and deeply anxious about their future.
(please continue)
America means what?
What America stands for, its essential values, are roughly defined and perhaps most eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
With contradictions from the start, this basic framework and set of first principles would evolve into a national ethos of opportunity and progress and would later be coined by James Truslow Adams as the American Dream:
...that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
Is this the America of today? No. Absolutely not. Not in the slightest.
In fact, the America of today to a large degree stands in direct opposition to its founding principles and cultural values like the American Dream.
What went wrong?
The problems we face today are multifaceted and it would be extremely dishonest to say mono-causal vis a vis the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector or what is euphemistically called "Wall Street." Though unchecked Wall Street power is by far the most fiercely urgent problem facing the country and world and must be dealt with in order to prevent utter collapse, it is both a cause and a symptom of a larger disease within the nation.
Many if not most of America's problems, including the Bailoutgarchs, are a result of a comprehensively dysfunctional and corrupt political system. One that has failed even the most basic tests of governance let alone the high standards set by the Declaration of Independence and subsequent Constitution. It is a failed system.
There are three interdependent conflicts within the American political system that ensure continued failure.
1. A Failed Two-Party System
The founders of the country and engineers of the Constitution, were opposed to political parties. They believed it would create factions and unnecessary conflict in the political process which, being individualistic, would preclude the necessity of political groups or parties. In any case, the role of parties is not formally defined or recognized within the founding documents nor has America since developed legal standards or practices for political parties that fit common standards of behavior and organizational form around the world - dues, binding leadership power in the party, voting for parties rather individual candidates etc - for just that reason.
This policy choice quickly blew up in the founders' faces. In an early and almost fatal test Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had a showdown in the election for U.S President and while parties had existed previously to the conflict, the factionalism and partisanship that not having official parties was supposed to prevent emerged with a vengeance. While disaster was averted in that instance, less than a hundred years after the founding of the nation factionalism and partisanship would help light the fuse that almost annihilated the country itself in the American Civil War. Americans love to talk about the wisdom of the founders and the wonders of federalism, they tend to gloss over the fact that those same people and policies almost destroyed the country they founded.
Today the country still lives with this crippling political structure and now has, essentially, two incumbent parties that are impossible to dislodge. A duopoly that crushes any real opposition be it left or right. The problem with any duopoly is the same one Americans face at the polls - limited choices.
It is possible the Republicans will lose the house of representatives in 2012 - is that due to the votes they have taken? Probably not, they did not gain the majority from the votes they took either. In fact, the most pressing issues of the 2010 campaign were based around the economy, jobs, Wall Street reform - issues they had no real agenda or track record on. The problem, the trap, the near futility for the voters is that with limited choices systemic unhappiness expressed at the ballot box will just empower the other party in the duopoly, regardless of their respective positions and actions. This means the minority party does not have to have a real agenda or record of achievement just merely wait for the majority party to screw up or for external circumstances to be extremely unfavorable and voila, back in power. The duopolistic Two-Party System is an incentive for bad government.
2. Money
Nothing has proven to be more determinative of outcomes in American politics than money. Often called the mother's milk of politics, money makes or breaks candidates, legislation and judicial rulings. It has invaded every aspect of American government on every level of American government; federal, state, local. Money makes the difference.
What is the consequence of this? Elections have become auctions, they lack the validity, credibility and legitimacy required for a democratic society. The outcomes are predetermined and in the event of an upset, snap your fingers and you will see the challenger become the incumbent and seek the armor of money.
And of course despite massive misdirections, everyone in the country understands there is no such thing as something for nothing. Especially when you consider who is donating the majority of the money - Corporate America. Corporate America isn't giving money for their health or the health of society they are doing it in exchange for, or at the very least in hopes of, consideration by public officials. Most democratic countries have banned this practice, also known as bribery.
The use of money in the dysfunctional Two-Party system has turned the American economy from a vigorous and dynamic force for innovation into a den of crony capitalists. Where prosperity is no longer a function of ingenuity or hard work but chiseling and backslapping. No longer an economy built on what you know but who you know - crony capitalism. It has also become in essence a plutonomy, as Citigroup suggested where the majority of high income jobs go to serve the rich either for business or entertainment.
No trend has been more conducive to this corruption or more empowered in response to wealth inequality than the rise of Wall Street or the financialization of the American economy. A sector that by definition creates no value has gained power in the marketplace and polling place by siphoning off capital through useless and exploitative transactions and using their ill-gotten gains for lobbying and campaign contributions. Bankster: a combination of the word banker and gangster is a perfect description.
As Wall Street's power and influence has increased so has wealth inequality.
This trend is in no way surprising. Wall Street creates nothing, it lives off the buying and selling of others. As one commenter said in a landmark piece by the New Yorker "What Good is Wall Street?":
Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain’s top financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has described much of what happens on Wall Street and in other financial centers as “socially useless activity”—a comment that suggests it could be eliminated without doing any damage to the economy.
Such useless activity generates the cash to bribe the politicians to deregulate for more risk so the banks can generate more cash to bribe more politicians to deregulate for more risk, until...
Oh, I wonder how that happened?
3. Endless Empire
At the end of World War II America found itself in a new and initially awkward position. The only Western Power in the world still standing strong. Germany, England, France and even Russia/The Soviet Union had been brutalized and crippled by the World War II experience. The East was also in shambles with Japan still radiating while China and the rest picked up the pieces.
Then came the Cold War. A nuclear standoff between the now dominant powers or empires in the world; the United States and the Soviet Union. Each had consolidated power in their respective spheres and each pursued expansion but due to the invention of atomic weapons and the sheer magnitude of the struggle, war or at least outright war was considered too calamitous, especially with Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D) as the standing paradigm. So the Cold War would be an indirect war waged through intelligence operations and proxies (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, etc.).
In order to protect the country from the perceived existential threat of Communism and the Soviet Union, President Truman and advisors in the American political establishment devised the National Security State. Brought chiefly into existence by the National Security Act of 1947:
The Act merged the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment, headed by the Secretary of Defense. It was also responsible for the creation of a Department of the Air Force separate from the existing Army Air Forces.
Aside from the military reorganization, the act established the National Security Council, a central place of coordination for national security policy in the executive branch, and the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S.'s first peacetime intelligence agency.
This quiet revolution contradicted America's most basic values and principles and actually stands in direct and open opposition to George Washington's farewell address to the country:
While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
A mere 14 years after the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947, another U.S President, this one also a famous general, left a dire warning for the American people as he left:
The Cold War would end in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the threat of Communism considerably diminished throughout the world. Despite the end of the Cold War the National Security State was not abolished or dissipated into normal defense functions.
Ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union the United States would be attacked on 9/11 by, according to the official report, former U.S Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents and operatives who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Mujihadeen, later to be renamed Al-Qaeda, received; training, weapons and support from the American National Security establishment. Despite this perhaps being the greatest example of blowback in American history, (which for a reasonable people might have lead to a reexamining of foreign policy), the policy response to 9/11 by the Two-Party System was a massive increase in power and resources for the National Security State.
Freedoms that had survived the National Security State until 2001 would be removed by the PATRIOT Act effectively ending privacy and freedom from government surveillance for all citizens - at any time, for any reason, American citizens may be investigated as long as a government official can type the word terrorism on a key board. Washington and Eisenhower's warnings had come true with the price of overgrown military establishments or the military-industrial complex being liberty itself.
America is no longer the land of the free.
Occupy Wall Street: America's Last Chance
As anyone can see, and hopefully this piece has made it clearer, America faces serious challenges. Challenges that a cursory reading of history will tell you have brought down other powerful nations. Our economy and political system are fundamentally broken.
So what is Occupy Wall Street?
Occupy Wall Street is a peaceful movement attempting to remedy these problems constructively. I am amazed at how the media and political class is confused by this movement. "What's this about?" ... it's called Occupy Wall Street, it's about Wall Street's conduct (is that not clear?). Not to mention one of the key "demands" if we must use that word was said from day one, removing money from politics. And of course, others have joined to give their voices on other issues and we are all the better for it.
But Occupy Wall Street is more than any list of demands could be. It's teaching, or really, reminding America what democracy is. And during a time of intense existential crisis it's always useful to remember where you came from. America has had great democratic traditions, it's time to remember who we are.
What seems to also be lost on the establishment is the alternative to finally addressing the people's grievances peacefully - civil unrest, criminality, and violence. There is simply no way a people, let alone the American people, are going to accept poverty in order to prop up Banksters. It's a country of 300 million people and 200 million privately owned firearms - it's simply not realistic to assume 13,000 families can run the place like a debt plantation. If you think that is possible you just don't know America. The status quo right now is a nightmare for the average American and its perceived continuity is an elite wet dream because it leaves the vast majority of the American people with nothing, and when you have nothing you have nothing to lose. People's faith and trust in the American Dream is at stake, if that is lost the toleration for even mild wealth inequality will precipitously evaporate and peaceful protesters in a park will be the least of the establishment's problems.
Occupy Wall Street is attempting something that I and many other people who have worked inside and outside of the political establishment have not seen for some time. A social movement, not a campaign.
I don't know if it will work given the enormity of the country's problems. I just know it is surely our last chance before we lose what we have left of something great.