Last night my wife and I had a conversation about the Occupy people. Just out of the blue, she said "I'm tired of hearing about the Occupy people". Alarm bells went off in my head as my debating mechanisms sprung into action, readying my arsenal of points and counterpoints, facts and frames. I wondered, "what MSM b.s. has she heard?" Find out after the fold.
From that one comment, it might sound like my wife is a statistic--- yet another victim of the malicious, seditious right-wing noise machine. But I know my wife well enough not to sell her short; she is no sucker for propaganda. She can smell your bullshit long before she hears it come out of your mouth. Besides, she has a liberal's moral outlook. She understands fairness and justice, and she never lacks for empathy (unless you're her enemy, then you better watch out!). She understands that government should step in to repair failures of the market to do what's right. Of course, she is French, and even though she leans a little right on the French spectrum, we live in Texas, where she's basically deep in the heart of Commie-land.
So what's up with her comment? I had to find out.
I doubted my wife was much of a one-percenter, given her working-class upbringing and liberal moral ethics, but in case she had a conservative point in her head (and not desirous of a shouting match with an expert at shouting matches!) I merely asked her, "What for?"
Also, my debating style with conservatives, or those who parrot conservative talking points, is the Socratic slow play--- keep my cool, save the righteous indignation, and ask seemingly innocuous questions that undermine the confidence of my interlocutor in their ridiculous beliefs, sowing the seeds of future discord rather than lunging for the jugular. Most beliefs seem awesome when we tell them to ourselves in our heads, but sound less so when we say them out loud to others. Conservative ones especially. That's why I asked an open question.
"What are they even out there for?", she replied.
This question, I was ready for: "They're mad because the game is rigged for us to lose. The economy is growing, but just for the rich."
Then she went on a mini-rant: "People are out there who got Ph.D's and published articles and they can't get jobs," she noted, "and they took loans up the butt 'cause American universities are overrated and overpriced, and now they can't get a job."
Wait, was she slow playing me instead? Either way, I was relieved; she stands with the 99%. I added, "And you can't get rid of a student loan. You're stuck with it."
She asked me, "What are these people [the Occupiers] supposed to do, then?"
So I pressed on: "Well, the Republicans' solution is to just tell them to get a job flipping burgers. But two whole generations have been raised to go to college and study hard and get a degree so we wouldn't have to flip burgers. We go out and do all that, and now they tell us to flip burgers? Fuck that! and fuck them!"
But then she found the way to express to her original point, "People shouldn't have to go out and protest about this. If we had a free press, nobody would have to protest about this." "
"Well, we realize the game is rigged," I replied.
"Yeah, but the press just have rich bosses and they don't want to get fired, so they don't say anything."
To add to her point, I told her the story of how Phil Donahue got canned by MSNBC for criticizing the Iraq War, despite hosting their highest rated show. (This required explaining who he is, so I'll skip the quotes.)
The conversation came around to possible solutions.
"Jobs," she said, "but we can't just make jobs for people right away."
"Actually, the government can do that. But the Republicans will all vote against it. Unfortunately, and they've said this out loud--- they're purposefully tanking the economy so Obama loses. Even though they don't have any plans to fix things if they win."
Nothing else to say about the Republicans, so she went back to the press. "It's stupid that people even have to go to the streets for people to hear about this. The press should have told us a long time ago."
And to that, I had nothing else to add. So we went on with our evening. Sadly we did not break out into a passionate love-making session, what with our toddler and her parents padding and plodding around our place. But it was good to know we are both 99-percenters, and it's always nice to be reminded that the person you chose to spend your life with is morally good, whip-smart, and articulate enough in a foreign language to discuss this sort of thing.
Hilarious postscript: I later found out what brought this up--- she heard on NPR yesterday a report describing the "two-month anniversary" of OWS. This is a pet peeve of both of ours, the use of anniversary to refer to the celebration of any duration of time, not just years, as its etymology suggests. She was like, "If every month gets its own anniversary, we'd be in 26151 AD." I love that gal.