Forum Post: Hey TROLLS! Show me what America looks like!

This Is What America Looks Like

by: William Rivers Pitt

Let's get a few things straight right from the jump.

First of all, despite all the gleeful obituaries that have been appearing across the scabrous landscape of the "mainstream" news media, the Occupy movement is not, in fact, over. Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have sent in cops like thieves in the night to dispossess peaceful protesters and destroy books in New York City, but there are hundreds of Occupy camps still standing from one side of this nation to the other. As for the seedcorn New York protest, well...if you're one who opposes what they've been doing, you can cross your fingers and toes to your heart's delight in the hope that matters are settled in the Big Apple, but you best be prepared for disappointment, because those people have set their caps to accomplish what they endeavored to do back in September, and they are far, far more organized and determined than people like you seem capable of apprehending.

A setback like this only adds fuel to the fire. We're talking about people who are so committed to the ideals of the Occupy movement that they abandoned the soft conveniences of modern existence - walls, a roof, a bed, plumbing, locks on the doors and the soothing babble of cable TV - to sleep in a park surrounded by strangers for almost two months. Raise your hand if you've ever gone camping for two full months, anywhere. It has been hot, it has been cold, it has rained, it has snowed, and, oh yeah, there was the ever-present threat of catching a billy club over the head or a face full of NYPD mace for their trouble. You think they're going away after enduring all that?

Ha.

Second, I'm going to slap the next person who comes out with the pat line, "They don't have a message! They need a message! They're nothing without a message!" Um, cluebag, they are the message. The Occupy movement has created modern-day Hoovervilles from sea to shining sea to point out the simple fact that things have gone badly wrong in these United States, that the American Dream of even minimal upward mobility and the promise of a better future for our children were sold for pennies on the dollar to the bastards and whores who have perverted this democracy past the point of recognition. It's a fantastic bit of irony, a towering example of cognitive dissonance, that the same people who attack the Occupy movement are also the ones packing guns to Tea Party protests because they think the country is headed in the wrong direction. What in the name of Jesus H. Christ do they think the right direction is? 99% of us are getting screwed, and the Occupy movement has been the most eloquent firebreak against that heedless, moneygrubbing trend.

I'll make it simple: Wall Street has occupied American politics and stolen America's bright future in an orgy of graft and theft, so America has occupied Wall Street - along with every Main Street in every city and town you can think of - in order to try and set things right. Got it? It is pretty simple, folks. Two plus two does, in fact, equal four. The only reasons people refuse to see this thing, simply, for what it is come down to willful stupidity, stubborn partisanship, money, or a combination of the three.

Third, anyone who claims that the Occupy movement has not accomplished anything can kiss my whole entire ass. The upward mobility of our hard-earned money into the coffers of the rich and powerful has been going on since the disaster known as the "Reagan Revolution." The politicians bought by the cash-fat elite have appointed judges to every level of the state and federal judicial systems, and the serial corporate-favoring rulings handed down by these robed criminals have given this grand theft the imprimatur of legality, but it ain't legal, and it ain't right. One look at the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision, and the after-affects of same, can tell you that. Hell, Mitt Romney actually got up with his bare face hanging out the other day to make the very modern American argument that corporations are, in fact, people...non-existent multi-billionaire people protected from even the most minimal legal oversight or scrutiny, to be sure, but people all the same.

Is that the country you want to live in? I don't, and neither do the Occupy protesters, and what they have accomplished over these last two months is to finally, finally, finally draw major national attention to the deranged way we go about things here in America. In the immortal words of a fantastic Occupy protest sign, "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." For the first time in modern memory, people in America, along with their elected representatives and the "mainstream" media that covers it all, have had their noses rubbed in the awful yawning gap between the Haves and the Have Nots, and the manner in which this doomed system of thievery-as-governance actually operates.

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http://www.truth-out.org/what-america-looks/1321471600

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I'd say this thread was a wild success.