The Daily Show’s video of the class divisions at Occupy Wall Street was delectable. See it here http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/occupy-wall-street-jon-stewart-zuccotti-park-263116.
An open, horizontal, leaderless process soon divided into a ghetto and an upper class enclave.
The rich kids were feeling guilty because of their un-earned success, while the poor kids were feeling betrayed by the American Dream.
The rich kids are mimicking their Grandmas and Grandpas who Occupied Woodstock and Kent State. Our condescending occupiers don’t understand why they have everything while others have nothing. I find it a hopeful sign because it’s not about entitlement; it’s embarrassment about entitlement. They still understand the American Ethos is about working hard to earn success and they are an aberration from it. Their teachers, even if they didn’t mean to, somehow inculcated the definitive American value by decrying the failures of the American system.
The ghetto dwellers are the kids who have worked hard and are failing to gain traction economically. Feeling betrayed by their teachers because they are working hard and yet nothing that should happen is happening, they rebel against the current injustices.
I’m hopeful because eventually Life will happen to both of these groups. The condescending ones will be slapped around by life like everyone is slapped around by life. They are, like all young people, sure that their life will go on in the same trajectory as it is right now. But it won’t. Life catches up with everyone eventually. They will have to struggle, they just don’t know it yet.
The ghetto dwellers need to keep working, eventually life will catch up with them too. The secret to gaining traction in the US economy is to get a job and save more than you spend.
Apart from all the trappings of hippie, anti-establishment rhetoric, the ghetto dwellers, condescending occupiers, and the Tea Party all have the same basic values … working hard should mean something and if someone fails there should be consequences. Because they are young, they have not experienced the great equalizer: the wheel of time. In the US, there is high mobility between low and high economic classes over time. Unfortunately for the occupiers some of them may have done the one thing to prevent them from moving upward by getting a criminal record.
I am sure that just like their Grandmas and Grandpas of the worst generation they will all eventually settle down, get married and work out their own compromise with the American Ethos.
