Don’t be an asshole: arguments for & against Occupy Wall Street

In the media, in conversations, on social networking sites, there’s nothing worse than irrational people passionately spewing their irrational nonsense. Especially with Occupy Wall Street. On both sides.

Before I proceed, I will tell you that I generally support  Occupy Wall Street and like the issues brought up by the intelligent members of the movement. But every time I hear someone scream “we are the 99 percent” it reinforces my desire to disaffiliate with groups that derive power from numbers. If you said “I am similar to 99 percent of the population in terms of income,” i would be less annoyed.

I’ll support people looking to end corruption. I’ll support people looking out for the least well-off in our country. I’ll support anybody’s right to nonviolently protest anything. But I don’t want to be apart of the group.

In this post, I will analyze some (not all) arguments on both sides of the Occupy Wall Street movement and address issues that I feel are keeping the two sides apart.

Pro-Occupy Wall Street Arguments

“Companies are bad, capitalism is inherently evil”

This argument has been a focal point for many in the OWS crowd and is perhaps the most divisive between the protesters and people who strongly disagree. I think OWS is hurting their ability to reach an even more widespread following by deciding that capitalism is a black or white issue when really there are many shades of gray.

There really is a difference between scumbag bankers who take billions in federal bailout money after setting up a system in which they raked in record profits off failed mortgages of the middle-class and working poor, and companies that don’t rely on manipulation, but rather providing a product or service that is symbiotic to all parties involved in the transaction. There really are companies that are good. There really are companies who only benefit from having consumers satisfied with their purchases (unlike Citigroup, for example).

If people in OWS don’t express that there are some companies that are good – or at least not evil – then it only makes them look like hypocrites to people on the fence about the protests when they see people in OWS use their iPhones, eat in restaurants, or wear clothing they didn’t sew themselves.

You're not helping

They would do a much better job gaining support if the most radical anti-capitalists of the OWS protesters realized that money isn’t inherently evil, but how some corporations choose to pursue money is. Focus on them, not all.

This also applies for attitudes towards people with money: the one percent. Stop chanting “we are the 99 percent” in order rally the masses to vilify people who make over  a half-million dollars and using everybody with money as the scapegoat to societies problems. Instead, focus on what the “one percent” did to make their money: did they do it ethically? did they do it honestly? Understand that not everybody with money is shitty. a lot are, but not all. Focus on the shitty ones.

Instead of the OWS protesters angrily chanting “we are the 99 percent!” how about yelling “we aren’t the people who benefited from corporate tax loopholes and unethical business practices!”

It’s wordy, but worth a shot.

Anti-Occupy Wall Street arguments

“Hey freeloading hippies: it’s the American dream. Get a job and stop complaining”

I feel that many of the people against the Occupy Wall Street protests have only really looked at the surface level of the movement; much of their distaste for the protesters is essentially symbolic and on an unconscious level from an ingrained desire to be really rich; they identify with Wall Street because they have dreamed about becoming ridiculously wealthy since they were a kid and think that it will come one day. I call it symbolic because they seem to hate who the protesters are, rather than the problems with the system that (smartest of the) OWS addresses.

If a birkenstock-wearing hippy held this chart on a sign, they would be more upset about seeing a hippy

If they are conservative and view OWS as a liberal movement, they will be subconsciously inclined to disagree with what they are saying. If they view law enforcement as infallible and see that the NYPD and OWS are clashing, they will be inclined to view OWS as wrong, no matter what. If the protesters look so different from them (dirty, smelly, dreadlocks), then their desires must be different.

It’s strange when the working-poor – the people working hard for long hours just to get by – don’t understand the nature of the protests and have somehow been convinced to oppose the protest. Somebody I follow on twitter, for example, posted this:

I have 3 jobs 3!!! People need to get off the fucking streets and get a job #fuckoccupywallstreet#manthefuckup

This is a common sentiment among anti-OWS people. How do they not realize that Wall Street is not on their side? How are they not upset that there is a growing disparity between the income of the poor and middle class and the income of the richest of people who use corrupt practices for unchecked wealth? How do they relate more to hedge fund managers, bankers, CEOs, predatory lenders at Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Merrill Lynch, than the people raising awareness about those corporations systematically manipulating the financial well-being of the least well-off in this country? Do they not realize if these people would take the money out of your wallet and punch you in the nose if they could?

Yes, a lot of the protesters are obnoxious. Yes, you probably wouldn’t want to hang out with those people. Yes, they rarely shower and wear tight jeans and some have ironic mustaches. They might be extremely annoying, but they generally share values as the poor and middle-class people who oppose them.

Part of it, I think, comes from people who have been told of the “American Dream” all of their life but fail to think deeper about it’s meaning. If you work hard, eventually you’ll become rich; that’s all that’s to it. If people are rich, they must have done something to deserve it, they must have worked harder than everybody, pulled them self up by their proverbial “bootstraps,” and that should be respected. To me, the American dream isn’t Wall Street firms “stuffing a portfolio with risky mortgage-related investments, sell it to unsuspecting customers and bet against it.” The American dream isn’t mortgage fraud. The American dream isn’t Wall Street funding “risky loans as a tradeoff for the higher fees and interest rates they could charge” (meaning “the more loans these companies sold, the higher the bonuses that everyone from account executives to corporate officers received”).

If that’s your definition of the American dream, you’re an asshole. If that’s your  definition of earning your income, you’re a pretty shitty person. Stop being shitty.

It’s especially annoying when I hear people mimicking pundits – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter – using the same key phrases and themes that these people disseminate daily on their extremely popular radio and TV shows: protesters are freeloaders. protesters are stupid. protesters shouldn’t be listened to. protesters stand opposed to everything great about America. Let’s take a look at these people; let’s see who’s interests they have in mind:

• Rush Limbaugh: signed a $400 million contract with Clear Channel, a publicly traded company with billions in revenue every year.
• Glenn Beck: made $40 million in 2010 and could make $100 million this year.
• Sean Hannity: signed a 5-year $100 million radio contract in 2008.

I’m not criticizing Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity for making money. I’m just pointing out that they make millions upon millions of dollars every year from companies that make billions upon billions every year on Wall Street.

If I was paid $100 million by Marlboro, you could be damn sure I’d do everything in my power to convince people that cigarettes are healthy. You could be damn sure I’d try to convince the public that people who oppose tobacco are crazy and their arguments aren’t legitimate. I would find the dumbest anti-tobacco people and convince the public that they are a true representation of their group.

That is why so many critics are quick to point out the clowns of the OWS (they are there, no denying it), the worst of the OWS, the dumbest of the OWS, and fail to show the reasonable, rational people who have thought out ideas and read gripes about the system. There are positive mentions of protesters in many media outlets, but I’ve found that many of the people so adamantly opposed to the movement seek out those pundits that already agree with their world view. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.

They’ll complain about how the protesters are freeloaders because they pay little, if any, taxes while glossing over the fact that the only reason they don’t pay taxes is because they don’t make money; like poverty without taxes is easier than their $100 million contract with taxes. They get their listeners, most of whom don’t make significant money, to turn against the poor and to idolize bankers who would fuck them over in a second if they had a chance.

Summary of arguments/quick points

Pro-Occupy Wall Street

• Stop being clowns. Stop wearing silly hats and costumes. put the bongos away. You’re making people who would be supportive of your movement go the other way.
• Stop looking at things in black and white way. There are gray areas.
• Stop vilifying people solely for having money, and focus your signs and messages on people who unethically made money off manipulating the system that fucks over the middle class and poor.
• Some corporations aren’t shitty. Some profit off making great products / providing great services in a mutually agreed upon and beneficial manner.

Anti-Occupy Wall Street

• Look beyond the hippies. They look like idiots but they have better intentions for the country than the people who would give you a mortgage that they know you couldn’t pay back, bet against you paying it back, and then profit off you being miserable.
• Look into the motives of the pundits looking to paint the protesters as crazy people with illegitimate points. Odds are, they don’t have you in mind.
• The rich vilifying the poor because they don’t pay taxes is something only assholes would agree with. It’s like healthy people vilifying the crippled because of the sweet parking spaces and elevator privileges.
• The American dream is not to fuck people over and get rich at any cost.
• Don’t be an asshole.