When this whole  Days of Rage/ Occupy Wall Street/ Occupy Any Random Street movement got started, I didn’t want to write about it.  Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty to be said.  I just think that it was a mistake, from the beginning, to give this movement so much attention.  Yes, I get that there are some very powerful and anti-capitalists behind these demonstrations, but the protesters themselves are not worthy of any coverage.  They are aimless and ignorant.  They have no concrete goals and their understanding of basic economic and political structures is jaw-droppingly juvenile and ill-informed.  On their own, they could no more start true a political revolution than they could sprout wings and fly.  In fact, I think that’s why they received such a disproportionate amount of coverage early on.  The left-wing of American media recognized that this movement was dead in the water if they didn’t do some serious spin on the matter.  And so the press attempted to craft an image of the protests, one that isn’t even remotely similar to the actuality  of them, in order to get some momentum behind it. They want us to believe that these assemblies of dirty, lazy, spoiled, brats and elderly hippies, whose only goal is to “eat the rich,” is in fact a coming together of everyday working class folks who only want a kinder and sunnier America.  They have taken a movement that couldn’t have possibly gained any serious ground on its own and so dramatically changed the perception of it, that many people who truly are “everyday working class folks” find themselves feeling sympathetic towards the demonstrators.  And that is the point where the protests became a  legitimate threat.  The moment when people started to believe the media-crafted image of the movement instead of the reality of it.

And that’s why, I think we have to simplify our response to these protests, especially when we are talking to people who don’t follow politics closely.  While it is important to have a well-reasoned counter argument to each of the specific demands of the movement, our first step ought to be discrediting the movement itself.  And it shouldn’t be that difficult considering the fact that only thing that gave the protesters any legitimacy to begin with was the false face created for them by the press.  Instead of indulging foolish discussions like “What have we learned about the need for equality from the Occupy Movement?,” we ought to be exposing this demonstrators for the clowns that they are.  They aren’t “the liberal tea party.”  They aren’t “the face of the middle class.”  They are a collection of useful idiots, the latest tool of anti-capitalists and power-hungry leftists.  And if we want to take this weapon out of the hands of the progressives, then we have to show the protesters for the ridiculous fools that they are.

First, people need to understand that the protesters are nothing like your average American.

• They have a month to kill.  Can you imagine taking a month off from your life to protest something?  No?  Good!  Because if you could, you would be a loser.  Not because you were willing to sacrifice time for a cause, that’s an admirable thing.  But because you have that much free time to begin with.  We’re not talking about people who leave their families to fight a war and defend their country.  We’re not talking about tea partiers who give up a few weekends a year to hold rallies. We’re talking about people who have spent a month standing around yelling about their problems.   If you can give up bathing, abandon all responsibilities,  and reject any semblance of a productive daily routine to hang out with a bunch of people who aren’t exactly sure what they’re protesting,  your normal life was probably just as pathetic. Normal people have obligations like; jobs, families, friends, even laundry.  If you can walk away from all of your daily obligations so easily, it’s pretty safe to assume that people don’t expect much from you anyways.
• They have a very different definition of “down-trodden” than the rest of us do.  When you see these guys interviewed, most of them are just spoiled rich kids.  They come from fairly well-off families and many have an ivy league education.  That’s why they can afford to stew in their own filth for a month at a time.   As far as the ones who really are living in need are concerned, they aren’t doing a whole lot to fix that problem, are they?  If the problem is that they don’t have jobs, perhaps they should be spending this time looking for a job.  I’m no psychic, but I can positively predict that no employer is going to wade through a sea of unwashed stoners, interrupt their drum circle, and offer them “fulfilling careers” which pay “a fair and livable wage.”  It is clear that the poor, destitute Occupiers either don’t need a job or don’t really want one.
• Hey, remember that time when 400 tea party members were arrested at one time during a rally?  Oh wait, that never happened.  But it did happen to Days of Rage protesters in NYC.  Unlike the tea party rallies (where the only arrests made are of union thugs who came to beat up black conservatives and bite people’s fingers off), these demonstrations are filled with illegal behavior and arrests are now the norm.  The protesters aren’t constructing new policies or organizing a strategy to further their ideas.  They’re drinking, using drugs, and having sex in the same filthy streets and parks they’re using as a bathroom.  There have been rape allegations at Occupy Boston, the Oakland protest has disintegrated into all-out riots, and the activists at Occupy Phoenix having been passing around flyers entitled “When is it OK to Shoot a Cop?“.  To call this a “left-wing tea party” is laughable. When was the last time you saw a picture of a tea partier using a police car as a toilet?  One of the most notable characteristics of a tea party is the clean and orderly way they leave the property after the rally.  These protest sites are covered with food wrappers, condoms, liquor bottles, and human waste.  The New York Post described the scene in their neighborhood as “an open sewer with people urinating and defecating in public.”  Speaking about a protester named Dave, the Post went on to say, “Wanted for burglary, the drug-addled fugitive said some of his hard-partying pals clued him in that the protest was a good place to be fed, get wasted and crash,”  he said “I’ve been smoking and drinking in here for eight days now. I need to get some methadone. Every day, I wake up, and I’m f****d up.”
• Not only are the Occupy demonstrations “as good a spot as any to hide”if  you “got warrants,” but they are a great place to score free stuff.“People say they are here for the cause, but the real reason is the free food,” quipped Cameron, 26, of Jersey City.“On my third day, they had smoked salmon with cream cheese. You know how much smoked salmon is a pound? Sixteen dollars. I eat better here than I do with my parents.”    Yep, just like every grassroots movement this one is full of dedicated people who are willing to hang out, eat free gourmet food, accept clothing donations, and set-up a free condom area in the middle of the demonstration.  Because when you really want to make a change in the world, you’ve gotta make time for fine-dining and outdoor sex with strangers.  Especially when you can get others to foot the bill.  And if you really, really want to show how dedicated you are, you should get wealthy and powerful labor unions to pay you to protest other wealthy and powerful people.  That way when people see a crowd of paid protesters eating expensive food and wearing clothes they didn’t pay for, they’ll know you mean business.
• They don’t know what they want.  I mean aside from the fact that they want to “eat the rich.”  What comes after the feasting? Let’s say they succeeded in getting the rich people to “pay their fair share.”  What then?  How are they any better off?  Are they expecting a check for their share of the wealth?  Do they really think that government is going to just give it to them and not spend it?  Or do they want the government to invest it infrastructure, like the roads and bridges President Obama insists we need?  How does that make them any more employed (cause they don’t look like bridge-building physical labor types to me)?  Is there a job they’re trying to get to on some sort of bridgeless island?  They say they want to collapse capitalism, but what do they want to replace it with?  Surely they know that in a communist country they would never be allowed to stop working for a month to lay about and complain.  They must realize that citizens of a socialist nation don’t have the disposable income to donate skinny jeans and caviar for the next time they feel like holding a Life is Yucky and Mean demonstration.  And they must understand that people like them who would rather whine about their circumstances than try to improve them are an enormous drain on society.  Any country which truly shared the wealth would be dragged under in no time flat by these people.  So, what exactly do they want?
• Businesses (you know, the places that provide those jobs the protesters claim they want) are closing their doors in certain ares because the Occupy Movement is blocking the streets and, quite frankly, no one wants to walk through that filthy mess to go shopping or out to dinner.  While they may claim, to be the great defenders of “Main Street,”  these demonstrations are a detriment to their local business sector.
• When Al Sharpton, Roseanne Barr, Yoko Ono, Michael Moore, Screwy Louie Farrakhan, and Van Jones are on your side, you’re on the wrong side.  When Amanda Knox comes straight from an Italian prison to speak at your event, you’re on the wrong side, crazy, and probably high.
• OK, I thought of something besides “eating the rich” that many Occupiers want.  They would also like to chase out the Jews.  That’s right, these demonstrations are full of racists.  I’m not talking about it in the vague way that liberal describe tea parties as racist.  When the left talks about the “racism” of conservatives, it’s usually because one guy in a crowd of thousands was holding a sign that wasn’t directly racist, but kinda reminded them of a feeling they had once when they encountered real racism. No, this is the real thing.  These protests are swarming with people holding anti-Semitic signs and screaming horrible things about the Jews.  They have bought in to decades-old conspiratorial stereotypes about greedy Jewish bankers secretly running the world.  Liberals have been letting their anti-Jewish roots show more and more in the past few years, but this is front and center.  From an insane teacher shouting that “Zionist Jews” need to be “run out of this country,” to the punk who calls a passerby a “bum Jew” and a “short little man” before telling him to “go back to Israel”, to the countless signs which warn of a global Jewish banking conspiracy, there is an ugly underlying current to this movement.  These are not the tolerant peaceniks the press would have us believe they are.
• They have no idea who “Wall Street” is.  The vast majority of the protestors were Obama voters in 2008. Wall Street bankers give about 80% of their political donations to Democrats.  Democrats, in turn, created and covered up the looming mortgage crisis in the early 2000′s and bailed out banks and big corporations later on. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and just about every cabinet member and czar in Washington are real politicians who have actually protected and promoted unsavory financial dealings and bailed out banks with tax-payer money.  And one of their biggest supporters and donors, is the dirtiest, slimiest billionaire investor of them all, George Soros. He not only bankrolls almost every prominent Democrat, but his organizations are behind lots of “grassroots” liberal movements as well.  And guess what?  MoveOn.org and the Tides Foundation (both member’s of Soros’s Open Society Institute) were two of the Occupy Movement’s earliest promoters. And just as people were starting to complain that police weren’t evicting protesters (as they should, by law), we find out that George Soros has had at least one secret meeting with heads of the NYPD.  We’re talking about a guy (who is himself Jewish) who has “no sense of guilt” for helping the Nazi’s when  he was younger, describing it as  the best year of my life.”  A man who made his billions by short-selling currency.  There is a reason he is known as “the man who broke the bank of England,” it’s because he orchestrated the infamous UK financial collapse known as Black Wednesday.  This is a man who has intentionally bankrupted several nations, caused the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, was convicted of insider trading in France, and is banned from trading in China.  And these clowns love him!  They love his organizations and the politicians he backs.  Soros actually is the conniving power-hungry lunatic that they claim to be protesting. The politicians he helps to elect really are the corrupt, crony-capitalism types that use tax-payer money to tip the scales in favor of their corporate allies (think Solyndra and GE). But the protesters show no interest in the real villains.  They would rather scream “Die fat cat!” at every secretary and under-paid salesman who walks by wearing a suit.
• They’re self-described views are way out there. They can call it “economic equality” or “social justice,” but these protesters want socialism, plain and simple.  The overwhelming majority rate themselves as to the left of Barack Obama.  That’s the same Barack Obama whose voting record earned him a rating as the most liberal Senator in the country during his time in the legislature.  That put him to the left of Socialist Party member Bernie Sanders.  Both NARAL and Planned Parenthood give the President a 100% rating! In a country where only about 20% of the population describe themselves as liberal, any group where the majority of people are to the left of Obama, is way out of step with the norm.  Furthermore, according to a poll by Doug Schoen, about a third of the occupiers support using violence to achieve their goals. That number is especially shocking when you consider the fact that they were polled in a state of relative calm.  This was not an instance of a mob mentality. These weren’t people who got caught up in the moment and briefly considered lashing out violently.  These were people who were asked a question at a time when there was no violence, had an opportunity to consider their response, and chose to condone violent demonstrations.  Any large crowd runs a small risk of becoming a riotous mob, but these sort of attitudes makes this movement a virtual powder keg.  If you are willing to entertain the thought of a violent uprising when you’re calm, there’s no telling what you might do when a spark ignites the emotions of the crowd around you.
• They have an unparalleled sense of entitlement.  When you listen to the list grievances these activists have, they aren’t really outraged by crony capitalism or Wall Street corruption.  That has nothing to do with it.  They are angry because society isn’t fulfilling their desire for a cushy job that pays six figures.  They whine about having to work a minimum wage job at the seasoned age of 21.  They can’t believe that they are expected to start at an entry-level position even with a shiny new diploma in hand.    They can’t get their head around the notion that 60 year-old CEO who has rescued a corporation from bankruptcy is drawing a larger paycheck than them.  Someone should put him in jail and redistribute his assets!  Despite its portrayal in the press, this is nothing like the distress most Americans are feeling about the economy. Most Americans would be grateful for any job that puts food on the table right now.

You don’t have to peer to deeply to recognize that the Occupiers are quite different from most Americans.  That much is obvious. However, the question remains “How do we counter this movement?”  I think the first step is to simply point out just how out of touch the protesters are.  And the next move is just a simple, we need to give these protesters something they never had before.  We need people to tell them that they are absolute fools!

These activists are products of the self-esteem generation.  When they were kids, they got participation trophies and learned to “applaud themselves.” It was never their fault if they failed to do their homework and study, it was the teachers’ fault for not making them learn.  If their grades weren’t good enough to get scholarships and grants, we picked up the tab because they had “a right to college education.”  We couldn’t tell them that maybe they should go to a community college to bring up those grades first, because they needed to go away to school and live in a dorm to have “the full college experience” (because we all know that nothing makes a productive grown-up like spending four years with all of the freedom of an adult and none of the corresponding responsibility). We didn’t tell them that the purpose of higher education was to learn a marketable skill or trade.  We told them to “find themselves” and pursue whatever gives them a “sense of fulfillment.”  And when they graduated with a degree in Women’s Studies or Music Therapy, we told them they deserved a well-paying job in their field.  It didn’t matter that there was absolutely no market for their “skills,” they had a right to a job where they could make their own hours, name their pay, and never have to do a single thing that they didn’t feel passionate about.  Politicians promised them grants for “starving artists,” because they shouldn’t feel pressured to create something that people actually want to buy. The government gave funding to community organizing and other various activist groups, because they shouldn’t have to push their politics on people in their spare time.  Taxpayers should pay them to do it so they can still have their weekends free to hit the bars.  Afterall, we should be grateful that they are “volunteering” to save the world.  We told them that by “following their dreams” they were making the world “a brighter place.” No wonder they are out there throwing a fit!  They’ve spent their whole lives under the impression that they are all geniuses who have blessed humanity by way of their very existence.  No one ever called them lazy, gave them a spanking, or said “that’s a stupid idea.” They have literally overdosed on self-esteem.

We don’t need politicians to have “a meaningful conversation” about the implications of the Occupy Movement. The last thing these people need is more validation. We need our representatives to come out and say what the rest of know to be true. 1. These are not real protests.  They are a bunch of drug fueled street parties which are being used by aging hippies and power-hungry leftists to push an agenda.  2. The protesters are not “the face of the working class.” The real working class is too busy working or trying to find work to lay in their own feces for a month.  The activists in the Occupy Movement are a bunch of ignorant pawns.  They are being used to push the agenda of the real corrupt elites.  3. Most people consider themselves fortunate if they get their dream job within 10 years of retirement.  You don’t get to stumble out of college and land a six-figure income.  It ain’t gonna happen.  4. The reason that employers have to pay their workers is that most jobs aren’t fun. If they were, we’d do them for free.  Most people have a choice, pursue a career for a sense of fulfilment or pursue one for a paycheck.  If no one is willing to pay for help  appreciating the fine arts or hire someone to discuss the role that global warming plays in third world marital trends, then the job-seeker can either go without pay or find something else to do.  Taxpayers (even the super-wealthy) shouldn’t pay their salary, the government shouldn’t “create” a job for them.  They should do what the rest of us do everyday and suck it up, take a less than perfect job, and keep an eye open for opportunities.  The economy is bad right now, they’re right about that.  But people like them who think they are entitled to an easy life are largely to blame.  While the rest of us do what we can to stay a float, the “it’s my right” crowd takes and takes and gives us nothing in return.  They are the ones who don’t “give back to the community.” It’s not the wealthy CEO who employs a full staff of people who are willing to work, it’s the bums who spent the last month not working and asking for handouts.  They are the ones.   Politicians are supposed to be the voice of the people, so they ought to start acting like it.  It’s time they quit pandering to the noisy few and spoke up for the rest of us.  What we want to say to the Occupiers is “Get out of the street, you’re disrupting businesses and hurting those who do want to work.  Go get a job, we’re sick of supporting you.  If you want people to respect you, try being a respectable person.  And if you want to be taken seriously, then quit whining, take responsibility for your own life, and please, please take a shower and quit urinating in the street.”  That would be the message from the 99%.