Re: The
Republican Position: OWS-spoiled brats, bums, and anarchists,
January, 2012
Dear Editor,
For someone who is so quick to lob
insults at those whose political views diverge from his own, Gene
Howard's criticism of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is
founded on shaky assumptions.
Firstly, he seems to think the OWS
protests were specifically against the Republican Party. This is untrue - otherwise,
it would have been called “Occupy Republican National
Headquarters.” In fact, the OWS has been very critical of the
President. For example, back in November OWS protesters were out in
full force at an Obama fundraiser dinner in New York, holding signs
with slogans such as “Obama is a corporate puppet”.
So when Mr.
Howard says “the uninformed and unwashed associate pin stripes
with Republicans, and assumed they were attacking conservatives,”
he is clearly obfuscating the issue with blatant untruths. The OWS
protests were certainly not an Obama love-in. Then again, when you're yelling at lefties, it is best not to let truth get in the
way of anger.
Another questionable area of Mr.
Howard's screed is where he says the OWS protesters are making use of
“the resources and innovations of capitalism” such as the
Internet and social media to connect with each other. Let's set the
record straight – the Internet began life as early as 1963 as the
ARPAnet, a creation of the U.S. Military's Advanced Research Projects
Agency. Most true innovation in high technology occurs in
publicly-funded laboratories or universities – it is only after the
fact that capitalism comes along to capitalize on it, and perhaps
hire away some of the original researchers. To specifically call the
Internet an “innovation of capitalism”, however, is absurd.
James Deagle
Ottawa, Canada
I agree on all points, but on the OWS against the Republican Party is an easy thing to mix up. OWS is not against Republicans or conservatives, but it's Republicans and conservatives who are against OWS. What OWS is, is a flourishing of political thought happening all at once; across the country and across the globe. Republicans don't like this, even though the Tea Party had many similar complaints, but were corporate backed from the beginning. It can be an easy mistake to make.
ReplyDeleteOWS is quite critical of President Obama and the current system of government. That is why political ideas that were never talked about are being discussed. Over here in Florida, my local Occupy movement had a weekend discussing Anarchy. While most people would just scoff and the idea of Anarchy, there are many worthwhile things in this ideology that people are just finding out about. Not to mention Socialism now has a positive view for 18-29 year olds according to a recent Pew poll research. Saying it's just a leftist movement, in the case of the people wanting more power it can be correctly identified as such, is the wrong way to peg the movement. It's across the spectrum politically from left to right.
So in short. Conservatives are against Occupy because they want to be against it. It is the "other" to them. Occupy is not against anything more than inequality. That should be the clear distinction to make.
Agree with you James - how dare call the net a capitalist invention! Capitalism just takes advantage of whatever is new and its agenda is always exploitation. I'm no communist - I just detest the rampant greed of capitalism.
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