92 Responses to “#OccupyDC ‘What Democracy Looks Like’”

1. Anonymous
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:05 pm

   So we see that anyone with any real complaints of government overreach and abuse that attached those issues to these events were misguided and naive. I have seen people using this exposure to advance their legitimate agenda and pray they will come to their senses and extricate themselves from this operative arm of the Democratic National Committee.

2. Anonymous
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:22 pm

   Well wroten, Stacy.

   It’s just a party, a rave-up.  And the sense of entitlement evidently extends to the bodies of other partygoers.

3. ThePaganTemple
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:29 pm

   I saw something somewhere to the effect that they even harassed an elderly woman in a wheelchair, and wouldn’t allow her to leave. Death would be too good for these scum suckers. This OWS crowd are the kinds of people I would love to accidentally overhear somebody planning their murders, just so I could have the sadistic pleasure of not saying jack shit about it.

4. Anonymous
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:48 pm

   Unfortunately there will have to be something big like someone getting killed during one of the demonstrations (as opposed to the campins) or a large number of injuries before the Winston Smith Media pays any attention to what even they will have to view as the negative side to the Donner Party.

   They don’t report on the sexual assaults or thefts because they don’t feel that those things are part of the “movement” merely collateral damage, the victims, casualties sacrificed in the noble cause. Even threats, intimidation and actual attacks on local media go largely unreported nationally. Once that dramatic event occurs the media will be all over it reminding us that they have been warning us all along.

5. JeffS
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:51 pm

   #OccupyWhatEver is just a way for the lefties to harness the energies of our home grown barbarians.  Which, I suspect, said lefties will come to regret when the people who actually make this civilization work will offer them a collective “Fuck You!”, reinforced with a firm view of weapon muzzles trained right between their eyes.

   And those (supposedly) educated people and national organizations and institutions who actually support these animals need to Get A Clue — those barbarians are not their friends.  Placation does not work, unless surrender is an objective.

6. ThePaganTemple
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:53 pm

   They are reporting some things, but they are trying to play it off as outsiders, like he homeless, or recently paroled prisoners looking for freebies and a party. In other words, its not the protesters, just people taking advantage of them. If something happened at a Tea Party and I blamed it on the same culprits, then I would be painted as a person who hated the homeless or who unfairly persecuted paroled criminals who just need a break. Its amazing to me who these damn people can even stand to look at themselves in the mirror.

7. Anonymous
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:57 pm

   Which is why I call it the Donner Party.

8. #OccupyDC ‘What Democracy Looks Like’ : The Other McCain « God's Own Crunk
   November 5th, 2011 @ 6:58 pm

   […] via #OccupyDC ‘What Democracy Looks Like’ : The Other McCain. […]

9. Anonymous
   November 5th, 2011 @ 7:03 pm

   “the collectivist mentality”

   … in the middle of an entirely collectivist interpretation of the motives and actions of thousands of individuals.

   Eye-roni!

10. SDN
    November 5th, 2011 @ 7:09 pm

    thousands of individuals in SEIU shirts… gotcha.

11. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 7:13 pm

    I haven’t been to OWS or Occupy DC. But I visited Occupy St. Louis. St. Louis is big-time SEIU territory (remember Kenneth Gladney?), and there wasn’t an SEIU t-shirt in sight.

12. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 7:21 pm

    Just viewed the occupy the consulate video. Now it’s OK for the Egyptians to “occupy our consulates”. While this appears to be the lobby of a building in which the Israel is only a part, meaning the lobby isn’t technically the property of a sovereign Nation, I suspect that nuance will escape radicals overseas. That the Boston PD felt the need to explain and apologise to the Donner Partiers for forcing them to cut short their “occupation” of someone Else’s property is truly despicable. While they would claim that they’re only trying to keep the peace, protecting property is the most important job of law enforcement. The actions of many of the police departments enabling lawlessness because the violations are in furtherance Radical-Liberal politics should compromise the viability of continued federal funding these cities receive.

13. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 7:27 pm

    Don’t need to be wearing SEIU shirts to be collectivists. These folks don’t deny it. They rather more resemble the Borg than the sixties protesters, but even a hive has a queen.

14. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 7:38 pm

    Adobe,

    Some of them are collectivists, some of them aren’t.

    I was just pointing out that Stacy’s analysis is at least collectivist as its subject.

15. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 7:59 pm

    Don’t see it, how so?

16. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:08 pm

    Maybe I’m the only person nerdy enough to think this way, but James Madison in Federalist #10 would readily concur that this IS what democracy looks like, which is why he was so passionate that the United States be a Republic.

    Got a catchy beat for “this is what a Republic looks like?” Of course, republicans (little “r”) are not known for mob rule or mindless chanting.

    Madison: “A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. “

17. Call the Democrat Party – Tell Them You’ve Had Enough of the Mob! | The Lonely Conservative
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:08 pm

    […] the lawless radicals or the media and politicians who provide them cover and lend them legitimacy.Stacy witnessed the mob in action first hand last night.We can no longer tolerate media assertions that this is a non-violent […]

18. Garym
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:15 pm

    You write how I speak.

19. Matthew Patterson
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:19 pm

    Wow. Compassionate conservatism right there..

20. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:22 pm

    “Don’t see it, how so?”

    The Occupy movement is composed of thousands (actually probably tens of thousands; I’m not sure I buy the claims of hundreds of thousands or millions at this point) of individuals in scores of cities.

    The reason you don’t hear about what’s going on in most of those cities is that the stuff Stacy’s (rightly) exercised about isn’t happening in most of those cities. Classifying them all as “smelly hippies,” “malodorous mobsters,” “savages” and a “criminal movement” is indisputably a collectivist analysis.

21. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:43 pm

    Oh, now we should look deeper, that this is all the result of a small groups or individuals. No one bothered to do that with the Tea Party. Of course, the Tea Party would not have countenanced any of this behavior in their midst. Of course, the Tea Party as a whole would have been blamed, at least for not stopping it. And you probably wouldn’t be here telling us to not look at it “collectively”.

22. Bruce
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:47 pm

    This ain’t the 90’s Rip Van Winkle. Did you just wake up? 

    Being compassionate to thugs supports thuggery. 

23. Garym
    November 5th, 2011 @ 8:55 pm

    This is what you get when you elect a community organizer to presidident. An utterly divided nation.

24. Thomas Ferdousi
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:02 pm

    Thanks for the link!

25. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:12 pm

    “Oh, now we should look deeper, that this is all the result of a small groups or individuals. No one bothered to do that with the Tea Party. ”

    I did.

26. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:15 pm

    I don’t see how defining ones enemies negatively is collectivist, while we might find some commonality with some of the things they are against we have nothing in common with their solutions to any of them.

     We are against the bank bailouts because of the moral and economic damages of socialising risk while privatizing profit. They object because rich folks got the money instead of them.

    They don’t want to change the government in order to attain their goals they want the current power structure to confiscate wealth redistribute it and then leave them alone to enjoy their gains, until it’s time to do it all over again. The inherent flaws of this scheme appear to exceed their comprehension skills. They seem to believe that increasing the government intervention can give them what other’s earn without interfering in their personal lives. We know better and believe that less government is the path individual freedom and prosperity.

    Tens of thousands is probably the upper limit even if one counts all the campers and the reinforcements who show up for particular excursions off camp. No doubt our definitions of “the collective” and “collectivism” vary a good deal however I submit that each camp is “run” as a collective and if all the camps were merged into one big camp they would attempt to run it as they do the smaller ones. In the video you posted the part were they tell the driver who had a child in the car and just wanted to proceed on with his journey, they tell him that he has no power is very revealing. Their belief that their mere presence abrogated his right to drive on the roads his tax dollars pay for but took away his power to do so just because they say so. My take from that is that they not only don’t understand what power is, in that if he chose to exercise it, he did indeed have the power to proceed on his way despite the “moral power” they think their decision to block the road gave them. To my mind they are so convinced of their “collective” power that they believe once they have reached consensus on what their rights and privileges are the rest of us are part of the collective it’s just that we are rebelling against it. Or perhaps we’re just Kulaks.

    Their sense of entitlement astounds, I’ve heard them say in previous videos that they have a right to “civil disobedience” and it’s fascistic to arrest them for it. They also believe that they have the right to invade private property to express their demands. That seems to be based on their belief that private property only means personal possessions.

27. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:20 pm

    Here is a feel good story.

    http://moonbattery.com/?p=4156#comments

28. Edward
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:24 pm

    I think we need to consider that this is really just a trial run.  That all of this is intended really for Election Day.  Imagine all of these thugs camped out by the polling stations.

    Would the police shove them away so people could vote?  Would the federal authorities?  Eric Holder isn’t going to give the orders.  And considering these examples neither would any Democrat in office.

    So.  How are we going to confront this kind of thuggery?  You may think this is a far-fetched scenario but it might happen.  And it is definitely worth putting in some thought now rather than at the very last moment.

29. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:31 pm

    If thugs are camped out by the polling stations, I imagine that we 53%-ers will just have to bring our heat.

30. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:33 pm

    “Democracy passes into despotism.”  –Plato

31. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:35 pm

    No use for compassionate conservatives.

32. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:37 pm

    Adobe,

    “We are against the bank bailouts because of the moral and economic damages of socialising risk while privatizing profit. They object because rich folks got the money instead of them.”

    I’m not sure who the “we” and “they” are that you’re referring to.

    I personally know Occupiers who are there specifically because they oppose “socializing risk while privatizing profit” — language which they (and I) have been using since long before the Tea Party coalesced (hey, here’s me saying that in mid-2008, months before the first Tea Party rally).

    And when attending Tea Party rallies in 2009, I met Tea Partiers carrying “Where’s My Bailout?” signs and upset as hell at the possibility that they might not get “their” Social Security or Medicare.

    I don’t think my friends are typical of Occupy, or that the “welfare for me but not for thee” types are typical of the Tea Party. That’s why collective criticism is dangerous.

33. Instapundit » Blog Archive » #OCCUPYFAIL: “Let it sink in: Their protests now need rape shelters. This is actually happening. An…
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:41 pm

    […] UPDATE: A roundup. […]

34. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 9:55 pm

    Collectivist and conformist are not synonyms.

    Actually, the two terms are about as far apart as what you want the Occupy groups to be and what they really are . . .

35. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:02 pm

    PGlenn,

    I’m well aware that the Occupy groups are nothing like what I want them to be. That doesn’t mean I have to pretend they are something they’re not.

    I wish they were Paine-style libertarians. They aren’t, any more than the Tea Partiers are Burke-style conservatives.

36. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:08 pm

    See my comment above. What is your definition of collectivism? Perhaps you can enlighten me as to how your conception of collectivism applies to RSM’s post.    

37. metalscapeinc
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:12 pm

    this … “they’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed into the collectivist mentality as to have become actively hostile to freedom.”
    and …
    “there is something genuinely tragic, and profoundling troubling, in watching this sorry “Occupy” farce unfold. So many young people have been so miseducated that they can’t tell “heaven from hell, blue skies from pain,”

    YES.  Thank you for making these points.   I am not ready to throw the kids in the group to the wolves.  They showed up originally to complain of spending a fortune on an education EVERYONE assured them would get them a good job.  It is not their fault the Leftist education industry in this Country defrauded them.  And now the same Leftists show up to use them as cannon fodder for their revolutionary ends.  Down with Capitalism?  I wonder who taught them to think that?

    These are our kids we are so casually ridiculing as they get their heads busted.  Eventually some will be killed.  The Left knows no shame and the Right knows no compassion.   Hang the anarchists.  Save the kids.

38. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:22 pm

    PGlenn,

    There are several different useful definitions of collectivism, but the one that runs both ways here is the assumption that because a group is defined by one characteristic, its members necessarily share other characteristics.

    The only characteristic shared by all participants in Occupy is that they’re all participating in Occupy. In every other respect, they differ. 

    Some are run-of-the-mill Democrats who think they’re participating in a “reform” movement.

    Some are organized labor rank-and-file who’ve been drummed out to try to co-opt the thing for the Democratic Party.

    Some are anarchists, some are statists.

    Some are non-anarchist libertarians, some are Stalinists, some are in between those two statist extremes.

    Some may be smelly hippies (I saw some hippies at Occupy St. Louis, but they weren’t particularly smelly).

    Some obviously are savages, most of them probably aren’t.

    Personally, I think it’s both too early and too late to call Occupy a “movement” at all. Half of it is a clusterfuck that has yet to organize around anything in particular, and the other half is a Democratic Party astroturf operation, and that half-and-half division probably isn’t nearly granular enough to capture the reality.

    Replace “Stalinist” with “Falangist,” “Democratic” with “Republican,” and remove the organized labor component, and you’ve got the Tea Party circa mid-2009.

39. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:25 pm

    Thanks for the candor. So, back to the “collectivist” part . . .

    Calling OWS types “dirty hippies,” etc. might be construed as being a reaction based in ideological conformity, but I don’t get how you read it as “collectivist.” Please enlighten.  

40. metalscapeinc
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:39 pm

    ” this IS what democracy looks like, which is why he was so passionate that the United States be a Republic. ”

    Excellent point.   Makes for a pretty snappy comeback at debate time.

41. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:39 pm

    knappster, you didn’t define collectivism; you described an assumption common among many adherants of “identity politics,” including among collectivists but not exclusively so (you wrote,  “the assumption that because a group is defined by one characteristic, its members necessarily share other characteristics”).

    Logically, a group cannot be defined by one particular trait if that trait is common among other groups.  

    Collectivism basically means collective ownership by all the people of the “collective” of all means of production, with that system controlled by a central authority (e.g., the state).

    It’s true that the scourge of identity politics sometimes lamentably creeps into rightwing discourses, but that doesn’t mean that such usages are at all sympathetic with collectivist notions.

42. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:45 pm

    “Collectivism basically means collective ownership by all the people of the ‘collective’ of all means of production, with that system controlled by a central authority (e.g., the state).”

    No, it doesn’t. Communism (of which there are both anarchist and statist varieties) is a political extension of collectivism, which is itself epistemological.

43. Jeff McCabe
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:49 pm

    How do you figure?  You seem to be the only one bringing it up. 

44. Jeff McCabe
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:54 pm

    “that they might not get “their” Social Security or Medicare.”   So your saying these particular people haven’t been paying into SS and medicare their  entire working lives?  How did you determine this?

45. Jeff McCabe
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:55 pm

    Agree

46. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 10:59 pm

    As for the Occupy mix, I haven’t witnessed any of these protests firsthand; however, it seems fairly obvious that many of the serious, full-time campers are radical leftists.

    And I know radical leftists pretty well. If the vanguard consists of what I suspect it does – for example, young watermelons (e.g., Earth Firsters), the old anti-globalization crowd, International ANSWER types, labor movement radicals, washed up FMLN wannabes, community organizers, Rachel Corries, etc. – well, those groups aren’t usually immediately dangerous, except that many of them have seen their fantasy nihilism coddled for so long that they begin to feel “empowered” in ways that could take a nasty turn.    

47. Dianna Deeley
    November 5th, 2011 @ 11:08 pm

    The only problem being that the Donner Party (historic) lacked good sense – or at least good advice about the weather – but did its best in dreadful circumstances. Cannibalism is dreadful, but no one in the party killed anyone else for dinner.

48. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 11:18 pm

    knappster, sorry, you’re flat wrong here. Collectivism is not epistemoligically rooted. Where did you come up with that? I encourage you to consult how the term has been used over the years in the relevant disciplines, but in the meantime simply look up the definition in a dictionary.  

49. Anonymous
    November 5th, 2011 @ 11:19 pm

    The we I refer to are conservatives in general, admittedly an over broad generalization. They in this case is the Donner Party tho I’d use it to refer to the left in general. A species I’ve no use for whatsoever. While I suspect that if one cared to find it the nuances you elaborate are to be found among them I don’t see enough difference to make a distinction. While this may be unfair (a word I’m not fond of) I’ve determined that their “vision” for the future is absolutely divergent from mine and that really is all I need to know.

50. Dianna Deeley
    November 5th, 2011 @ 11:20 pm

    It’s not easy, but the way to handle this is a method called “the human chain.” You link hands with friends and create a clear path. While wearing helmets of some sort, and good, thick padded jackets. Don’t forget hard boots, because nothing hurts quite as badly as a broken instep.

    The people doing this need to be aware it might hurt. A lot. It’s conspicuously non-violent, so no one can accuse the human chain of battery, but it also cuts down on your opportunities for personal self-defense.

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