10-07-2011, 03:47 PM
cbelt3 wrote:
My clever addition would be that, while Middle America has the TEA Party, the Coastie Liberal America has... more of a 60's style sit in without any coherent focus.
Getting these kids organized would be a lot like herding cats. Cats with ADHD smoking crack.
cbelt3, you raise some good points. IMHO, the Tea Party began as a disorganized group with unclear goals, but it successfully used the Internet, talk radio and even the MSM to quickly establish itself as a political force with a more tightly-tuned message. It organized into local cells and then jumped right into Republican politics: endorsing/working for preferred candidates, raising money and increasing voter turnout for Tea Party-friendly voters. They've followed the script that any other special interest group, right or left, has relied on over the years.
The OWS group seems more incoherent and disorganized, and all I can say is that they appear to be modeled after the Arab Spring protesters. Like the Arab Spring gang, OWS is overeducated and disenfranchised from the economic and political establishment (here is where they differ from the Tea Partiers, who are wealthier and more involved in politics than the average American according to surveys).
I don't think that the Arab revolutionaries knew what to do once their hated despots were toppled - they just wanted the corrupt b**tards gone. You can see that in the current chaos in places like Egypt. The OWS crowd seems to be following their lead.
The Tea Party really helped drive the debate in Washington for the past 2 years: just look at all of the talk about immigration crackdowns, challenges to the new healthcare law and bombast and threats re: federal spending. However, the Tea Party platform was helped by their direct involvement in getting their members elected. Will OWS eventually endorse candidates? Is it too early to tell? All I know is that they are bringing issues to the forefront that have generally been ignored by politicians, corporations and the MSM like a just economic system, the corrupting power of money in the political process and a general frustration with a public-private industrial complex that puts shareholders before citizens.
cbelt3 wrote: Of course if they use their cell phones (provided by evil corporate overlords) and Facebook (another evil corporate overlord) and Twitter (another evil corporate overlord) they might be able to get the local news and radio (also evil corporate overlords) to give them some publicity (if they hire clever evil corporate overlord marketing people to help them.)
Do they realize that if there actually WAS some sort of evil corporate conspiracy, none of that crap would work for them ? :biggrin: