Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
– Green Day, American Idiot, 2004
Cui Bono (who benefits)?
- – unknown origin, but famously used by Cicero
Had the new R majority in Congress begun investigations into the overt (obvious, in-your-face, testified to under oath in depositions) Wall Street fraud that caused the meltdown, and launched prosecutions, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests would likely not have occurred IMO. Economics commentators and authorities with a left-leaning bent (Joe Stiglitz, Bill Black) have been crying for someone to pick up the banner of fraud investigations. They’ve been chiding the Obummer administration to do something about it. Sitglitz himself has visited and spoken to OWS in NYC.
The R’s could have blunted all of this years ago by actually doing something about it, launching real investigations, stealing the issue from the left, and muting the left’s ability to protest that the R’s are the tools of big money. They failed to do so. Why, one might ask? One possible explanation, one that seems increasingly likely, is that the R’s in fact ARE the tools of big money. Another is that the R’s wanted the D’s to have an issue of their own. Always remember, all politics in the U.S. MUST take place within the D-R paradigm. Otherwise, difficult questions begin being asked.
By ceding to the left an important and publicly-acknowledged issue (Wall Street fraud), the right virtually guaranteed the birth of OWS and provided an opportunity for the left to launch a new left-leaning political movement that will ultimately be co-opted by the organized left, like so much of the Tea Party movement has been by the organized right.
If these people had jobs and believed in their futures, they wouldn’t be in the streets. What is needed to restart the productive American economy? We know the answer; it has been known for a long time, since before Adam Smith: COMMAND ECONOMIES DON’T WORK. STOP TRYING TO CONTROL THE ECONOMY. How do we do that? Deregulate, let the markets clear (let bankrupt businesses fail), develop domestic resources, unleash the productive human spirit. Why isn’t Congress doing this? They haven’t even tried. Why not?
OWS will someday have self-proclaimed “national leaders” who will be invited to speak at coronation events, just like Sarah Palin was at the “National Tea Party” event. These people will become the MSM voices of the OWS movement, and that will be the end of it (Tom Hayden has already been seen on TV talking about OWS). Both movements will have been redirected back into the left-right paradigm, and that will be that. The status quo prevails again.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish is the oldest and most oft-practiced political strategy known to man, other than outright oppression.
Watch and learn.
Cui Bono?
