CSotD: Mr. Jones is looking a bit occupied …
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Stuart Carlson does, I think, a particularly fine job with this cartoon in that he does not telegraph whether he feels the politician is sincerely puzzled or purposefully ignoring the messages from the crowd. As the cartoon says, the message — including some very specific concepts — is out there to be heard by those who are listening.
As I've said many times, though, one should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, and, in this case, I use "stupidity" in a broad sense that covers being oblivious to that which goes on around you, not out of malice, not as part of a conspiracy, but simply because you don't get it.
Case in point being the executive who has his secretary print out his email and place it on his desk.
It's not that he is opposed to the new technology. He really and truly doesn't understand that it isn't simply a new kind of office machinery for her to operate.
And he doesn't see what's happening in the street, not because he is trying to misunderstand and not because he is opposed to what they want. He simply, fundamentally, does not get it.
So, with all that has been going on, with all the coverage in the media, he is still content to say "They haven't said what they wanted" because, like the printed-out email, that sincere reaction does not require him to interact on a level he's not used to.
And he's probably heard it from comfortable pundits in three-piece suits who are as sincerely clueless as he is, and who look like him, which makes him prone to accept their wisdom as his own.
And so looking at Congress a month after OWS began, we see that Bernie Sanders is on board, and a few other predictable people, and the rest of our elected officials are still in their own comfort zones and Bernie was there before it all started anyway.
Nothing is going to change until more people — more average people — begin to get it.
I don't know that a country this size, with a system this size, is ever going to be able to sit down and have a face-to-face conversation. Direct democracy is not made for huge groups of dissimilar people.
But I do know that the first step is to grasp the tiller and frame the conversation yourself, because the alternative is to have someone else frame it for you.
And I know that politicians don't necessarily understand what you're saying, but they do understand how many people are saying it.
Which makes it critical that the conversation be inclusive and inviting and that it attract the people who are its natural allies, because they truly are a majority but, unlike in Europe and the Middle East, they are not a prepackaged group that you can count on bringing to the table through the methods we've seen work in those regions.
There remain among the protesters those who are fixated on a radical mentality they have seen shake France or Germany or Egypt, and so they are out in the streets provoking the authorities, uploading selectively edited videos and generally trying to stir up the anger of the mob they fancy is boiling under the surface of the nation.
But the American public has not shared the experience of the European or Middle Eastern working class since the days of Joe Hill and the Pinkertons. Their experience is different, their culture is different, and they must be appealed to in a different way, with regard to their wants and needs and fears and dreams.
I think that process is happening, despite the Robespierre wannabes who still dream of storming the barricades.
It appears that the mass of demonstrators are starting to get a much more inviting, more realistic, more effective message out, and that, in the many places where they are permitted to dominate the action, they're starting to get a lot of sympathy from the average person.
For example, in my always humble opinion, one of the most attractive strategies has been the web cam shot with the personal story. (click on the pics to read them) Somebody thought of that. It didn't just happen. But it's happening now and I think it's effective.
I was very critical of the organizers when Occupy Wall Street began and (obviously) I remain very critical of the True Believers in the crowd. But I think that the real people are beginning to elbow the True Believers aside and that if the crowd is willing to become the organizers, there will be less for the rightwing opposition to seize upon as an excuse to ignore, to denigrate, to oppose without hearing.
There are a whole lot of people hurting in this country who are willing to number themselves among the 99. They need to be welcomed aboard and made to feel at home.
As for the message, as for what people want, it is there to be heard, if not by the politicians, by the people themselves, at which point, it won't matter whether or not the politicians get it, because, as the phrase goes, they'll have to either lead, follow or get out of the way.
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