The OWS Movement had me thinking... About the 1960's

[Bumrush99]

Since I was born in 1975, I can't really comment on the tone in DC or the pulse of the nation during the 60's.. But one thing I have been pondering is my perception of the 60's (especially late 60's) and the media's glorification of the counterculture, hippies and social movements that took place.. A lot of which strikingly resembles OWS and the counterculture against the "supposed" 1% that controls America.

When I look back at the 68 and 72 sweeping Nixon victories, I can't help but wonder if the 60's mystique was a facade, generated by historians and the media to exaggerate the movement and to romanticize it. Yes, the 60's were turbulent- The Vietnam war, drugs, Kennedy assassinations, the rise of the USSR, Bay of Pigs, MLK, urban riots and Woodstock.. Yet despite all that, the status quo remained in power politically and Nixon had no problem coasting to victory in 72.. Was the counterculture of the 60's far less impact-full than what we have been led to believe (socially it did change America with mass drug usage and open sexuality) from a political perspective? Most films that deal with the 60's are very harsh on patriotic conservatives, almost portraying them as rigid, backwards minded individuals that refused to open their minds to the growing social unrest and economic inequalities. Noble, idealistic causes.. Yet those people still represented a majority of Americans, correct?

With that being said, will history repeat itself and view this OWS movement as a watershed moment in American politics? I would hope not, but if this continues for a few years history may be re-written to falsely portray this as a worthy ideological cause.

Thoughts?

 

[jackschmittusa]

Though their were a lot of protests, many were narrowly targeted (war, civil rights). Much was centered on the "drop out" mentality. It was an ignore society, not change it attitude. It was far less about collective power and much more about individual choices.

edit: Example: "Tune in, turn on, drop out", "Do your own thing" were the common mantras, communes represented the idea of leaving society.

 

[Craig234]

I could tell you a lot about about the topic you bring up where you're right and wrong, but the amount of hostility you have to the 'cause' of the people opposing the historic, massive corruption of their society as the few wealthy have committed a massive theft of the wealth of society tells me it's completely pointless - like trying to discuss the history of WWII with someone who claims the Holocaust was really misrepresented as a bad thing. Not much point in discussing the history with that difference in views.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

OWS is nothing like the 60's nor will it ever be.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

Is it really still "supposed" at this point?

 

[Craig234]

Is it really still "supposed" at this point?

Exactly. That's one of the 'reality is far away from this one' problems with his post.

 

[Bumrush99]

Exactly. That's one of the 'reality is far away from this one' problems with his post.

As opposed to what? Every society has a ruling class, whether it's the communist party of the USSR or the good old USA. Guess what? Despite that if you work hard and save your money rather than drown yourself in debt, you can have a very high standard of living in America. Nobody is claiming that bankers or other organizations that engaged in fraud deserve to be given a pass..

 

[IceBergSLiM]

As opposed to what? Every society has a ruling class, whether it's the communist party of the USSR or the good old USA. Guess what? Despite that if you work hard and save your money rather than drown yourself in debt, you can have a very high standard of living in America. Nobody is claiming that bankers or other organizations that engaged in fraud deserve to be given a pass..

accepting the status quo does exactly that.

 

[Bumrush99]

I prefer to accept reality. There will always be a power and economic gap. Unless we want to go down the road of European socialism (which is still plagued by a host of other issues we can spend days debating) it's not going to change.

I'd like for someone like Craig, who has taken a hostile position around my post to explain how our current system can change to meet what he believes would be a fair and equitable system.

 

[LumbergTech]

I prefer to accept reality. There will always be a power and economic gap. Unless we want to go down the road of European socialism (which is still plagued by a host of other issues we can spend days debating) it's not going to change.

I'd like for someone like Craig, who has taken a hostlie position around my post to explain how our current system can change to meet what he believes would be a fair and equitable system.

are you trying to say that there is nothing we can do to be more fair and still successful at the same time?

 

[Bumrush99]

are you trying to say that there is nothing we can do to be more fair and still successful at the same time?

Where did I say that?

What do you propose other than the standard "Tax the rich" talking points?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

I prefer to accept reality. There will always be a power and economic gap. Unless we want to go down the road of European socialism (which is still plagued by a host of other issues we can spend days debating) it's not going to change.

I'd like for someone like Craig, who has taken a hostlie position around my post to explain how our current system can change to meet what he believes would be a fair and equitable system.

Changes wouldn't need to be that extreme. Priority 1 should be getting corporations out of our politics. Ban them from making any campaign contributions. Citizens should hold that right only and should also be maxed out at $1 so that no citizen can impose more influence than any other.

 

[Craig234]

I prefer to accept reality. There will always be a power and economic gap. Unless we want to go down the road of European socialism (which is still plagued by a host of other issues we can spend days debating) it's not going to change.

I'd like for someone like Craig, who has taken a hostile position around my post to explain how our current system can change to meet what he believes would be a fair and equitable system.

This is another example of why it's pointless. I'll take what i can stomach from your post for a point by point.

"I prefer to accept reality."

Pretty meaningless, really. Those who thought the Holocaust was good didn't deny it.

"There will always be a power and economic gap."

Another pointless statement doing nothing but discouraging improving things.

The point isn't that there will be 'a gap', and in fact as I've said before some gap is a good thing. The point is for it not to be too huge, a point you miss utterly.

"Unless we want to go down the road of European socialism (which is still plagued by a host of other issues we can spend days debating) it's not going to change. "

First of all, Europe is not 'socialist'. It and the US both have the same basic structure of some 'private', some 'government', some 'safety net', and so on. They might have some different degrees, but are the same structure, not some greatly different systems where Europe is 'socialist' and the US is not.

Second, there is a difference unstated but implied by your post where you are attacking the very idea of opposing poverty and having citizens do better, other than the top.

Europe in many ways has some of the best in the world situations for standard of living. Higher education, fewer in poverty, and those are GOOD things you attack.

We should be ENCOURAGING the good parts of Europe, but Europe instead is being drug down by global competition and poverty to try to make them lower their people's standard of living to compete with the poor in the world, the same thing happening to the US, where the agendas of those who profit by reducing the wealth of the people are being followed rather than the public interest.

Europe hardly gets everything right, they don't, but they've got far fewer in poverty than the US, far fewer in prison, less concentration of wealth than the US, they've switched from being the idiots who go to war pointlessly to the peaceful region compared to the US. The fact you attack them for all these things instead of praising where they are doing well means discussion is pointless.

Why would I say 'how our system can be equitable' when you oppose that result and you are demanding we have a 'tyranny of economic royals and destroy the middle class'?

We don't agree on the goals for how society should be.

I'm for a society with freedom, prosperity for as many as possible, opportunity, growth, innovation, democracy.

When you really measure the results of whose ideology does these things better, the 'Europe sucks for being socialist' people or the 'Europe is a model for some things' people, you find the 'left' does them better which is why the right likes to be ignorant about the facts and just spew ideology and name-calling.

Save234

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Changes wouldn't need to be that extreme. Priority 1 should be getting corporations out of our politics. Ban them from making any campaign contributions. Citizens should hold that right only and should also be maxed out at $1 so that no citizen can impose more influence than any other.

And eliminate lobbying. It's fucking bribery. Call it what it is. We have seen it for so long and dealt with it, we accept as the status quo, greasing the wheels, however you want to spin it, it's a bribe. Open, legal bribery of our elected officials.
Lobbyists have zero social redeeming value and need to be eliminated as a 'career'.

 

[Ausm]

OWS is nothing like the 60's nor will it ever be.

I disagree totally.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I disagree totally.

Of course you do. How old were you in the 60's?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

And eliminate lobbying. It's fucking bribery. Call it what it is. We have seen it for so long and dealt with it, we accept as the status quo, greasing the wheels, however you want to spin it, it's a bribe. Open, legal bribery of our elected officials.
Lobbyists have zero social redeeming value and need to be eliminated as a 'career'.

agreed.....so that is three fairly simple changes that wouldn't make us socialist but would return power to the people.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

OWS is nothing like the 60's nor will it ever be.

This.

 

[monovillage]

There are many major differences between the protests of the 60's and the protests of the 10's. One of the major differences we see now is that the citizen is not totally dependent on the establishment press to show us what is actually happening during the protests. We still have advocacy journalism, but now it's from at least 2 different sides and the citizen has been enabled to record and show what is happening. Nothing enrages the left as much as their loss of control of the media and the empowerment of the citizen.

 

[Craig234]

And eliminate lobbying. It's fucking bribery. Call it what it is. We have seen it for so long and dealt with it, we accept as the status quo, greasing the wheels, however you want to spin it, it's a bribe. Open, legal bribery of our elected officials.
Lobbyists have zero social redeeming value and need to be eliminated as a 'career'.

Let's review the basic issue.

The norm in human society is that a few people have all the wealth and power, and the bulk of society serves them by producing wealth for them or serving in a military.

How do you change that so that people have a larger share of power, wealth and freedom - which has to come at the expense of the 'royals'?

The main idea that has been tried is "democracy", which turns over the power of the state to 'the people' - and has only been tried as the republican form of democracy, with elected representatives. By this theory, 'the people' only have taxes, wars, and other measures they approve of, preventing a few 'royals' from taking everything.

Now, those at the top who have a far larger share of wealth and power naturally view democracy as 'the enemy' in many cases - the system specifically designed not to let them have all the cookies in the jar. Naturally, their preference is to have a larger share of power than 'one man, one vote'.

And so they look for how to get that, and the one way really to get it is to have the system make money a more and more important part of who is elected, giving them a huge edge because they can afford to donate, while average Americans are very resistant to donating, saying 'you shouldn't have to BUY your government'.

And it's really about that basic. We've had incremental battles; the US Senate became terribly corrup as "the millonare's club", appointed by corrupt state legislators, and that was fought by a constitutional amendment to elect Senators. The progressive era battled a huge increase in the concentration of wealth, eventually leading to the FDR-era reforms that reduced the concentration of wealth.

Since Reagan, we've had major shifts back in the interests of the '1%' (really more the 0.01%, but that's a nit).

When Reagan and Carter ran for the Presidency, they took no donations from anyone. Only the federal government's funding using the $3 taxpayers could check for the election was used by both campaigns. There were fewer than a thousand lobbyists, compared to 36,000 today.

Starting with that shift in policies with Reagan, the rich have taken all the new wealth created in our country as the economy has doubled in size. IIRC, 80% of all the new wealth went to the top 1% - resulting in the top 1% more than doubling their share of the income taken, from 10% to nearly 25%.

Naturally, they have entrenched that role of money more and more - you're right, not only is lobbying 'effectively bribery', but I've seen it reported that half of Congressmen and staff go to lobbying positions when they leave office, greatly incenting them to keep the lobbyists happy when they are in office so they can do so.

We don't even need to mention how the 'antidote to corruption', a free press, has become so compromised with 90% of media owned by 4 or 5 corporations.

What do we need to do?

- Pass a constitutional amendment removing 'personhood' from corporations, along with the ban on the people having the right to limit corporate election donations.

- Restrict the movement between 'private' and 'government' positions, whether it's a Congressmen leaving to lobby or a general leaving to 'consult' for a defense company.

Or vice versa, industry representatives being appointed to run the government oversight of the industries they serve.

That's a great start.

Someone suggested we ban tv ads for elections - it's an interesting idea. The idea being cigarette tv ads were banned as harmful for society, and tv spots are bad for democracy. Make people read words for the 'free speech' instead of ads using sophisticated advertising manipulation costing millions of dollars that let candidates 'buy public opinion', as 94% of elections being won by those who spend the most shows.

While we're at it, keep net neutrality, since the internet has become important for democracy.

We also need to consider how to rebuild media that serves the people, rather than the powerful interests.

Save234

 

[Ausm]

Of course you do. How old were you in the 60's?

I am guessing a hell of a lot older then you were...

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I don't think so, I was born in the 50's. My bet is you were born in the 70's.

 

[Ausm]

I don't think so, I was born in the 50's. My bet is you were born in the 70's.

Bad bet....

 

[Craig234]

Stop arguing about who is older, no one is going to change their opinion because of it and it's nothing but an attempt to gain advantage fallaciously.

While there might be some benefit to that in understanding the history, two people who were there will have very different opinions about it, so it doesn't solve much.

 

[BudAshes]

Bad bet....

Grandpa fight!