The “Occupy Wall Street” gatherings are not only infantile, but fail to reach any semblance of cultural history, unless mass public defecation and fornication in New York City is something new.
Even the ’60′s hippie movement, irresponsibly juvenile as it was, had focus and a sense of romantic purpose. The degenerates of that age had their actual music, their poetry, their spokesmen. That wave of public immaturity left memorabilia. They were genuine tokens, not tweets, videos, or ubiquitous and cheap electronic record so consumptive today.
Wall Street “bastards” have left nothing but their own waste. They are like children who have literally had no upbringing but TV, internet, and Sesame Street. There is no sentiment to carry their emotion, because the emotion is ugly, uninspiring and unworthy. They have no songs, no lyrics, but only infantile outrage and meaningless anger at existence. They resent their birth. (Of late, some drum groups have evolve–from sheer boredom, no doubt; but this only demonstrates more accurately the utter lack of mind and intellect involved. This is as primitive as the public can be, without words, without thought, without purpose. Just primal rage.)
The hippies of the ’60′s had a feeling of genuine exploration, deconstructive as it was. (It simply hadn’t happened before in American culture.) But the moment cannot be relived. All such imitations are doomed, for historical circumstances are essentially inimitable. Therefore, the Occupiers are lost, and without direction. Social circumstances and the political situation is different today. The level of public maturity is far less. And even a Canadian-based anarchy movement will not suffice to give meaning to the pathetic “useful idiots” in the street.
The hippies had one or two major events of public exposure. They displayed their body functions in the open. But, they were in the woods, not in public parks in the middle of crowded cities. They called it Woodstock, not Wall Street. They wanted to drop out, in a way. The Occupiers want to destroy.
But the Occupiers are not stronger, or more aggressive. They are cowardly, in fact. Or, just undeveloped. Occupy Wall Street is a kind fetal 9-11. Perhaps we can expect to seem them advised by their more violent Muslim brethren in the near future.
In the mean time, there is no serious patriot reaction to this nonsense coming from any public officials in charge. And the quasi-musical ravings of Hank Williams, Jr., far from being the true spirit of patriotism, are only an angry reaction to a personal offense. And no songs from the Tea Party (if there are any) have any status to compare with the songs from the ’60′s, like those of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dilan, Jimmy Hendrix, or even Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Kalle Lasn is the co-founder of Adbusters, the Canadian corporation that is the brains and organizational savvy behind Occupy Wall Street et al. (You can see some documentation of this at adbusters.org’s “Campaigns” page.) His book, Culture Jam, makes fascinating reading. He describes himself as an anarchist and neo-Luddite, among other things, and wants to use a network of a few hundred global activists at an opportune moment (sound familiar?) to reprogram and coerce the majority into his vision of Utopia. If you want to know what OWS is about, he has a way more coherent vision than most of the boots on the ground seem to.
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