Is Occupy Wall Street a harbinger of things to come? Social chaos is not good for business. So the mass arrests of protestors in New York City are probably not surprising. But the brutality of the police is being documented by the protestors using the new social media, and the spread of the news of these occurrences is instantaneous and utterly hard to control. But should we be surprised by these historical events? The Mass media are in their own disingenuous way trying to discredit the protesters, as fringe elements of discontent, in the vain hope that they will disappear. As if we are not subject to the dismal conservative governance of Obama and a Republican Party controlled by Tea Party Jacobins, whose stance toward governance is an unyielding nihilism. Add to that an economy that is headed toward an ever deepening recession and the failing Austerity Solution hailed as the only solution to our economic plight.

Americans believe themselves to be exceptional in all things: the notion that somehow the current course, that is failing, and is impeding a generation’s economic rise has only begun to work its way through the social fabric. American are also deeply conservative, but how much Austerity will it take to push a citizenry steeped in the dogmas of Free Market economics, and its political corollaries to rise up in revolt, no matter how seemingly inexplicable and unrelated they may first appear? The loss of hope for a better life can lead to destructive, seemingly irrational behavior, to constructive political action, or to a mix of both.

Almost Marx