Pro, you are just as guilty of reading websites who say they are news but just posting slanted opinions. You seem to be swallowing it up whole.
Actually, while I freely admit I'm certain of some bias on some level (as I'm so involved it would be impossible not to be), the articles I post up are either based on sourced, proven facts, or are accompanied by another piece of media (pic or vid) to lend credence to its factual relevance. It's hard to spin a video that clearly demonstrates consistent police brutality and an illegal crushing of American rights. But, that doesn't stop partisan hacks from trying.
OWS is guilty of plenty of sins, on plenty of levels. However, I think you'll find that the worst of OWS crimes are exaggerated by the opposition (as evidenced by John Boehner’s 'attack plan'). And if one member of a Movement that consists of hundred-of-thousands in the US alone is to be the label by which the entire movement is judged, then that means every organization, team, company, party, and movement in existence must be judged by the same standards. If not, then they are bad apples and should be cast out as such.
Should The Movement police its own affairs and members more stridently? Yes. Should they pick a main message and agree to a suitable resolution if offered one? Yes. Should the entire Movement be labeled criminal or bad based on a few bad apples (and I'm NOT talking about the three-hundred "arrests" that occur because the cops went in, busted heads, and arrested victims)? Absolutely not. That's nonsense. Are the police reacting in an overly brutal manner? Absolutely. A proven, unequivocal fact. Should American citizens......and not just "hippies", but fireman, policeman, military vets, doctors, teachers, religious figures, you name it.....be physically attacked and injured for exercising their Constitutionally-protected Right to protest against an unfairness they believe is destroying our country and world? Of course not. To think otherwise is ludicrous, cruel, and frankly traitorous.
The Opposition will always try and throw out whatever they can think of to smear the Movement. It threatens their livelihood, their political beliefs, and their powerhold on America. They desperately want to label everyone involved a "liberal", a "hippie", a "Marxist", a "molester", a "trespasser". Anything that's bad. Anything that they think can get the public on their side. Which is why I find this so incredibly profound:
- Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong.
- “The greatest hoax of the last couple of decades has been the ability of the right wing to co-opt members of the struggling lower middle class and lower class and pretend they speak for them while enacting policies that enable the super-rich. They’ve used wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and the baby Jeebus to alienate folks from their own economic interests, feeding them a steady diet of hatred of minorites, the educated, science, and, well, reality to create a voting block of people so guided by hatred of the ‘other’ that they would crawl over broken glass to cut their nose off to spite their face.”
People are protesting, and they're not backing down. This is real. Not a fad. Not a whim. Not a "Soros-funded terrorist Marxist attack on Gawd's People". People just want jobs. They want healthcare. They want to work and be paid fairly. They oppose the factual corruption of Government by Corporate interests. Simple as that.
