An Oblique Attack

I noticed two items online this week that don’t at first glance appear to have any connection, but when you stop and think about them are really just two sides of the same coin. If you study history or finance, or worst of all, economic history, you already know that virtually every major financial crisis in Western history has given rise to protests that seek to blame the woes of the poor and downtrodden on the wealthy classes of their society, and demand redress, usually in the form of redistribution of that same wealth. In the Twentieth Century this tendency became permanently associated with civil rights and social justice movements, and with the usually (very) young people who make up the core of such groups, resulting in a perception of not just rich versus poor, but also of young versus old, crude versus cultured, liberal versus conservative, those who feel entitled to wealth and privilege versus those who (for whatever reason) actually have money and the advantages that go with it. And if you have read up on that history, you know that both halves of that perception are dangerous…

First, you have a story off of the Oregon Live site (quoted from the Oregonian), which tells about the mess and damaged caused by Occupy Portland, and how city officials are saying that cleaning up and repairing everything will cost around $85,000 from an already overtaxed city budget. The author does a good job of staying neutral in the report, but there isn’t much room for interpretation here anyway; the work descriptions and costs being reported are official, and they don’t paint a nice picture of the situation in Oregon. Even if you support everything the Occupy movement stands for, the fact that the encampments caused a huge mess, disrupted life in the area, and attracted a crowd of homeless people (and others who exploited the situation) can’t really be disputed. Given that most people around the country still don’t really know what the movement is trying to accomplish, all the average reader is seeing is a bunch of hippies demanding something or other while contributing nothing to society and draining money from taxpayers and social services (not exactly the 1%, whoever they might be). But that’s still the milder of the two stories…

The second was a piece on Fox News – quoted here by a conservative talk-radio broadcaster from Boston – about a college professor asking his students to write essays about what the American Dream means to them and getting a bunch of answers that expect the national government to take care of them and provide for their needs. Both the video and the site make a big point of emphasizing that the students repeatedly stated that rich people should have their money taken away and distributed to poor young people (like themselves). The authors then comment that since this seems to be the prevailing attitude, it’s no wonder that there have been public demonstrations by people “demanding free stuff.” The implication is that the Occupy have no real grievances or true reform agenda; they’re just spoiled kids who want everything but don’t want to actually work for it. The implication is snide, underhanded, and unfair to all of the people in the movement who would gladly take jobs and invest in their own future if they could get jobs, access to capital, networking opportunities, and all of the things the conservatives seem to forget that they already have. Unfortunately, the comments on the levels of entitlement currently prevailing in America aren’t incorrect – or even unfair…

Now, I don’t mean to side with either group in this scenario. I’ve taught undergraduates for the last three years, and a lot of them do have entitlement issues – but a lot of them are determined, hard-working people who will accomplish amazing things if they are allowed to do so. And I’ve seen the same stories you have about banks refusing to extend credit while they demand that the government bail them out – and then issuing billion-dollar bonuses to the people whose incompetence caused the financial crisis in the first place – but I’ve also met people who started with nothing and had nothing handed to them who have earned the riches they have; where is the justice in demanding that they give all away to people who have never worked a day in their lives? The truth is, both of these positions are nothing more than an oblique attack on the other side of a social-political issue, and the only ones who can possibly benefit from this innuendo are those political and social forces who are busily stirring the pot…