Last night I sat down with Tim Pool and his crew to record three hours of discussion -- two for his livestream and one for his members-only forum. It was a great experience. One of the issues we addressed in the members-only portion was Occupy Wall Street.
Tim made his name as a journalist by streaming from the protest in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan -- the main Occupy site. He has long argued that conservatives -- including Andrew Breitbart -- made a mistake by dismissing the movement instead of listening to it.
Tim saw the protest -- at least until it was taken over by trust fund babies and professional left-wing activists -- as an important populist movement that challenged the union of political and financial power. It took Donald Trump to make conservatives listen.
I pointed out that Andrew Breitbart did, indeed, visit and listen to the Occupy protesters -- though he also made fun of them and the fact that they were undoing fundamental values, not just capitalism and law and order, but individualism itself (think: human microphone).
Perhaps Andrew's take on Occupy was also affected by the fact that the protest site we visited was in L.A., where unions were much more directly and visibly involved. It was an institutional-left set-piece. Perhaps it had been less so in the early days in New York.
Regardless, we agreed on a few points. 1. Conservatives should have listened to the populist critique, because their refusal to do so led the GOP to nominate Mitt Romney, who was an emblem of all that both left and right disliked about politics and the establishment.
2. Occupy Wall Street was, in fact, taken over by left-wing crazies who inaugurated an era of wokism. I think that was present at the outset, but Tim points out that it accelerated when people like Sean Hannity bashed the movement. Tribalism hurt political dialogue.
3. The "mic check" stuff really was creepy, as was the movement's descent into identity politics, in which white people were not even allowed to speak (this was years before Black Lives Matter). The crushing of individual liberty was something we all lamented.
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
