Outside the Box: Occupy Wall Street

Inside the box, they pretend to wonder why OWS is happening. A more realistic question: How could this not be happening?

People are finally exercising their last peaceful option that might influence the system, protesting from the outside against a system rigged by the 1 percent to favor the 1 percent, to the bane of us 99 percent. And the elite are discombobulated, suddenly feeling the heat of intelligence surging from below—intelligence aimed right at them, point blank range. So, officially, they stick to why, insisting on formal issuance of demands. What do the occupiers want? What’s the problem?

Why this is happening is obvious. People tend to eventually rebel if abused long enough, hard enough, and thrust into dire straits; the key for the elite is to render them incapable of connecting enough dots to get any glimpse of the picture. Throughout the history of government, cognitive impairment of the masses has been a dirty little open secret. Intelligence and awareness among the masses impedes government’s catering to its owners. Despite florid lip service about freedom and democracy, “justice for all”, rousing “land of the free, home of the brave”, “your vote counts” and all that, ownership of government never involves the masses.

So after comprehensively dumbing down Americans for so long, pulling out all the stops to foster a mindless society…the elite, secretly frantic, are wondering: How? That’s the real concern, inside the box. How can this be happening, after all we’ve done? Mercury and aluminum in vaccines, mercury piling up in food chains, 72 years of leaded gasoline, neurotoxins in processed foods (MSG, aspartame, etc.); gadgets and cell phones, TV, celebrities, and sports; ghoulish politicians, cultured denigration of intelligence—the methods seem endless; so do the effects.

This whole OWS movement is “scary” for the elite because it does not adhere to institutionalized patterns. There seems to be no head to lop off. Plus, the movement does not fall into Corporatocracy’s standardized traps—but seems to dance around them, even taking bait without springing the traps. Established rules of engagement are being ignored.

And now it’s all spreading around the world.

CorpoMedia full-power omit-and-suppress routine blew up in the elite’s faces. Customary ad hominem low blows are backfiring. They could just crush the thing like a bug, except it’s not a bug. It’s an idea. Ideas can be very contagious if they have good character. And how do you kill an idea?

Elite reactions so far seem like something I witnessed back in high school. Summertime in Seattle, down in the University District; a couple of friends and I slipped into darkness for a screening of the just-released movie, The Exorcist. The theater was packed. And the crowd’s reaction to the hideous visual horror on the screen seemed more disturbing than the horror. That movie was a classic for scaring the scat out of people, but the primary reaction in that audience was laughter. The further people were shocked and horrified the more they laughed.

Such ready masking of fear with laughter tattooed my memory.

Are the elite in such a mode, cloaking their fear with taunts and jeers? Well, it might seem that the righteous-wing cheerleaders on Fox and such taunt and jeer at their own peril if this idea gets much more out of control.

OWS is bursting with character largely because truth and justice are on their side. The opposition is so void of truth and justice that their pathetic, uncorralled hubris is getting ugly. And the world is watching.

The world, our 99 percent (or is that 99.99 percent?), seem to like what OWS is showing them. And what has Corporatocracy been showing the world? It’s been shoved right in our faces, proof there really is only one issue: corporate profit. Nothing is too evil when it comes to padding the bottom line.

Is shoved right in our faces too tame of a description?

Even a quick peek at results of Corporatocracy can get obscene in a hurry. Among the 195 nations on Earth, only 5 of them have worse inequality of wealth distribution than the US. Put another way, in terms of fair distribution of wealth, we come in 189th. Meanwhile, our military spending exceeds that of the rest of the world combined. Sorry way to be number one.

The OWS movement offers an honorable way to be number one. If Americans can show the world that it is possible to impact the humanity-crushing system of concentrated wealth and power killing the biosphere for profit—what an improvement. Corporatocracy, America’s “leadership”—it’s focused the world’s enmity on Americans. OWS, if it keeps gaining power until somehow changing the nation’s course, steering us into actually becoming a positive force in the world; well, at least we can still dream.

Thousands of courageous people are showing us a way; if the rest of us help the dream survive, make it stronger, maybe there still is hope in America? This is not a fad, a passing fancy—we are watching humanity’s last chance for dignity, perhaps even survival.

Change we can believe in? It will only come from outside the system, outside the box. And the dream is alive. Corporatocracy does their worst to kill the dream; but again, how do you kill an idea?

Surely, they are working overtime on that problem.

The rest is up to us.

Rand Clifford’s novels Castling, Timing, Priest Lake Cathedral, and Voices of Vires are published by StarChief Press, and will be available soon as e-books. Read other articles by Rand.