(Written in response to "Panic of the Plutocrats" by Paul Krugman, published yesterday in The New York Times, "a look at why there is so much hysteria over the Wall Street protests")
It's true: the super-rich are really coming unglued over the 99 percenters' nationwide protests. The Occupy Wall Street movement that began last month is demonstrating nationwide against corporate greed and control of politicians via campaign donations. The wealthy and the right-wing politicians and media who support them and do their bidding are vilifying these middle-class patriots as anti-capitalist "mobs" who will soon resort to guillotines and gas chambers. Glenn Beck has even warned the fat cats that the protestors are going to drag them out into the streets and kill them for what they have!
Krugman cites Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who "has denounced 'mobs' and 'the pitting of Americans against Americans.' The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging 'class warfare,' while Herman Cain calls them 'anti-American.'
"What’s going on here?" Krugman asks. "The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens."
Maybe this uprising will prove fleeting, or perhaps it's the inception of "the Revolution" that campus activists envisioned in the 1960s. At this point, I'm just hoping it outlasts the inevitable police crackdowns, as well as another bitter winter.
