Occupy Wall Street and Rolling Stone

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone is just about my favorite writer on the internet.  This piece is great:

And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

We cheer for people who hit their own home runs in this country– not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.
That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.
All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes...

He goes on to describe the many ways in which the banks have been handed free money and bailed out in a myriad of ways from their stupid decisions, while regular Americans have no such advantages.

One thing about OWS that conservatives don't seem able to grasp is that it's a leaderless movement, completely unhierarchical.  It's incredibly diverse, so while there are really cool, smart people like this:

...there are also plenty of crazy Stalinists, heroin dealers, and apparently even a stray Nazi or two.  Right now the best thing the movement is doing is building momentum and getting the issue of inequality into the national conversation.  I'm not sure if anything else will come of it, but if not that's still a pretty good accomplishment.

The comparison to the Tea Party is interesting.  There are plenty of similarities.  But one key for me is that the Crazies in the Tea Party have completely taken over the larger conservative movement.  The Republican presidential candidates are completely unwilling to cross even the most extreme Tea Party talking point.

(I love that sign, from a Tea Party rally.  It's a cheap shot I know.  Stupid protesters are all over the place at both OWS and Tea Party rallies- I concede that readily.)

I don't think that any significant Democrats, on the other hand, are likely to propose forgiving all college loans or socialized medicine.  The kooks on the Left are on the fringe, while the kooks on the Right are in charge of the GOP.