I don’t think the New York City police should be torturing peaceful demonstrators with pepper spray, but I don’t understand why I am supposed to care about this whole #OccupyWallStreet protest. There is no platform, no legislative vehicle, no coherent call to action, no overriding message, and very little in the way of any point. While the enterprise is less nihilistic than the Rodney King riots or the recent unpleasantness in England, it is even less effectual. I am not sure they are even being successful in inconveniencing anyone. The best I can say for the whole effort is that at least they haven’t created a right-wing backlash. If you want to hurt Wall Street without hurting everyone else in the process, develop a legislative goal that sticks it to Wall Street without further tanking the economy. Walking around in circles in Lower Manhattan and chanting “This is what Democracy looks like” is little different from holing up in your apartment with a week’s worth of free porn. It’s nothing more than a Wank-a-Thon, and I find the whole thing boring and depressing.
I mean, look at this:
Just for the record, I love cops. I do, my mother worked in the justice system for 30 years, and I’ve known a lot of really good cops, really good honorable people just doing their jobs. I’ve never agreed with the sentiment, “Fuck the Po-lice,” and I still don’t. But these guys are fucked up. There was an anger in those white-shirt’s eyes that said, “You don’t matter.” And whether they were just scared or irrational or looking for a target for their rage, there was no excuse for their abuse of authority. I had always thought that people who complained about police brutality must have done something to provoke it, that surely cops wouldn’t hurt people without a really good reason. But they do. We were on the curb, we were contained, we were unarmed. Pepper spray hurts like hell, and the experience only makes me wish I’d done something more to deserve it.
And that’s the problem. People aren’t doing anything worth commenting on. They don’t deserve a response, let alone pepper spray. When they deserve the pepper spray, maybe I will give a shit.
