Well, to be honest I can’t say for certain that the individuals in the video (dated September 23rd) watching the protestors marching past them from their balconies on Wall Street work for Goldman Sachs, other Investment firms, hedge funds, or one of the numerous financial institutions (private and quasi-governmental) implicated in creating the global financial crisis that caused the Great Recession, but odds are that if they do not, they move in the same circles. So take a good look at them in the video below beginning about the 54 second mark.
Don’t they look so happy and serene, and amused by the doings of the hoi polloi making their little march and chanting their silly slogans? They are laughing, joking with each other,smirking, and taking pictures and videos to show there friends of the absurd little people in the street below who stupidly believe that these little protests will have any impact on the lives of their betters standing above them. And these well dressed, relaxes folks are celebrating the occasion with no doubt expensive liquor.
Of course, since the date of this video they’ve become a little more anxious. After all, the NYPD has now have been given free rein to use mace and batons (please don’t call them “billy clubs” as that would be so louche), and we know the CEO of one of these firms instructed the NY Times Financial Reporter to conduct a reconnaissance mission to determine the danger he and his minions faced from these bums and low-lifes. Still, I have to believe that what we see in the video above represents their true feelings regarding the Occupy Wall Street protests: disdain, condescension, bemusement and joy at the chance to take a break from driving the world’s economy off a cliff in order to enjoy expensive alcoholic beverages (no Yukon Jack or MD 20-20 for the members of the ruling class, oh no!) while mocking the DFH’s on the sidewalks below.
Just look at their faces. Look carefully. Do you see any expression of empathy? Compassion or sympathy? I see one well dressed man lifting his glass to them in a sardonic salute. They think they hold all the cards. They don’t look worried in the least. It’s almost as if they think the protests were a little bit of street theater created for their own amusement. Why else take time off from their busy, busy day running the world if not to enjoy a 3D reality show performed especially for them. It’s as if the people in the street are ants, and they know they can step on them anytime they wish, but out of boredom or apathy they chose not to that day. Certainly their faces tell me they don’t consider the protestors below as real human beings deserving of the same rights and privileges that they, the Lords of Wall Street, greedily keep to themselves.
It’s all there in their eyes. To them we are insignificant, lacking any value or respect. We might as well be a different species from them. Our struggles, our pain, our demands are not worthy of their time or attention. The only thing they think us good for is to provide them a little entertainment on a late afternoon after the markets have closed.
Perhaps they still believe that about us. But we have not gone away since this video was shot. We are still there and the movement, despite all the scorn and ridicule about our movement in the media they control, despite the police state tactics of law enforcement agencies employed against those of us on the front lines, not just in New York but around the country (the top recced diary at Dkos about the illegal and excessive actions of the SFPD in San Francisco is but the latest of many examples around the country).
I wonder, when they go home to their palatial estates or expensive Manhattan condominiums and penthouses, before they go to bed after checking the opening of the Asian markets on their Blackberries, whether a little smidgen of fear has crept into their lizard brains? Surely this can’t keep going. Surely these “things” will crawl back into the woodwork where they belong as the temperatures get colder. Surely, this movement, without funding and directions from Billionaire financiers and political operatives will fall apart and blow away like dust on the wind. Surely.
But however smug they may appear outwardly, they can’t be sure, can they?
