Finally figured out what was buggin me about Occupy Wall Street ...

...cause I’m naturally inclined to side with the underdogs and nothing gets my back up more than arrogant bullying, abuse of power, and greed…and yet this entire OWS movement has left me pretty much unmoved and skeptical. And now I think I’ve sniffed out the source of my lack of appetite for this particular protest. And it smells like envy. Yup, I think I sense a resentment and disenchantment that has its origins in a misplaced sense of entitlement. The 1% v. 99% symbolism is a substitute for what is basically the claim that “It’s not fair.”

Cmon. Isn’t it also unfair that people who can’t play an instrument, or sing, or think A Sharp minor is a clever under-aged groupie are the ones making more money in the music business than those who can? But what's music, or capitalism got to do with it?

Capitalism unfair? An essentially unregulated, unscrupulous, winner take all and often fixed competition that crushes and abandons the losers with total disregard for all social/economic/public principles of democratic responsibility and obligation is….unfair? And Greed, the very thing that drives the whole thing, is the problem?

Isn’t that like saying that when a plane crashes, gravity is the problem? And what does the OWS crowd say and chant and demand? An end to greed and capitalism? How’s that gonna happen? Make the wealthy promise to be nice? Less selfish? More generous? And what would that actually look like? “ Hey, you folks, we’re sorry you got screwed, so how bout you join us and do some odd jobs around the house and we’ll toss you some loose change, or maybe even put you on the payroll and then you too can be…." What? Like them? They're thieves, and crooks, and cheats, and liars, and worst of all, they don't like to share. Reminds me of the Woody Allen bit about the restaurant where the food is horrible, and the portions are too small.

“Unfair” is a pretty weak argument against anyone who hasn’t the least interest in fairness. And particularly in any argument that purports to be addressing legitimate issues of class discrimination, equal opportunity or justice.It’s not the folks on Wall Street who are responsible…it’s the folks who pretend to be the ones protecting us from the folks on Wall Street. And the reason they’re pretending to protect us, instead of really protecting us is cause … they rarely can, and historically speaking more often than not, they couldn't.

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”
~John Adams

“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
~Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1803.

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.” ~James Madison

“I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. … You are a den of vipers and thieves.”
~Andrew Jackson, 1834, on closing the Second Bank of the United States

“I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy….. I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war.”
~Abraham Lincoln

“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realise that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
~James Garfield (assassinated within weeks of release of this statement during first year of his Presidency in 1881)

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
~Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world– no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.”
~Woodrow Wilson

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace-business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hatred for me – and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”
~Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speech at Madison Square Garden

“All problems, depressions, wars, disasters, assassinations, all of them were planned, caused, instigated, and implemented by the International Bankers and their attempt to establish a central bank in every country in the world, which they have now done, thanks to corrupt politicians who have been bought and paid for. This is all you need to know about the history of the world.”
~John F. Kennedy