Occupy Wall Street: The Final Implosion and the Impact on My Politics

It seems Occupy Wall Street has finally imploded and died. I say good riddance to bad rubbish. Yes, I supported Occupy for a period of weeks, much to my shame. Once Occupy got away from a populist economic message and went off into far left nonsense it was doomed. Huge clue: Marxist teach ins don't fly in America. Neither does the over the top anti-Semitism that came to pervade the so-called movement.

The fact is that Occupy has been dead for a couple of years now. Those in the hard core left-wing social media bubble don't realize it because they've supported one another and somehow think lots of other people agree with them. These, of course, are the folks who think President Obama is a corporate sell out and who either stayed home during the 2012 elections or supported Jill Stein for President. How many votes did she get? Getting 0.36 percent of the vote is not making an impact. You see my point. Occupy had become another piece of the extreme left wing, and hard left politics are terribly unpopular in the U.S.

Occupy did have an impact. It made income inequality an issue Democrats and even some Republicans are still talking about. It deserves some credit for that. However, a "leaderless" organization (or rather disorganization) which tried to make decisions by "consensus" was doomed to failure from the start. An organization like this needs leadership, real leadership, that can keep it on message and keep that message narrowly defined. That's how things can get accomplished and how progress towards the worthwhile goals that Occupy started out with can be made. Right now the name Occupy is poison to anyone not on the far left. If you really want a populist, non-partisan movement with broad based support you need focus, first and foremost.

I had been drifting from right to left politically for a very long time when I joined Occupy, willing to devote time and resources to what I saw as a worthwhile movement against corruption, undue corporate influence and for needed economic reform. Since that brief period, since I became more tuned into left wing media and what the left stands for, I've been moving in the opposite direction. I fully expect to vote Republican for the first time in a quarter of a century in the 2014 elections. That's the one positive change Occupy did make in my life. Congratulations! I don't think that was the intent of the movement but it sure convinced me that was the correct and moral direction for me to move in.

[Drawn from a debate on Facebook,]