First Michael Moore and now Naomi Wolf are speculating that the recent crack-downs on OWS were … are you sitting down? … coordinated by Obama. Citing a single unnamed source (actually, citing the same source twice through two different bloggers, so that she can claim confirmation), she alleges that DHS has coordinated the crackdowns. The sinister right-wing Obama Administration did this because OWS was threatening politicians’ ability to make money from campaign donations.
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Wait a minute. Only one side is choosing violence? What about those who tried to disrupt a conference held by the eevil Koch brothers? Or those who turned on food vendors when they stopped giving them free stuff? Or the allegations of rape and sexual assault? That’s just what I remember off the top of my head. That’s not to mention the tradition that OWS has inherited from previous violence in Seattle.
Now the government’s response has been more organized. And while I think some of it has gone too far, organized violence is the government’s job. Leftists like are Wolf are wont to forget this. They forget that the healthcare mandates and taxes and regulations that they so love are, ultimately, enforced by the threat of violence.
And this is the first threat against the Congressional money train? Give me a break. The entire Iraq War protest was centered around “no blood for oil”, the idea that Congress and the President were invading Iraq for huge oil company profits. The last time the “get money out of politics” crowd go their way, we got McCain-Feingold. It was passed without violence and it was completely effective in decreasing the power of special interests to … stop that laughing back there. The protesters do want to overturn Citizens United and eliminate corporate personhood (even though, as Bainbridge points out, corporate personhood is a good thing if you believe in regulation). But the likelihood of that happening is pretty close to zero.
Further deconstruction of Wolf’s idiocy can be found here and here. The most that can be said is that the small number of cities had crackdowns after asking the protesters to leave multiple times and these crackdowns may have involved some consultations with experts, including maybe some at DHS. That’s about it. The evidence of a national coordinated campaign simply does not exist.
Look, I’ve said multiple times I’m somewhat sympathetic to OWS. But let’s be honest. They are not complaining, as Wolf speculates, about some obscure provision affecting corporations in Delaware. The most common hue and cry is for a bailout of their student debt. I’m sure what few private interests remain in the student loan market would love for the government to pay off loans in full.
And I drew fire last week for objecting to some of the violent tactics used by police. But how desperate to you have to be to believe that this was the idea of Barack Obama and a bunch of liberal Democrat mayors?
Of course, a complete lack of either evidence or logic has never been a problem for Wolf (or Moore, for that matter). It’s usually just proof that we need to dig deeper!