What the -ites don't like

There's a substratum of the Occupy Movement that yields some very hot cultural oil. What appears to the hardcore sub/urbanite as their radical deculturization (a/k/a hippiedom) instantly calls all this fragile cultural superstructure into immediate question.

The -ites think: It's hard enuf for us to keep all these things going, but do those whacko hippies have to disgust & insult & impoverish us while we work at it? Do they have a death-wish or something?

Occupy actually contains a bread spectrum of people, who may look like hippies, but come from of all class-levels. They obviously have a fine/instinctive dramatic sense of getting everybody's attention fixed on where & what they want it to be concentrated on: the centers of power - state houses, city halls, big bank offices (no credit unions), corporate HQs, Wall Street - where it is & what it symbolizes. This is a profoundly educative effort; they aren't asking to be housed on their own behalves - or hasn't anybody noticed this yet? They aren't panhandling us, they're visually & verbally accusing & distressing who's actually ripping us off.

The 1% (of course) want us to be distracted by appearances, charmed by the envied & admired rich, while being disgusted by what appears to be the undeserving poor sleeping in little mountaineering gumdrop-tents on downtown sidewalks. What actually happens is that the more Occupiers are abused, the deeper our subconsious sympathy runs.

Some super-hacks (Willie Brown in his last Sunday's CHRON column) scorn the Occupiers for having cellphones & thus not really being abjectly poor. For the record: Occupy is not a Poor People's March. It's an Informed People's deeply disturbing indictment of our warped economic situation. The more it warps, the more disturbing the indictment: We ask ourselves: Why...can't we just fix it?

Ans: The -ites like it just the way it is. So do the plutocrats who once used to inspire them. That pathetic delusion's being called into question now before our decreasingly unbelieving eyes.