Monday, October 17, 2011

Do I have this right?

Distilled down, the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street are complaining about the same stuff but with one major difference about what do about it.

Tea Party:  "Boo, Corporatist Gummint types and rent seeking Companies and Firms!  Stop taking our stuff and leave us alone!"

OWS:  "Boo, Corporatist Gummint types and rent seeking Companies and Firms!  Give us free stuff and take care of us in loco parentis!"

Did I get that right?  Am I missing some angle?  Is that the brass tacks?  Obviously I'm giving the soap-dodgers a lot of credit.  They talk a big game; socialist revolution this, chop off the heads of the greedy bankers that...  But I will give them a HUGE benefit of the doubt and call that part of their faction mere cranks for the sake of this argument.  If they are given free Gummint Cheese and a promise to be taken care of they'd melt away without their revolution or any heads on pikes, methinks.

Same with the Tea Party.  They'd never march again if their tax burdens were lessened and gov't types got out of their faces so that they, the Tea Partiers, could go back to working and living out their lives as they saw fit.  Never marching again would be a mistake.  If you take your eye off a bureaucrat he'll just go about trying to find a way to harm you and then you have to pay attention to him again.  Your best bet is to keep him afraid of you.  If a bureaucrat is scared of you he does less harm.  As opposed when he is just scared.  Then he can cause a lot of mischief trying to protect himself.

[Ha!  And Pajamas Media has a bit on the difference, too, Between the Tea Party and Fleabaggers.  Money quote:  "How does one start from the same basic objection and reach the polar opposite prescription? The answer is a lack of maturity."]

3 comments:

Mike W. said...

Hit the nail on the head, NJT.

Paladin said...

Little known fact: The list of things Occupy Wall Street is protesting against is actually larger than the list of things that exist in the world. It's a physics thingie. Kind of like the Tardis on Dr. Who: Larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Broken Andy said...

I think you got it right.

The OWS motto is "In the government that fucked this all up we trust."