Frank Rich, from his new perch at New York Magazine, has written another long, considered evaluation of the Occupy Movement, focusing on its Wall Street instance.
I disagree with the piece's title ("The Class War Has Begun"), especially since Rich is the man who previously coined the phrase "the Billionaire's Coup," which I have been co-opting ever since.
Nevertheless, the piece is well worth your time. One of its excellencies is that it takes the long view. Here's the opening:
During the death throes of Herbert Hoover’s presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over—alone, in groups, with families—until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River’s fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army—for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didn’t want to wait any longer for their pre–New Deal entitlement—especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist “Radio Priest” who became a phenomenon for railing against “greedy bankers and financiers,” framed Washington’s double standard this way: “If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to the soldiers?”(If you click that link in the 2nd paragraph, you see a nice YouTube of actual 1932 footage; well worth two minutes of your time. And yes, I know that Fr. Coughlin is a seriously mixed bag, but early on he was as FDR–anti-banker as the best of them.)
The echoes of our own Great Recession do not end there. Both parties were alarmed by this motley assemblage and its political rallies; the Secret Service infiltrated its ranks to root out radicals. But a good Communist was hard to find. The men were mostly middle-class, patriotic Americans. They kept their improvised hovels clean and maintained small gardens. Even so, good behavior by the Bonus Army did not prevent the U.S. Army’s hotheaded chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, from summoning an overwhelming force to evict it from Pennsylvania Avenue late that July. After assaulting the veterans and thousands of onlookers with tear gas, MacArthur’s troops crossed the bridge and burned down the encampment. The general had acted against Hoover’s wishes, but the president expressed satisfaction afterward that the government had dispatched “a mob”—albeit at the cost of killing two of the demonstrators. The public had another take. When graphic newsreels of the riotous mêlée fanned out to the nation’s movie theaters, audiences booed MacArthur and his troops, not the men down on their luck. Even the mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the Hope diamond and wife of the proprietor of the Washington Post, professed solidarity with the “mob” that had occupied the nation’s capital.
The Great Depression was then nearly three years old, with FDR still in the wings and some of the worst deprivation and unrest yet to come. Three years after our own crash, we do not have the benefit of historical omniscience to know where 2011 is on the time line of America’s deepest bout of economic distress since that era. (The White House, you may recall, rolled out “recovery summer” sixteen months ago.) We don’t know if our current president will end up being viewed more like Hoover or FDR. We don’t know whether Occupy Wall Street and its proliferating satellites will spiral into larger and more violent confrontations, disperse in cold weather, prove a footnote to our narrative, or be the seeds of something big.
What’s as intriguing as Occupy Wall Street itself is that once again our Establishment, left, right, and center, did not see the wave coming or understand what it meant as it broke.
Here are Rich's comments on class and "class war" — this is mainly right, though I'll leave my disagreement at the edges unexpressed (for now). His point about anger is exactly right.
These efforts to domesticate and contain the protests are unlikely to succeed. It is not frustration that’s roiling America but anger, the anger of a full-fledged class war. ... But the crisp agenda demanded of Occupy Wall Street will not be forthcoming. The inchoateness of our particular class war is central to its meaning. America is not Tahrir Square or the riot-scarred precincts of North London, where everyone knows at birth who is in which class and why. We pride ourselves on being a “classless” democracy. ... The often confusing fluidity of [our]class definitions, especially in an America as polarized as ours is now, may make our homegrown class war more volatile, not less.He goes on to make his point about confused enemies by contrasting Tea Party Consciousness (my phrase) with the Occupy Movement. Point taken and well made.
Even Steve Jobs (yes, the most recent "tabloid saint" — one of whom no ill can be spoken) comes in for his share of nuanced comment. (Do click and read, if only for that. Rich is not stupid — or unobservant.)
Rich's prognosis is similarly nuanced and well-considered.
The whole system is screwed up. ... Elections are supposed to resolve conflicts in a great democracy, but our next one will not. The elites will face off against the elites to a standoff, and the issues animating the class war in both parties won’t even be on the table.He's right. Read the part about the intersect of lobbyists and the Congressional Super-Committee, or the section about Obama (both near the end). He doesn't see a near-term resolution (I agree). But he hints that, just as the Bonus Army was a preview of coming (not so attractive) attractions, so could be the Occupy Movement.
At some point, this will have to resolve itself. Either the 99% will stand down and take it, or the 1% will, or there will be something that looks like war, whatever form it takes.
Class war? That started in earnest when the AFL-CIO failed to support the Air Traffic Controllers — and the right-wing race was on.
GP
