A blogger calling himself Mark America demonstrates the fear-sodden ideology of the right that is disabling many conservatives’ ability to think clearly about what is really going on:
On Saturday, the “Occupy DC” contingent of the greater “Occupy Wall Street” movement clashed with guards and police outside the National Air and Space Museum. At least one was pepper-sprayed, and one was arrested. They’re now combining with the even more radical October2011 group, the object of which is to overturn our system of government. All of these groups have direct ties to Barack Obama from his years in the left-wing community organizing movement, and to the Democrat party structure reaching back two decades. Let’s be honest: These are the shock-troops of the communist movement in America.
For those of you who don’t yet understand what this is all about, it’s time to clear it up. These people aren’t protesting for reform. They are protesting for the absolute destruction of the United States of America of any description by which you’ve known it. I once thought that to believe this, a person would need the tin-foil hat and the basement computer terminal and be a conspiracy kook, but this is simply not the case any longer. These people have powerful, well-heeled backers, and they are acting in concert with Barack Obama and the extreme leftist fringe of American politics.
They make the mistake of believing the Republican Party is the United States. Big, big mistake. It misleads them into making mistakes of thinking all around.
The Republican Party primarily represents the interests of those who are profiting from the destruction of American society and democracy. It works to divide Americans from each other along the artificial line of ideology. It is owned, this party, by the super rich who use propaganda rooted in fear and resentment to trick people of modest means to vote against their self-interest.
The Democratic Party is no better. It is also owned by the super rich. It tricks people of modest means into believing it stands for their interests, but it stands for the interests of those who own it.
The American system has been destroyed and only the people, left and right, north and south, rich and poor, can put it back in working order. This will require that we stop demonizing each other and dividing ourselves from each. That we start talking to each other and working with each other to save what we can of democracy before the plutocrats rip it entirely out of our grasp.
This is the message of #occupywallstreet.
I am flabbergasted when someone claims that OWS has “direct ties to Barack Obama.” They are making it up from whole cloth. What evidence is there? How do you “debate” something that is completely absurd?
I’m still trying to figure that out, after trying it on Usenet and the Internet for about 15 years. How do you reach common ground when one side is using a whole set of “facts” not grounded in fact but reinforced through fierce repetition? I don’t know.