Is It Time to Just Show Up?

Woody Allen may have said it best.  Eighty per cent of success is showing up. 

The time may not be right for Occupy Wall Street to forge a common message.  But a unified slogan could be just the thing for the moment when critics are trying to debunk the movement for its formlessness.

"Just Show Up" could serve the purpose.

Six million Americans have been out of work for more than six months.  If that doesn't qualify people to protest against the greed and opportunism that has exploited them, what would?  The thing about the six million -- and all their dependents -- is that most of the time they're invisible.  So it's hard to imagine how much misery and shame that represents.

As long as people who are suffering from the system's excesses remain huddled by the hearth -- as long as the unemployed protest their fate from corner bar stools across America -- they can be dismissed as an inevitable consequence of capitalism.

Right-thinking people know they are not.  Increasingly, they represent the silent majority.  Instead of being shuffled out of sight, isn't it time for the real majority to JUST SHOW UP?

Right Brain is Empty

CBC's hired mogul Kevin O'Leary is stumped by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges' coherent description of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hedges vows not to re-appear with Canada's answer to the Fox News mouthpiece.  O'Leary doesn't seem able to grasp plain speaking.

If there is to be a productive debate over solutions to the hollowing-out of western capitalist-style democracies, this clip shows it will take debaters who can put their case without resorting to cheap TV trash talk.  As a supporter of "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting" we understand the CBC's effort to balance the conversation by giving air time to both sides.  But surely the right can find somebody capable of representing their position without caricaturing their ideology. 

Name-calling and character-bashing. are the redoubt of the empty-headed.  Those are not the people who are going to dig America out of its slough of despair.

O'Leary reflects the most simplistic side of the argument and real life just isn't that simple for most people.  That's why the Wall Street protesters are calling themselves The 99 Per Cent.  Instead of  profiting from sure-fire formulas for capital gain, most people are struggling to feed, clothe and heat themselves.  O'Leary should try that for a while and see if his simple-mided solutions can dig him out.