It was a bizarre juxtaposition. This Monday, I found myself in downtown Los Angeles while my wife, an Israeli green card holder, took her test for citizenship. “It is a privilege to become a citizen of this country,” she told me before heading into the immigration office. Across the street, hundreds of American citizens protested American capitalism at the Occupy Los Angeles protests. Their tent city stretched for blocks. Fortunately for me, I now had a couple of hours to kill and a camera in my car. Thus began my journey into the heart of moral and intellectual vapidity.
A member of the 53% drives past the tent-sitting members of the 47%.
The romantic walkway of OLA. Just don’t walk it at night.
Yogi Bear’s heart rate just jumped exponentially.
The self-aware portion of OLA rightly labels this “skid row.”
It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly in the sky. Nobody was starving in the streets. Showers were widely available.
And yet at the Occupy Los Angeles protest, the look was dirty grunge, the smell Mary Jane, and the atmosphere one of pathetic desperation tinged with utopian unreality.
I began my journey at the corner of Main and Temple. The light poles were festooned with the celebratory beauty of this spiritually uplifting movement:
Despite its boasts, 99% of Los Angelenos do not care about OLA.
So, who are these supposed 99%? As we’ll see, they’re generally college students who took their professors’ rhetoric about “safe spaces” too seriously, and homeless people and/or losers who are looking for an excuse to live in tents out in the open, without being harassed by the police. These are not former employees of Countrywide – or former mortgagers of Countrywide. They are people hungry to hang out in the SoCal sunshine with the approval of the local government and the paternalistic go-ahead of the President of the United States.
As for the notion that these rallies have not been astroturfed by existing organizations … not so much. In case you can’t read these posters, they were provided by the AFL-CIO, the National Association of Letter Carriers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. That means that our taxpayer money is, in backdoor fashion, subsidizing the Occupy movement, since these unions all collectively bargain with the government.
The grassroots all have enormous contracts with the government.
The most obvious theme of Occupy Los Angeles is that there is no theme. While President Obama proclaims that Occupy Wall Street is a concerted movement for social change, and while the media tries to liken it to the single-message Tea Party, the Occupy movement is really a random agglomeration of radical leftist causes meshed under the banner of anti-establishment thinking. The signs reflected this ideological schizophrenia – as well as artistic and basic linguistic incompetence:
The LGBT movement stakes out its claim.
The composting crowd is there.
So are the class warriors, whose probable public school education gave them just enough literacy to misspell “billionaires” and beg for cash for their unclean gas generators.
What’s Yemen got to do with it? Who knows?
Indiana Jones and the Protest of Doom.
Remember that guy looking for cash for the gas generator? He should have a little discussion with this fellow.
Don’t forget animal rights.
Hint: Take the bike repair.
Bill Clinton’s tent.
Correction: This is Bill Clinton’s tent.
Most of the tents seemed to be empty. At least, the native life hadn’t yet made itself apparent. Those who were sitting outside didn’t look much different from the unfortunate homeless who dot streets all over Los Angeles. They had just relocated. But the smell of pot told the story as I approached the local hotbeds of activity. Most of the activity took place in larger tents, where small groups of younger people crowded together to toke up. I heard one random man shout in drug-induced ecstasy, “You motherf——! I love you motherf——-!” The unity was palpable.
This would be labeled “urban renewal” by liberals.
I didn’t expect that the protest would actually be dominated by hippies – honestly, I thought it was conservative name-calling. As it turns out, this wasn’t labeling, it was journalistic accuracy. Many of those walking around were filthy, hair unwashed for weeks, living on the dirt ground. If these are the seedlings for Obama’s socialistic revolution, he’s going to have to delouse first.
This is what equality looks like.
The army of the useless and the misguided.
Their parents must be so proud.
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