Blog: The President's Role in the Occupy Movement

By Lawson, Editor of The Spare Changer

This is Part 2 of a series. Part 1 can be . 

Everyone knows that ordinary life today is a painful struggle for many, and reform may not come soon enough. It may not come at all if the Wall Street-purchased, Republican-controlled Congress has its way.

It has already blocked key elements to economic recovery, health care and, soon, job creation. Of course, the sitting President will go down as the villain responsible.

Ideological extremists would have the working class believe that the Republican Party still holds the values and visions it used to have. The average American family needs all of its earned assets and resources. Our dependence on foreign energy forces our government -- whether left or right-controlled -- to run the race of global competition with its shoes tied.

Further -- because all products and services must be delivered to market, and that takes energy, whether in the form of oil, money, credit, or status within the global community -- the American consumer continues to be at the mercy of big business “deals” that must turn a profit. If not, there will be no commerce at all. But what is energy but the ability to do work? We are buying at a loss.

“We” the people. “We” the consumer, are “paying more for less” and what is so morally wrong (it seems to me), is that profits are being made on both ends, at the expense of the middle class.

As I recall, so-called “Reagonomic” Theory and the Bush Era Tax Exemptions were designed and legislated on the premise and promise that jobs would be created for Americans and, in the long run, create renewed prosperity for all Americans, whether through employment or by way of government subsidies. Instead, while that “wealthy 1 percent” and the corporate conglomerates continue to show record profits, people all over the country are protesting the immorality of it all and lashing out in loud voices. But is anybody listening?

Who… is listening?

History will show had wings. It will show that it flew because it was the only tool the masses could wield, and did wield, until supporters of the “Buffet Rule” mindset enrolled themselves in the revolution. That’s when the movement will really become a force to be taken seriously.

It will have been this support that tipped the scales, which towed the line and which eventually lead to sustainable job creation, single-payer healthcare and shelter for all who were ready, willing and able to support themselves and a true “safety net” for those who could not.

History will also reveal the concepts of Government Education Grants (Pell), “welfare” and “entitlements” as transformed from dirty words within corporate boardrooms and wealthy households of the “1%” into terms of pride -- the sheer accomplishment and feeling of what I like to term “wealth through worth.” 

This cultural change could only have come from sharing in our country’s economic sacrifices at this time of dire need. Personally, I hope the present administration defines and accepts the political challenge for what it plainly is: Civil War.

“It is math.” 

It is also, war.

The extreme right makes no bones about its primary agenda, and that is to bring down the Obama administration at any and all cost. That agenda will diminish the ranks of the middle class--only deftly and in disguise—and keep underfoot the chronic homeless, as well as other marginally served. It will hinder our ability to rise above our present stations in life.

This America, our America, will die in due time if the Movement is not taken seriously. Understand that there is profit in poverty: media control, stock market manipulation, misrepresentation of ends and means, pretzel-logic analyses and speculation delivered as fact (almost FOX-worthy funny to my sensibilities!).

These are the weapons of this army of “21st Century Economic Terrorists.” Money manipulators are in the business of putting profit before people. They have been raping our economy and have no problem fleeing a bankrupt America, leaving what is left to be fought over like uncivilized animals until we die.

Note: This comes from a Democrat who has voted Republican in the past, when there was morality in the Republican Party and when the pendulum had obviously swung too far to the left.

In the coming weeks, I expect to see President Barak Obama that is The Occupy Movement. It has the power to jump start his campaign for re-election, because everyone will see that it isn’t just the poor, or the elderly, or our education-seeking youth who are at stake. It is not just our dependence on foreign energy or its shackling of our way of life that are at stake. 

The dreams of all past, present and future American’s are at stake.  This is what it means to be an American, rich, poor, or in-between, sheltered and un-sheltered alike. I sincerely hope you are listening to the Occupy Wall Street “dissenters,” Mr. President.

I sincerely hope you will recognize this Class War, this Second Civil War of the United States of America for what it is; a war.

I beseech you to resist your scholarly and laudable tendency to compromise at all cost. Congress demonstrated during the debt-ceiling battle that you no longer have the luxury of bringing a knife to a gun-fight.