Now, There Are Two

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement moved to Tennessee this past Saturday morning. The locals did not call their rally “Occupy Wall Street”, but rather occupy Johnson City, the local site. Occupy Johnson City seems to have more possibilities.

  We can count on the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street to stay around awhile. For now, both groups have some scary looking characters associated with their movements. But, appearances will go through an upgrade; and become, more mature, more sophisticated, and better informed in the days ahead.

  Both organizations, and I assume it is fair to call them organizations, have many similarities. They approach the inequity condition, from slightly different angles and their solutions could provide quite different results. The Tea Party opposes the concentration of government power, mainly the central government. They see bureaucratic intervention as obstructing progress. Occupy Wall Street sees oppression in the concentration of economic power. When 1% of the population have such a dominant ownership of the wealth of the whole country something is malfunctioning. Of course, both groups are on the bulls eye. Concentration is the opponent, both economic concentration and the consolidation of political power to the central government. Bureaucrats and business maintain their position in tandem. They have interdependency. Wealth could not be so concentrated without an accommodating central government.

  The emergence of these movements has been possible due to the vacuum in political responsiveness. The traditional parties have become sort of irrelevant. Certainly dysfunctional !

  I am sorry I could not check out the local rally. I spent the day in North Carolina inspecting some of God’s handiwork in our glorious Appalachian mountains.