Occupy?

The events at the various Occupy Wall Street protests have made me realize something: I can find it hard to evaluate events objectively when I find myself either opposed to someone's opinion, or even apathetic.  The bald fact is that I have very little sympathy for the OWS folks, for any number of reasons: here are some of them.

In the first place, their grievances are, for the most part, wildly generic, and run in one of two general channels: either the rich should get less, or the poor should get more; in either case The Government should make sure something equitable happens.  (The Tea Party complaint, that the government needs to stop the "bailouts" and super-regulatory state which ends up encouraging these (often publicly-financed) bonuses), is occasionally heard even at OWS but is antithetical to their main complaints.  To illustrate: the Tea Party wants to stop bailouts, period; the OWS folks, even those concerned about the issue, are more likely to try to pass regulations making it illegal to accept bailout money.  The Tea Party would limit government; OWS, the private sector.)  As I happen to believe that less government, beyond necessity, is usually better, and I tend to think that the necessary amount of government is kind of low, ideologically I have no common ground.

In the second place, the nature of the protests has been ridiculous, and not defensible as "free speech".  Camping, as in NYC and elsewhere, is not speech.  It doesn't even fit any reasonable definition of "assembly".  Shutting down a port, as in Oakland, is not speech.  (And what exactly was the Oakland port doing wrong, anyway?)

In the third place, I find the protests – at least as covered in the media – to be disturbingly unpolitical.  There is no agenda.  There is no political organization on any meaningful scale.  There is not even a denouncement of the current political organization, beyond a few particular policy differences.  I'd prefer to deal with out-and-out communists, totalitarians, or shariaists, from an ideas standpoint.  You can't argue with, "Everybody should have food," when the proposed mechanism to make this happen is, "Somebody (meaning somebody else) should figure out how."  Which is to say, the protestors demonstrate a dependent mindset in many ways, which I find childish if not repellant.

At the same time, we are hearing reports of police brutality, in varying degrees; what is hard to tell, very hard to determine, is whether this "brutality" is being provoked – I won't say justified, but at the same time there are also reports of criminal activity (from drug use to thefts to rapes) which would demand a police presence, and I get the impression that the police are largely not welcomed.

If police – or other government force – is being employed illegitimately, this is bad and should stop.  At the same time, I'm finding that I have trouble caring, not because I think the protesters are wrong, exactly, but more because I far as I can tell their wasting time and space and media attention on ...exactly what, anyway?  As regards the protestors, I'm apathetic.