The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street

The Nation ^ | 11/1/2011 | Richard Kim

[Oatka]

. . . produced a museum’s worth of posters (from the crudely handmade to slicker culture-jamming twists on corporate designs), poetry readings, performance-art happenings, political yoga classes and Situationist spectacles like the one in which an artist dressed in a suit and noose tie rolled up to the New York Stock Exchange in a giant clear plastic bubble to mock the speculative economy’s inevitable pop.

By God, those efforts will REALLY get America out of this hole!

[kearnyirish2]

“the principles of horizontalism, autonomy and collectivism”

It sounds like every slut can be horizontal with as many people at a time as they like, without anyone telling them otherwise.

[AZLiberty]

I hadn't heard before of "The Coming Insurrection" -- the actual document, that is. (Apparently I don't pay enough attention to Glenn Beck, perhaps because he only just now replaced Michael Savage in Phoenix.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Insurrection.

[zopilote]

Horizontalism: Getting horizontal, i.e. getting laid.

Autonomy: Being self-directed, i.e. doing as I please.

Collectivism: Someone else pays the bills, as I am too busy being autonomously horizontal.

[livius]

No, this has been going on long before we started to bring in Asians. Our math and science programs have been a joke since the late 1970s, when we started affirmative action education, where everybody was a star, and we graduate fewer and fewer people in these fields every year.

Part of this may also have to do with the fact that we have an increasing number of women (now the majority) among our college graduates, and unlike Russian and Asian women, they rarely go into the hard sciences, computer science, etc.

There are jobs going begging for people of American or any nationality who have these skills, and this has been the case for years. But our kids don’t go into this because they are the victims of teachers like Mr. Puppet above, and the school system that even gave somebody so stupid a job in the first place.

[livius]

And I probably would’ve gotten drunk and failed out in a big way anyway.

LOL! Unfortunately, I think the problem with many of our schools is that the kids get drunk (or stoned) and DON'T fail out, partly because there are lax standards and partly because mommy and daddy come and twist the arm of any prof who dares to give their baby less than an A.

My daughter was a graduate teaching assistant (in the sciences) and the assistants and even the faculty were terrified of the parents, who felt entitled to demand that their baby (who never attended class, never went to make-up sessions, and failed every test) not ever have to come to grips with his behavior.

[kearnyirish2]

I graduated in the early 90s, and a lot of American computer science majors couldn’t find work; the Asian Invasion had begun. Americans could find work at low pay, with no bargaining power. Now that has spread to the financial areas as well.

[TheOldLady]

Mash His Cute Little Nose

We're Looking For a Little Yellow

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[Pearls Before Swine]

There are literally hundreds of thousands of engineering and tech jobs, almost all of them paying over $50,000 a year to start, going unfilled all over the country or being filled by young Indians and even Arabs brought here on visas.

I'm not sure that's true this year. One of my boys graduated with dual degrees in Math and Chemistry, but couldn't find a job. The closest he got was one he was clearly qualfied for, but because it said "Chem Engineering" on the job spec, the HR person blew him off. Discouraged, he did the wise thing and hid in a Ph.D. program. He really did want to work for a couple of years, though.

[G L Tirebiter]

This article just wanders with the wind.

Amen. Apparently they can't afford to hire editors at The Nation.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I think the best thing the military did for me was show me that I’m NOT the greatest thing since sliced bread, that I have to earn my way in life (not going to be showered with gifts just for showing up somewhere), and that people who don’t think I’m wonderful aren’t necessarily a-holes who just don’t have a clue on life.

The only people who get this kind of treatment are celebrities, and they don’t deserve it, either.

[livius]

A lot of it depends on where you live and how far you’re willing to move. Unfortunately, this can be quite a distance. I don’t know if your son has a family, but it can be very hard to uproot even if he doesn’t have kids. These jobs aren’t available everywhere, and some of the places where they are available aren’t places most people want to live.

Someday, if Obama dries up and blows away and we take the restrictions off our industries, maybe every part of the country will have some of these jobs.

[Pearls Before Swine]

A lot of it depends on where you live and how far you’re willing to move.

That wasn't a problem. I wasn't looking over his shoulder on the job search, but I know he was very capable. Maybe he didn't cast a wide enough net, or looked in the wrong places--can't say.

[tickmeister]

Agreed, I was being facetious about the 20 minutes.
Still, how do you spend $35,000 to learn the skill

[Malone LaVeigh]

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I’m still going to have that drink. ;-)

[arthurus]

I read the first few lines then skimmed a bit the next few paragraphs to see when the satire would begin to bite. It took a wasted minute to decide this is meant to be serious. These little tragedies make me suspect that some folks have emotional breakdowns if mommy won’t let them eat Frosted Flakest one morning.