Thoughts for Remembrance Day, and Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) figures out the #Occupy movement

It’s a big man who can start a national column with an admission that he got it wrong.

This little corner’s been relatively silent on the whole Occupy thing, but now that it’s gotten the Masters of the Universe sufficiently rattled, they’re cranking up the apparatus of repression. At encampments everywhere, the cops are moving in.

In Toronto, Mayor Stupid’s opened his yap to talk about the calls he’s getting from people who want the St. James camp shut down. Naturally, he’s putting it in terms of standing up for businesses and taxpayers. Not citizens. Dumbass has a way of describing the voices in his head that way, regardless of what they’re saying or how many of them there actually are.

(Incidentally, if he’s truly listening to people, it might be worth a call to his office: 416-397-FORD (3673). Be nice to his staff, it’s not their fault their boss is a moron.)

But nothing crystallizes the 99 percent versus 1 percent thing better than watching the violence inflicted on the Occupiers by police — if not here (yet), then certainly in places like Oakland, where a former Marine and veteran of the conflict in Iraq was critically injured after taking a rubber bullet in the head:

Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull Tuesday in a march with other protesters toward City Hall, said Dottie Guy, of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Olsen’s family members said the Marine Corps corporal served two tours of duty in Iraq.

There’s not enough room in this post to wonder why the whole criminal Bush/Cheney gang aren’t under arrest, but if Remembrance Day is a time to mark the sacrifice of veterans, then perhaps we might spare a moment for guys like Scott Olsen. And remember how they’re used for patriotic displays of chest-beating by the chickenhawks of the right-wing noise machine, and then discarded like used toilet paper after their tours are up. Lest we forget, the same sickening patterns are evident up here as well.

But back to Taibbi, who may just be the best political journalist in America today. In his way, he’s also put his finger on the 99 percent versus the 1 percent thing:

One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes. This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive.

He doesn’t come right out and use the word “class,” but then he doesn’t really have to. And that’s something to keep in mind whenever Mayor Stupid (and his Salacious Crumbs in the Sun) opens his piehole: no matter how stupid, vulgar, and ignorant he sounds, let’s never forget who he’s working for. It ain’t taxpayers, it ain’t citizens, and it sure as shit ain’t you or me.

Related posts: