Dr. Mark Finney
Journalism Dept.
Let’s forget a moment about what the Tea Party stands for. I’m not saying that we should forget about their ideology. It’s certainly important to them and I’m sure there is something we can all learn from it, but for the moment, just let it go.
The same can be said about the Occupy Wall Street group (I don’t think we can call them a party). Not that they’ve given us much concrete direction in terms of ideology, but instead, lets put that quandary out of our minds for a moment.
Instead, lets think about what these groups mean in a meta-narrative sort of way.
What we are seeing is some real discontent. Not just discontent, but disenfranchisement too. Democrats and Republicans have run the show for a long, long time. They’re pretty entrenched, moneyed-up, tied to lobbyists, and to their polarized, zero-sum style positions. I know a lot of people who feel like they don’t have an outlet to voice their opinions. I’m confident that you do too. Frankly, our mainstream media, with their horse race and he-said-she-said memes don’t help much in this regard either.
But these two movements, with thousands of vocal and committed supporters and about as divergent ideological agendas as one can imagine represent something. They represent a swath of Americans who don’t feel like they’re being represented, and they’re pissed.
I remember in 2002 and 2003 marching with thousands of others in Washington D.C. to try to convince the President not to invade Iraq. Clearly we were unsuccessful. My point in mentioning this is to convey that when people are disenfranchised they do things to reenfranchise themselves (I know that’s not a word).
This is what we’re seeing: aggressive, enthusiastic reenfranchisement (which is still not a word). It felt really crappy to spend the whole day marching with thousands of others to no effect. But the Tea Partiers have taken this a giant step further, organizing, getting on ballots, getting themselves elected and saying f-you to the Republicans who had previously counted them as supporters. Now it seems that the OWS group is directing a similar metaphorical finger toward the Democrats.
Will the OWS folks have the same success as the Tea Party? Probably not (without corporate funding, would the Tea Party have gotten as far as they have?), but then what happens with all of the sentiment that’s percolating in the streets of New York, Washington D. C. and even Denver? Will it go back into hibernation? Will one of our two parties pick up the call?
What’s Been Said…