Reading political threads on this site (and really any site for that matter) is incredibly frustrating. Namely because they all boil down to the same argument. Who is it that is fucking society over? The answer is always simple. It's the other guy, and they are doing it because they have a laundry list of character flaws. Not only is this frustrating, it is also unproductive and largely untrue. There is an old saying that goes "if you think the other side is crazy, you don't understand the other side." If we are to believe the rhetoric found on the topics here and in other political threads, the Occupy Wallstreet movement is nothing but a bunch of lazy hippies smoking crack and punching horses before they have gratuitous liberal sex on beds of food stamps in the middle of the street. Also corporations are run by men that starve children for fun, feed on the poor, and run secret societies where they plot the mass sterilization of humanity. This is not a realistic view of the situation.
The fact of the matter is that our society as a whole is massive. Unbelievably massive. We are seven BILLION people spread out across the globe, we are diverse multicultural, multifaceted and have built a remarkable machine called civilization that we don't even come close to fully understanding. The world is too big for a relatively small group of people to move, and we can't predict markets, wars, politics, religious movements, or cultural movements. But we are certain that the other guys are fucking it up, whoever they might be.
When I look out at our economic problems, our social problems, our inability to reconcile cultural or political differences, I don't see Scrooge picking the pockets of poor people, while the young 'uns use their ipads to complain on their blogs about getting fired from their job at MacDonalds. I see a complex web of biology, psychology, and culture.
Believe it or not, we are not the first generation to have income disparities and be angry at the wealthy. In fact that happens time and time again through out history. Wealth always rises to the top, some of it may trickle down depending on the economic system, but those at the top always get a bit more and then a bit more. All of our economic systems boil down to us being biologically hardwired to make sure we have a little bit more than our neighbor. Not because we're evil, but because it's instinct. If you gave a generous person a million dollars and told him to be charitable, 99 out of a 100 people would come out the other side with a nice car, a new home and a a few people slightly less starving than there were previously. And they would think "that's strange, I really tried to be charitable, I don't know what happened." And then they would probably blame somebody else. We can't help but have wealth pool up at the top, and we also can't help being pissed off at those at the top, which is also part of our psychology. We resent those in a better position than ourselves, especially those that we don't feel deserve it (and they almost never do). Which leads to an endless cycle of history, people start relatively equal, a group gets a bit wealthier, uses that wealth to procure more wealth, eventually they have way more than everybody else, and then everybody else burns the rich people's homes to the ground to let the cycle begin again. It's not because the rich were evil, alot of them are probably very nice people. It's not because the people on bottom are all lazy bums, alot of them are very hard working. It's because we are humans and it's what we do, and have always done. You can dress it up in modern political terms, but it's the same story.
We are also not the first generation to have culture wars. Our entire history has been nothing but one huge culture war. Who's religion is right, who's country best embodies the best of human virtues, who's sports team is the most awesome. That is because we as humans are hardwired to be tribal, to create lines in the sand, divide up who is with who, and then crush the competition. Religious crusades, political strife,even school cliques all boil down to this one simple truth. We identify with a group, and we want our group to win over everyone elses because we believe it's better (obviously it must be better, because why else would we be a part of it?). It's not because muslims are evil, or because socialists are stupid, or gays are gross. It's because we group together with those similar to us, and then when we have that group, we want it to succeed at any cost over every other group. And this is repeated ad naseum through history. Making sure everyone is on the same page, either "re-adjusting" those that aren't, or ousting them from the group, and if the split becomes big enough, the attempted destruction of the other group. It's what we do. You can modernize that too however you want, and believe absolutely that we could all get along if we just got rid of group X, but once you do then the remaining group Y would just divide itself and the cycle would begin anew.
I think much of the machine of society can be boiled down to this: We want our group to succeed over other groups, and we want everyone in our group to be well off but not as well off as us. And out of this simple truth a myriad of both amazing and tragic things come about. It's not because of hippies, it's not because of fat cats, it's not because of atheists, it's not because of christian conservatives, or atheist liberals. It's because of intrinsic logical forces larger than any individual or group of individuals acting in a massive complex machine. We invented all sorts of deities to explain why the sun circles the earth, why it rains, why the seasons change, why the tides come in and out, why we live and die. And like wise we invent fictional caricatures of social forces to explain why markets rise and fall, political factions come into and fall out of power, why wars happen, why there is greed and sloth and apathy. But just like with the deities of old, the answer turned out to be far more complex, and less capricious natural answers to why it rains and why the sun rises. As it turns out it wasn't because "Ra" the sun god lived and died and was resurrected every day. And likewise it's not because the "entitlement generation" is lazy and self absorbed that unemployment is high, and it's not because "christians are ignorant" that education is poor. We had to let go of our old superstitions to start to really understand the forces of the universe and make them work for us rather than against us. And likewise we have to let go of these ignorant false caricatures of social devils that we blame for our misfortunes before we can begin to really understand humanity and make our massive civilization work for us, rather than against us.
So please please please stop posting videos of people punching horses, or getting arrested for pulling money out of banks. It makes us all look like jack asses, or at the least like primitive people blaming the drought on somebody pissing off the rain god. Start looking at the big picture, and stop assuming that all of our problems are the result of people not being a part of your obviously superior group.