a complaint about the occupy protests

I'm upset with intelligent people who support the Occupy protests. I always thought that intelligent people would be able to use reason and logic to conclude whether something like a protest was a worthwhile venture. It appears I was wrong.

I've heard from many people - some of them I consider friends - who think OccupyWallStreet, OccupyTogether, and other organizations are doing the good work of the people. That by and large there's valid concerns and complains to be heard amongst their ranks. That their lack of real organization or leadership and the hodge-podge of various complaints is an acceptable reason to protest. That somehow, in some way, if enough people get together and shout, everything will be made good. It seems that when the disenfranchised find the world is unfair, intelligent people will justify any of their actions on the grounds that they have valid concerns.

First of all let's clearly define the actors involved and their reasons for protesting. Based on the official and un-official websites of the groups involved (currently at least 25 independent groups in cities around the country) there are some generalized themes passed around. However, there are no official demands, goals, or mission statements to be found - to the contrary, they explicitly claim they are not yet ready to make such statements. However, you can find some common ground between them all. They all support one another, even though they do not all identify with all "Occupy" groups (as some are basically extremists or are more focused on a cause other than economic, such as anti-war or anti-capitalist groups like Stop the Machine).

The general themes they suggest as their cause are:

1. They are "the 99%", and are upset with "the 1%".
2. Government is corrupted by wealthy special interests
3. There are "problems" with the country (such as healthcare, education, environment, economy) that should be "fixed"
4. They are a resistance movement looking for revolution in America similar to the Arab Spring demonstrations, and use a form of collective communication known as a General Assembly to speak and discuss topics involving the entire group.
5. There is no central leadership or single organization

The first problem with this movement is the way they persecute the wealthiest individuals and corporations. If the wealthiest people control the country and Occupy wants the country to change, it's a bad idea to protest the people that control everything. Occupy immediately puts a roadblock between itself and its goals (if they had any concrete goals). Now instead of fighting say, one single influential institution that has money, they're fighting every single wealthy institution.

The simple math on this should show you why this is a bad idea. They claim many times that between 40% and 50% (jesus, that's quite a gap) of the wealth in the nation is controlled by 1% of it. So now a small, committed group with interests to protect, that has more funding than God, is your enemy. And Occupy is a small group with (comparatively) almost no funding. They're an ant and they just picked a fight with a bulldozer.

The second problem they have is lack of strength of message. Quite clearly, the lack of objectives leaves the group looking like a confused angry mob whose misdirected angst lands on the feet of the rich and powerful. Even if someone wants to join their cause, they may not feel comfortable because there's no telling where it will go or how they'll get there. Basically they're in the dark feeling around on their hands and knees looking for something and they're not sure what it feels like.

The civil rights movement had a clear objective. The women's suffrage movement had a clear objective. It was much easier to organize and plan a way to achieve these goals because they knew exactly what they wanted. A leader could get up and give a rousing speech on exactly why they wanted these goals and everyone could get behind it. But instead of a motivated focused group of individuals, Occupy is chaos. To me they resemble a colony of bees with a drone-laying queen. Everyone is running around over each other in chaos, and the colony will soon die due to lack of leadership.

The third problem they have is their generalized objectives are about as easy to accomplish as creating a hot dog as long as the circumference of the earth. It's totally within the realm of possibility, but it's really really difficult without a lot of different things. You need organizers, you need solid clear communication, you need funding/resources, you need a plan of action, and realistic methods to bring your objective to conclusion. They round off their problems as if it's a grocery list - fix the economy, fix healthcare, fix education, fix the environment. As if intelligent, motivated, organized people haven't been trying to do this for a century.

Complex systems require complex interaction. There are no simple solutions to the problems they face. And if there were, who's going to implement the solutions? The government is just people. Who does Occupy think is going to magically fix everything? Do they think there's some guy sitting in an office somewhere whose job it is to listen to their concerns and he's just been to lazy to fix everything? Like there's some guy in an office with a sign that says "ECONOMY" above his door, and he's making paper airplanes and watching YouTube instead of fixing the economy. The problems involved are so convoluted I can't begin to imagine all the steps required to make a minor improvement. Yet here these people are, expecting others to fix everything for them. Instead of proposing solutions they yell at an invisible personage to make everything better.

The Arab Spring demonstrators in Egypt had specific goals, and a simple solution for them. They didn't like their president and they wanted him out of office. Boom, he's out of office. Did that make anything better? Hell I don't know. I don't know if they even cared. They just had one thing they wanted done and they made it happen. Occupy doesn't even have that. Their wants are so diverse and generic that nobody could ever accomplish them all. Their mission statement is basically ineffective banter and public relations to point out that stuff is messed up.

I would work for Occupy if they got their act together and solved these problems. I could totally get behind a national movement to root out corruption in government and make it less likely for a powerful minority to control the majority. But like the rest of my apathetic generation i'm going to sit back and let someone else figure that out. After all, i've gotta get home to microwave a TV dinner and watch The Office.