Occupy Wall Street is really not a leftist version of the TEA Party

Anyone with a half brain knows the TEA party is not OWS. The TEA Party is loosely organized, grassroots and fed by people with jobs, families and lives. And after they protest over an afternoon they have paid the park fee, left the area cleaner than they found it and the participants then go back to their lives. Anyone looking at the morons (aka Occupy groups) in the country see groups that have destroyed private and public property, tried to cover up sexual assault of women and just want to stay there until someone tells them to leave. It was not a ground up movement but a deployment of rent a mobs with useful idiots as cannon fodder.

With that in mind Mr Cooke has a great one here. A look at the people in the Occupy movement and what is missing in their lives.

OWS Anatomized - Charles C. W. Cooke - National Review Online

It turns out not to be the Tea Party.

...The report, Shortselling America, reveals that, below the surface, there is a lot more going on than meets the eye, and most of it has very little to do with “social justice.” Its author, Frontier Lab takes an interesting approach, applying techniques of market research to political science. The group’s aim is to move away from the short-term model employed by political pollsters — which, although valuable, essentially provides just a fleeting snapshot — and instead to conduct a more thorough assessment of participants’ values. From these data, they then seek to predict future behavior. An example: Surface-level polling will see consumers tell us that the reason they buy a particular dish soap is because it is green, or cheap, or conveniently sized. But research shows the deeper truth is that, overwhelmingly, people buy the same brand as their mother did. (Nobody will write that on a survey.)

What did Frontier Lab discover? First, that many of the rank-and-file occupiers feel isolated in their lives, and appear to lack basic community ties such as are provided by participation in clubs, churches, and strong families. Indeed, much of the report could have come from the early chapters of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. They thus attach to their political causes with something like a religious fervor. For many, a commitment to “social justice” is “not the end, but rather a means to an inflated sense of self and purpose in their own lives.” Crucially, involvement with others who agree with them provides an “overwhelming feeling of being part of a family.” I noticed this on my first trip down to Zuccotti Park, when I saw a telling sign adorning the entrance to the tent city: “For the first time in my life, I feel at home.” On subsequent visits I was struck by the importance of the commune to the project. As much as anything else, vast swathes of occupiers were simply looking for a new club. This group, Frontier Lab dubs the “Communitarians.”

The second group, which to all intents and purposes forms the leadership, is less existentially lost, and derives its fulfillment from the “prestige,” “validation,” and “control” afforded by the movement’s coverage in the media. Frontier Lab calls this group the “Professionals.” Its members fill the ranks of the professional Left and boast long histories of attending and organizing protests. For them, indignation is quotidian, “community action” is a career, and they feel “validated by the fame and attention” and “rewarded for their life choices.” Unlike the Communitarians, the Professionals actually want tangible change, or a “win,” but politics is still playing second fiddle to self. There is nothing spontaneous or organic about the movements they lead. They are waiting for the revolution and hope to be in its vanguard. Their careers depend upon it...

...The Tea Party, conversely, appears to derive its enthusiasm from a sense of responsibility to others and is primarily working for the children and grandchildren of those involved. In the main, its members are not veterans of political protest, nor do they need to be involved to satisfy their souls. Tea partiers seem concerned with preventing fundamental change to the United States in order to bequeath to others a nation they love, not to gain for themselves. When was the last time you saw a tea partier stand up and say, “I’m unemployed, and . . . ” or “I have college debt, and . . . ”? (In Zuccotti Park, this was the default formulation.)...

The full article is well worth a few minutes. I wonder if the Communitarians have realized the are just hobbits of the rent a mob professionals out there? I doubt it. See previous post on intelligence and education.