Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh read the minutes from an on-line meeting conducted by some of the participants of OccupyWallStreet.
Did they rail against fascist-pig cops? Tearing down the walls of capitalism? No, they were concerned about whether they should sew old sleeping bags or go buy new ones, worried they were making a compromise with the devils of capitalism. In their Solomonic wisdom they split the difference and decided to find used ones in thrift stores, and then made a shopping list of other supplies they wanted to mooch from financial supporters; free medical, food, ground cloths, etc.
Rush made great sport of these people (not all are kids) and the lack of any real-world common sense about anything. (I’m guessing here) most of these have never had a job. When they couldn’t tap mom or dad or their trust fund for a fifty, having to use an ATM (what would their peers think?) their next natural response is to mooch it. That they should exchange their labor for a dollar has still never occurred to them. Or that it is even an option. (I know people like that on our side, too.)
As I’ve said before, they are lost, totally lost, educated and trained from childhood to be mindless, to refrain from any and all critical thinking, to shrink away from all personal responsibility, and now, to dream pretend-dreams of heroic Olympian deeds merely by crawling inside a sleeping bag when the temperatures drop below 60, snuggled up to a cheap bottle of Ripple… just likes drunks have done on the sidewalks of New York since Garfield was president.
OccupyWallStreet will be their Omaha Beach and Agincourt all rolled into one, where on the annual Feast of St Van Jones they will roll up their sleeves and reveal their old wounds, and show adoring children where they cut their fingers on a sardine can.
And tomorrow they will awake, and do it all over again, awaiting some signal, some spark, some sudden movement, never knowing that no matter who wins, or how it all turns out, they will be the first to be rolled over and the last to get up.
For they are useful idiots waiting to be cannon fodder.
“Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die.” (Tennyson)
It’s hard not to poke fun at this brood, but in the three weeks since OccupyWallStreet began, it has grown and multiplied to several more American cities. After the first weekend we announced it a giant fizzle, only several did not go home, and apparently did not despair. They let their Twitter do their talking (Yes, how are they keeping those cell phones recharged?) just as it had been practiced in Egypt in February. And more came, first in trickles, then, with the help of the media, who likens them now to the Tea Parties (of Sesame Street) and Hollywood celebs, OccupyWallStreet has become a “happening.”
But unlike the radical university take-overs of the 60s-eralt 70s, there is less of the fascist-pig talk, at least to the naked eye. True, they have leaders and facilitators who think only of these things, but the useful idiots show up in groups of five or so, then are assigned to a sector and a group leader, much as replacements would have been assigned during the Battle of the Bulge. They aren’t beating on pipes, breaking store windows (yet) but rather concerned about creature comforts in what may be a long wait before a battle.
There is a disquieting quiet about all this. They are just there. They are just waiting. They are in bivouac, and when in camp waiting to march, all you think about is a dry tent, grub and a good smoke. It’s universal.
They are only awaiting orders from higher-up. They know their place. They are useful idiots about to be cannon fodder.
Only I doubt they really know what cannon fodder is.
Not since 1944-45 have American men been served up in large order as cannon fodder, storming beachheads under withering enemy fire. But once upon a time it was a standard military tactic to stand up, by rank, and allow yourselves (the cannon fodder) to be shot at, first by cannons from a distance, then by muskets at close range.
I had a friend, thrice awarded the Purple Heart, who, when we played basketball, was a patchwork of bullet and shrapnel scars. Still, he told me there was no way he ever could have done what those men did when they stormed Omaha Beach. All he ever wanted was a fighting chance. And cannon fodder has none. Only luck.
We are nearing a breaking point with this occupation.
Like the Taliban, freeloaders don’t generally like to fight, or camp, in the winter. And winter is coming on.
But without being “inside” it’s hard to know if things are going according to plan or they are making it up on the run since the first days of fizzle three weeks ago. Why this is important is that they often are not very good at planning and executing operations on the run, having to make hurried decisions out of panic rather than coordinated planning. This causes mistakes. Often horrific ones. Only the cannon fodder never know this, just as the Light Brigade never knew the order was wrong and someone “had blunder’d.”
So far, the Occupiers have only confronted the police, and have generally not broken any laws NYPD have felt necessary to enforce with force. Except for the Brooklyn Bridge incident arrests have been relatively few, as have pepper spray incidents.
But the unions will be joining them this weekend. Consider this heavy artillery. Hired union thugs don’t stand off well against police, as unions like to carry weapons and flash them to intimidate, only police are not civilians. Police do not turn and flee. There may be a quickening.
Right now they all seem to waiting for a flash point, at which time the cannon fodder will simply be directed, like cattle, to a spot…it’s easy to do, I could stampede a herd of a thousand with fewer than ten men…never quite knowing who or what it is they are striking out against.
Counter-Strategy
Hats off to the NYPD, for both wisdom and restraint. And to counter-protesters for staying home. The Occupy strategy is to overwhelm by size, once a spark has been lit, and to cause the enemy to retreat, not to lay siege as it seems right now. I can see no reason to cause a riot with this mob. Wait them out. Hollywood will come, but fewer and fewer times. And the media will lose interest and find Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the coming investigation, indictment and trial of Eric Holder – all of far more interest.
In Tahrir Square the “spontaneous freedom-loving people” were 25% students and 50% hired thugs (you can hire a thug for a dollar a day in Egypt) and this OccupyWallStreet will eventually find itself bereft of committed freeloader occupiers. Most will go home, just as they came, in ones and fives and tens.
And once the rank and file of the unions understands that they have no common ground with these microbial Marxists, and don’t really like being thought of as Communists anyway (we’re working this angle as well), they will decide they’ve had enough too. Done right, this could be one of Big Labor’s Waterloos.
As for the cannon fodder, I doubt if this brood ever gave any serious thought to just how it got its name. In chess they are called pawns, yet not the same. And in Soviet iconography they were useful idiots, yet not the same. But when the fuse is lit and they become a mob, they become cannon fodder and I really don’t think they know what that means.
There is no winning for them. Unable to draw even a wiggly line connecting that cellphone, or laptop, or Red Wing boots, or flannel shirt, polypro underwear, to capitalism, even if they win they will lose as the light descends on their cupidity. And when they complain to the people they just helped install into power, just as Lenin did to the useful idiots who helped propel him into power, they will be sent off to the new re-education camps in Utah, or shot.
And if they lose in the impending riots, and they are lucky, they will suffer no more than a busted lip or broken leg.
But either way, they will lose.
