Columnist – John Sammon
Let’s take a look at the main criticisms of the Occupy Wall Street movement by the mostly right-wing groups that you hear again and again.

They are:

The protesters are the “unwashed.”

There is no clear objective. They don’t know what they want. They have no leadership, no purpose.

They want (somewhat contradictorily to the above) the death of capitalism.

They’re former or wanna-be hippies reliving the 1960s.

The “unwashed.” The “unwashed?” This is an insult whose purpose is to denigrate the protestors, some of whom are truly dirty, as lesser human beings. It makes me uncomfortable to hear this because I’m one of the few who remember that Nazi guards at death camps like Belsen and Auschwitz had an easier time killing the inmates once they became starved and filthy. They no longer looked like human beings deserving empathy.

For the Nazis, they were easier to hate dirty.

Unwashed?

Let’s look at this analytically. Let’s separate out 100 protestors. How many out of 100 are unwashed? Truly filthy by choice? Remember, being a little dirty because you’re camping out doesn’t count. The purpose of the protest is to camp in parks and selected sites. Everybody including you and me gets a little dirty camping and I enjoy camping.

I mean filthy because you choose to be, all the time. Habitually filthy. Stinking because you enjoy it. How many out of 100 are that way? No reasonably intelligent or honest person would say half, or 50 are. So let’s be realistic and say 10 are habitual human versions of pigs. They’re filthy. They stink.

Out of the 10, how many chose to be filthy because they enjoy it? Some of the 10 are homeless people, some are homeless veterans, some are mentally ill. If you’re homeless you only have occasional access to a shower, when you’re temporarily in a shelter. The rest of the time you’re sleeping wherever you can, in doorways, in cars, in parks.

Of the 10, how many would seek to bathe in a public fountain in November when the water temperature is 38 degrees assuming you had a bar of soap?

Also remember, sleeping out in the cold overnight is made colder by being dirty. For some chemical reason, the cleaner you are, your body feels about two degrees warmer. How many out of the 10 enjoy suffering with filth and stink because they chose it as a lifestyle choice?

I’d say two. Two out of 100.

Therefore, “unwashed” though partly true, is a label used to denigrate the protest as a whole, like calling all African Americans the N word.

Let’s now assume the accusation the protestors have no leaders and no solutions or purpose is true. Realistically, it can’t have no purpose at all, even if it’s nothing more than calling attention to the fact that some people are dissatisfied. That’s key. Dissatisfied.

I liken it to a baby in a crib. The baby does not show leadership, and it doesn’t know why it’s unhappy, from a wet diaper, or its hungry, or it has a colicky bubble in its stomach. The baby just knows it’s hurting, so it cries. Right-wingers who from this inference would want to call the protestors “cry babies” if they’re honest should realize that adults complain about inequity all the time, like a professional baseball batter to an umpire who calls a ball a strike.

Complaining is also a case of, “the squeaky door gets the oil.”

At the very least then, the protestors, who maintain that something with the system has gone drastically wrong, are crying a warning with their protest. This alone, again assuming it offers no leadership or solutions, does not render it irrelevant. Conservatives maintain nothing is wrong enough for the protest to occur, which is somewhat ironic in that most of them agree our now apparently-permanent 11 percent unemployment rate is not good.

Most ironic of all is the claim that protesters are “against and want to destroy capitalism.” Let’s go back to our sample 100. Out of 100, how many of the protestors are true anarchists or subversives? The irony here is the notion that asking to be included in the wealth of the one percent, is an attempt to destroy all wealth. In other words, you want to destroy something you’re asking to be included in.

I would venture once again, that out of 100 protestors, perhaps two are violent anarchists, with another two simply malicious punks from dysfunctional families seeking victims, or to vandalize property. Even if the number was as high as five each, is the protest as a whole violent?

What about the accusation that the protestors are old or young hippies reliving the 1960s? How many Americans today feel the cost of Vietnam (58,000 American dead) was worth the 12 major years of the war? Protest against real or perceived injustice is a long-practiced American tradition.

Finally, the right wing condemnation of the protest in that the role of capitalism is to make money and “corporate greed” is a meaningless catchphrase because the role of corporations is to “make a much as they can.”

Yes and no.

Does making money absolve a corporation from humanity, honesty, loyalty to its own country, decency? How many of the readers of Politicalarticles.net out of 100 believe a corporation has no moral responsibility at all beyond making profits? Last question, if that’s the case, if our corporate world has gone totally ruthless, is that a dangerous precedent?

I think two out of 100 would say “no.”

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