The 'Autumn of Anxiety' -- Why Democrats Embrace Occupy Wall Street at Their Peril (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are moving to embrace the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, under the impression that it will serve their party as the tea party has the Republicans. They need to rethink that idea.

George Will is amused at the spectacle of Democrats embracing "Occupy Wall Street" and suggests that conservatives should rejoice at the development. He hopes, perhaps vainly, that the OWS gains enough organization to endorse congressional candidates in next year's election. He points out the inherent contradiction of a movement that believes that the federal government is, "--grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful."

Karl Rove echoes Will's sentiments, pointing out some of the OWS's more unsavory characteristics, such as turning public spaces into public bathrooms. Rove is somewhat pessimistic about the movement's capacity to become a real political force in the Democratic Party (and thus helping to bring it down).

Some have compared the "Occupy Wall Street" movement to the anti war protests of the 1960s, which Will suggests led to the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. It is not even that, insofar as movements go. It has a strange resemblance to the "Summer of Love" that took place in San Francisco in 1967.

Like the "Summer of Love," Occupy Wall Street involves a gathering of mostly addled young people gathering together to make a nuisance of themselves, as well as people joining the scene in search of a party. But there the resemblance ends.

Whereas the "Summer of Love" focused on free food, free drugs, and free sex (with the accompanying instances of overdoses and sexually transmitted diseases), "Occupy Wall Street" features people wandering about chanting incoherently. Sex and drugs are available, but that is only incidental to the experience. It is all about venting and whining.

Call it "The Autumn of Anxiety."

It will be interesting to see if "Occupy Wall Street" survives the winter, when sleeping outside can be onerous. If it lasts until Spring, it will provide a colorful, albeit unsettling, quality to the 2012 election. Then both Will and Rove will be proven right. The Democrats will embrace these people at their peril.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111013/pl_ac/10197093_the_autumn_of_anxiety__why_democrats_embrace_occupy_wall_street_at_their_peril

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