As more stuff comes out about the government’s actions during the initial financial crisis, I start to wonder if Occupy didn’t do far more worse than good. The problems we faced then, and continue to face today, in regard to our economy and fiscal policy are enormously complex.
The spectacle of Occupy pushed important coverage and op-eds about these problems off the front page, if not right out of public consciousness, and the discussions about these issues were nether as detailed or as public as they should have been.
If there was any part of the whole movement that did do far more good than bad, I think it was the ‘We Are The 99%’ folks. When stories of hobos and police raids are long delegated to the dustbin of history, I suspect the images of The 99%, silent, suffering Americans, looking out from thousands of internet posts, will remain. I think they are likely to join images from events like the Depression and the Dust Bowl as representative of times that, whatever the cause or the fault, America truly screwed itself over.