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illdoctrine.com

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Occupy Wallstreet

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I started out feeling skeptical about this movement,

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and I think there's still work to be done

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making sure it's as inclusive as it needs to be

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among other things

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but I've been watching it, and I've been going down there

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and I have to say it is an inspiring scene,

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and I think they are getting a lot of things right.

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And when it comes to the core of it,

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the goals and the messaging,

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I think Occupy Wall Street is dead on.

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I think it's every bit as specific as it needs to be.

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And every bit as non-specific as it needs to be.

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It's just specific enough to capture that basic sentiment so many people share,

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and it's just vague enough to let many different people come to it

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with many different shades of that sentiment.

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And as it keeps growing and coalescing,

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if certain people keep on professing not to get it,

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those were probably the people who weren't supposed to get it.

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And that is what I love most about Occupy Wall Street

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As a media person who loves to watch how we communicate in that sphere,

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I love Occupy Wall Street for how it manipulates all the news media's biggest corn balls

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into outing themselves as corn balls.

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I love watching them go on and on about how they have no idea what everyone's protesting.

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I love watching them pretend it's just a bunch of hippies who don't matter

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because they don't dress respectably.

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I love how when it gets too big for that,

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they start saying it doesn't matter because it's a bunch of yuppies who DO dress respectably.

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I love when they say it's off-the-mark because the financial sector is mostly in midtown nowadays.

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Like you really can't comprehend that this is about what Wall Street symbolizes.

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I love when they say it's off the mark because we should be protesting Washington.

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As if the symbolic Wall Street's undue influence on the symbolic Washington

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hasn't been a running theme of this protest from the start.

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I love this whole spectacle of everyone scrambling and scraping for ways to pretend that something

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serious isn't happening here. It's like a big gameshow where everyone competes to see who

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can build the biggest strawman. And it's not only fun to watch,

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it provides a valuable service, because it reveals to us all who the Ringers are Wall Street's Three-card

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Monte table.

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Back in the 80s I bought all my vinyl at a place called The Music Factor

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in Time Square. So I used to hang out on that block and study how the Three-card Monte games worked.

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And as you probably know, every Three-card Monte setup has a Ringer. The Ringer's job is

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to pretend they're an objective, outside observer commenting on the game,

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when they're actually a part of the hustle who's there to help bamboozle

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the public into thinking this game is legitimate. So naturally if we stand next

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to the game and start telling everyone that the game is rigged, the Ringer is going

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to flip on us and start doing everything they can to make sure nobody

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listens to us. They're going to tell everyone that we're a bunch of losers who are just

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hatin' because we don't know how to play the game. We're a bunch of

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cardgame-hating socialists. They're going to try everything they can

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to discredit us so they can protect that game that they're so invested in.

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And it feels like that's what we've been seeing all month with Occupy Wall Street.

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And you might be thinking to yourself my analogy is incomplete because

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those card games also have a lookout, who's there to make sure the cops aren't

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coming to shut the game down. And they usually have some muscle,

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who's there to intimidate us from messing up the game.

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And you'd be right, but that's how this version of the game is different.

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In this version of the game, the hustler's don't need lookouts because the cops

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don't want to shut down the game. In this version of the game, the cops are the muscle

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to intimidate us from shutting down the game.

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And that's not to say I think every police officer is a bad-guy, I suspect that many

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rank-and-file officers are sympathic to this cause.

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But the police, as an instititution, their function in this game has been to

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step in and quiet us down whenever we shout, at the top of our lungs,

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that we think this whole game is rigged.

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So like I said at the beginning, I think there is a lot of work yet to be done,

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and a lot of cards still left to fall just the right way for this to become everything that

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it could be, but I do think it has incredibly potential. I think it's already

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accomplishing big things. And if it doesn't accomplish anything else, I think Occupy

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Wall Street has provided a vital service, simply by making it clear who the Ringers are,

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and who the muscle is, at Wall Street and Washington's Three-card Monte

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table. And I just hope the movement is sharp enough to survive this next stage of the game.

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Where they realize they can't shut us down, so they start trying to co-opting us instead,

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and make us a part of the game.