And We are Here to Protest What We are Here to Protest!

I recently saw a sign from the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" campaign that got my attention and provoked a bit of a laugh. I don't recall the precise wording, but the gist was very clearly this: "Wall Street is responsible for all poverty in the world."

I had to chuckle ironically as I read it, and also had to chuckle with a steadily lessening enthusiasm as I read more and more of the material coming from the Occupy Wall Street movement. There were dozens and hundreds more signs, facebook comments and Tweets with similar slogans, their spelling ranging from fair to incompetent, and with growing dubiousness as to the truth of their content. The first sign mentioned here was clearly an unresearched statement at best, as there are many other demonstrable causes of poverty in the world such as war, confiscatory governments as in the case of China and the former Soviet Union, and other causes having nothing to do with Wall Street. However, not only was some of the other content on this issue even more assinine in its name-calling and wild accusations, it also demonstrated a disturbing muddle of reasons for why these people were even protesting in the first place.