Tea Party and Wall St Protests: Inherently Opposite

I, like the rest of the country now, am still absorbed in the coverage of the Occupy Wall St protest. As you may remember this event caught my attention from the very beginning and I was disappointed in the little coverage it received. But now even with the media circus going on, I am still unhappy. There is undeniably a lot of coverage in the media but the analysis is so basic to me. "Basic" is honestly the best word that I could come up with without insulting the many journalists who I know are now rigorously playing catch up in reporting this event. But honestly, all these comparisons with the Tea Party are simplistic at best. The Tea Party is a wing of the Republican Party; it always has been. While they have been portrayed as the angry renegade group, the Tea Party has never suggested a structural change of the our current political system. NEVER. What they have done is demand a return and a reinvigoration of the most conservative and parochial ideas this country has ever seen. They are reformists at best.

This is NOT the same as the Occupy Wall St. These people are not reformists. At least not from what I can tell. The change they ask for, the demand for more participation is in its very essence revolutionary. It is at its roots a denouncement of capitalism. And these days people seem to be equating being American with being Capitalist, a statement I will always strongly disagree with. The Occupation protests all over the country are spotlighting structural problems with our economic system and though they may not have the language to explain it yet, they want structural solutions. Naturally this is a strange idea to most people and unfortunately the media seems to be confused as to how to respond to it. But I don't blame them. This is a new idea at its core. One that is rarely given credence in the public.