After this weekend, it is impossible to deny that something is going on out there – something that spans different cultures, countries and polities. From the "Indignants" of Madrid to the pierced peons of Times Square to the thousands in Berlin and Frankfurt and London: this is a chord being struck. The question, to my mind, is: which chord exactly?
The demos remind me a little of ACT-UP in its heyday, when AIDS activists got into the faces of the powerful and the masses and demanded they not be forgotten or ignored. There was the same ghastly p.c. crap, in which all that matters is the conversation and pure democracy and not specific leadership, which is swiftly problematized as patriarchal. But ACT-UP had an obvious set of goals: speed up HIV research, force drug companies to lower prices, give the FDA a kick up the ass, lobby for ADAP, etc. What does the Occupy movement actually want?
I see the signs urging us to "smash capitalism" and remain unmoved. Capitalism has – even over the 
last decade – brought more people out of poverty than ever before in history. I see personal hatred aimed at people working in the financial services industry, which again leaves me unmoved and not a little nauseated.
But what I do see is – finally – a powerful cultural protest against the corruption of capitalism in the last decade, the crony-ridden political system that even now is trying to stall or gut Dodd-Frank, and against the staggering inequalities that now exist in this country and threaten to change its core democratic nature. And this is a good thing. It's a good thing because it provides essential balance to the Tea Party's case against government as a whole. Only one entity can restore some equity to the system and it's government. Disempowering government at a time when the current system is consigning millions to decades of unemployment while rewarding a fraction of that with simply unimaginable rewards … that's a recipe for social unrest.
In other words, this street movement is emerging to demand some accountability from the bankers who helped destroy this economy, from the politicians who used our money to save them, from the GOP even now balking at basic regulations on Wall Street to help prevent another crash, and from Obama whose conciliatory style so many now regard as betrayal.
Some of this is self-serving. I don't believe the debt binge – private and public – was conducted without the eager participation of large numbers of Americans, trying to get something for nothing. I don't think you can leave government off the hook either, given its disastrous role in Freddie and Fannie. I think blaming Obama for all of it is absurd, when he is trying very hard in a deeply constrained Washington to enact core reforms. But reminding Wall Street and multinational corporations that they inhabit a polity, not a planet, is a good thing. Their fate is connected with ours, and until we return to a government that can balance its books, and to a banking system that seeks merely to make good loans, we are all in trouble.
My instinct is not to worry about those inequalities that reflect different talent or luck. Equally, though, when inequalities persist that are structural, that are rigged by one economic sector dominating others, and when the global trends point to even greater polarization, I think we should worry. This inequality will not hold over another decade of mass unemployment. Globalization is beginning to find millions of middle class victims in the West. This, in some respects, is the middle class's 1968.
The question hanging in the air will be the president's response to the movement. So far, he's been as vague as the movement itself. But if Obama can reframe his political future as harnessing this street power to hold the powerful accountable, if he can leverage it into passage of the American Jobs Act, and if he can cite this inequality as a reason for major tax reform with entitlement cuts and revenue increases, then Romney suddenly looks like a defensive plutocrat.
It's a question of movement and mood. The anger was first directed at Obama from the right (and largely redirected away from Bush and Cheney). Now it is being directed at those who were rescued after staggering recklessness. Each mood creates a different climate. And this one, I'd wager, benefits the populist left.
The Dish 