COMMENTARY | Besides crime, which now includes the vandalism of the oppressive drums, Occupy Wall Street is threatened with fights over money and with the relentless, remorseless approach of winter. The protestors seem incapable of dealing with either problem.
Occupy Wall Street is awash with cash, some $500,000 by one estimate, thanks to generous donations. However, questions about spending that money have provoked controversy among the people who have gathered at Zuccotti Park to protest greed. Various groups of people are finding that the utopian society that they have created comes with bureaucratic red tape.
There is a Finance Committee that grabs as much of the money it can and is reluctant to dole it out. That sounds very much like the government outside Zuccotti Park. In effect, the Occupy Wall Street protestors are finding out that their taxes are too high.
Indeed, the things that money is being spent on suggest that Occupy Wall Street has taken on the semblance of the Obama administration. A big screen TV has been bought for "movie night," the idea being that this will attract more recruits. However, with winter coming on, the OWS is not spending as much as it should on winter clothing, some sort of shelter, and sources of warmth like space heaters.
This is crucial for the long term survival of Occupy Wall Street. Winters in New York can be very brutal, especially for people proposing to stay outside during it. But by appropriating funds on entertainment and not on necessity, the OWS has taken on another characteristic of the government on the outside. That characteristic is the tendency to waste money. With the Obama administration it's green jobs. With Occupy Wall Street it's movie night.
One has come to the inescapable conclusion that Occupy Wall Street's days are numbered. It is just a question of whether the crime wave, fights over money and other issues, or the brutal cold winter will finish it off. This is what comes of trying to create utopia, which translates from Latin as "nowhere," and not thinking things through. The modern day hippies who wanted to change the world by camping out are instead telling a story that started as a drama, but ended as a farce.
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