People say that the Occupy movement has not been clear in its demands. I would say that their demands could not be more obvious.
They are already being articulated everywhere: the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Salon.com, the New Yorker. They are full of luminous writers: Nicholas Kristof. Paul Krugman. Gail Collins. Hendrik Herztberg. George Packer. Steve Coll, Bill McKibben. Dozens of intelligent books have appeared on the shelves in the past few years, examining the country’s problems and offering thoughtful proposals for reform.
They want a fairer tax system. They want a sane energy policy that addresses climate change and searches for cleaner ways to power our civilization. They want a government that is not wholly owned by the rich. They want access to justice and education. They want a reasonable hope of getting and keeping a job that gives them a living wage and the ability to invest for the future.
They want a rational health care system that they can afford. They want government policy that is driven by thoughtful attention to rational research, not ideology. They want a transparent government that holds the powerful accountable. They want a government that understands the importance of investing now in human capital and infrastructure.
The obstacles to reform seem overwhelming. The country’s far right has systematically obstructed every attempt to change things for the better. The electorate seems hopelessly divided. For decades, it has voted to create legislative deadlock. Despite the overwhelming failure of the Bush administration, half of the country has not grasped how utterly the Republican philosophy of governance has been discredited. The Democrats are uncoordinated and have no coherent philosophy at all. In our Internet age, the media are so fragmented that no single idea can seem to hold the country’s attention for long. America has never seemed more divided and paralyzed in living memory.
