DAVE ROSS

Farewell to Utopia

Nov 18, 2011, 9:28 AM | Updated: Nov 19, 2011, 8:00 am

Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: Farewell to Utopia

The Occupy encampments around the country are mostly gone. Broken up by the police. And I’m hearing even some of the supporters say it was probably a GOOD thing.

The occupy movement began with a childlike innocence. And it picked up on some pretty popular themes — Tax the Rich, Get Money Out Of Politics, Invest in Roads and Bridges and Education. This is not crazy stuff. But as it attracted more homeless people, and anarchists, and people demanding not just jobs but jobs that matched their college degrees —

“Social workers like me should be able to find a job,” said one protester.

The movement began plummeting in the polls. It got caught up in an old fallacy. That Utopia is possible. That a classless society can exist. The Daily Show — which I think we can agree is no friend of the Rich Corporate Establishment — sent Samantha Bee to Zuccotti Park and even she concluded the police did the movement a favor:

“As it dragged on the movement had been in danger of becoming the very thing it was fighting against.”

It took a comedy show to get the latest attempt at a classless society to acknowledge that like every human organization it too had divided itself by class. Now maybe they can start a REAL organization and actually change something.

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Farewell to Utopia