The American Autumn?

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700 anti-Wall Street demonstrators were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend — and that sent the Occupy Wall Street protest to the top of the news queue.

And since we all know arrests only make a movement bigger (that was one of the lessons of the Arab spring) are we seeing the American autumn?

Two years is a long time to be out of work; 14 million is a LOT of unemployed people, but we have been a very patient bunch.

Probably because unlike in those Arab countries, in America, even if you’re unemployed, you still have a stake in the economy. We may hate the corporations, but please don’t take away the TVs and the cars and the computers that they produce.

We may hate Wall Street, but it controls a big chunk of our nest eggs, so we’re not quite ready to hand it over to the anarchists.

And the other reason we’re so patient is that most Americans believe in rugged individualism; that ours is a fair system that rewards hard work, and therefore most poor people are probably lazy, and most unemployed people probably haven’t tried hard enough.

And that belief works… until the people who believe it find that THEY TOO are having trouble getting a job. That works until people who know they’re NOT lazy find themselves losing ground anyway.

“Occupy Wall Street” is certainly attracting some of the same perennial demonstrators — but last week, it also attracted 700 uniformed airline pilots marching in ranks, looking pretty impressive.

And if 14 million unemployed people wake up one morning and say, “hey wait a minute — I’m not lazy and I’m still getting screwed…” it’ll be a long drive to Brooklyn.

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