ScottSevener.com

So I haven’t really posted much about Occupy Wall Street in the last month, partially because news “coverage” in generally seemed to get increasingly misguided and depressing, and partially because honestly I kind of lost interest and found myself buried under a pile of my own work that I needed to focus on.

…and yet ironically enough, that’s the exact same concern that I’m worried will happen to Occupy on a mass level!

The thing is, what’s somewhat sad about this country – myself certainly included to varying degrees – is that in general, we’re a society that feeds off of sound bites and as a result, it’s kind of uncommon for many issues to stay in the American spotlight for more than a week or so. And while OWS most certainly kept people’s attentions for significantly longer than most, it still begs to question as we move into the third running month of the movement whether most people even care anymore despite whatever turnouts are still present around the country.

To one extent it’s kind of frustrating because if I think back to some of the other major news stories that we saw over the last year – WikiLeaks, harassment by the TSA, government budget issues – most of them aren’t really heard from anymore, and as far as I can tell, it’s not so much because any of them actually got resolved. WikiLeaks sort of faded into the background, despite continuing to operate and battle legal fights for both its founder and one of its biggest sources, the TSA continues to flat-out deny any and all claims to its violations of personal space, and even just recently the congressional super committee established solely for the purpose of avoiding default across the board cuts failed at exactly that, despite what I can only assume would be a lot of pressure to actually do their job correctly to rescue the nation from financial turmoil!

I guess what makes me particularly concerned about Occupy Wall Street in this regard then is simply because if it too just dwindles out of the public eye with little to no resolution but for a brief mention in whatever history books choose to tell it, essentially nothing changes and those who were actually responsible for what OWS is protesting will continue to rape and pillage profits off of Americans’ backs until somebody or something does finally make them stop. Occupy Wall Street felt like it had that kind of potential, and yet where are the politicians stepping up to say that lobbyists have no place in American politics? Where are the law enforcement officials who are leaving their posts and refusing to arrest or bring harm to these people who are asking the questions that need to be asked? Where are the businessmen vilifying their own who take advantage of those naive among us who just don’t know any better and possibly even still don’t?!

These protests have brought forth plenty of people to point out the flaws, but where are the next flanks who will step up to do what’s right to actually close those loopholes and make a historic action to get America back on track? Are those people even among us, or have we all already changed gears to get ourselves ready for the holidays, ever-oblivious to the problems we face that don’t just magically go away if we’re ready to move on without really ever dealing with them??

Or even more simply put, how does one incite real change for a society that greatly needs it when it also happens to have the collective attention span of a 5 year-old child???