Anatomy of an Occupation

By Robin of Berkeley:

If you’re wondering whether I was at Occupy Berkeley on October 15, the answer is no. I didn’t have to attend; every day around here is Occupy Berkeley.

Because every moment of every day, I am surrounded by people who believe the insanity spewed by the occupants of Occupy. When I listened to the well-crafted video produced by three intrepid, Bay Area tea partiers at Occupy Oakland, none of what I heard surprised me. I thought, “Just another day in Berkeley or Oakland.

Around here almost everyone thinks like these Marxist spewing militants. While in your neck of the woods random strangers may comment, “Nice day if it doesn’t rain,” around here the words would be, “Nice day for a revolution.”

While the video didn’t shock me, it did disturb. What troubled me wasn’t just how widespread is the diatribe, but that up until a few, short years ago, I believed all of it. Before Obama came on the scene, I could have been interviewed, mumbling and bumbling, just like those other frothing-at-the-mouth leftists.

I would also have parroted the Third-World loving party line. I too would have angrily and self-righteously proclaimed that the US was the root of all evil in the world.

To me, capitalism was bad, communism good (which I discovered after watching the handsome Warren Beatty in the sweeping thriller, Reds). I envied Cuba, home of the finest health care system in the world (thank you, Michael Moore). And I, like our current occupiers, ranted and raved about the racist, patriarchal, capitalist system with its millionaire fat cats (which I learned from reading books by those millionaire fat cats, Noam Chomsky, Al Franken, Gloria Steinem and the late Howard Zinn.)

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