<story><title>Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>selimnairb</author><text>“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“&lt;p&gt;Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose, which is a reasonable description of concentration of wealth and power across Western countries and especially the US. Occupy attempted to employ more empowering and less alienating peer-to-peer governance.&lt;p&gt;Occupy didn’t “succeed”, probably due to both internal and external forces, but it wasn’t nihilistic.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bko</author><text>Occupy failed because it didn&amp;#x27;t have any clear asks or metrics to track. They were against the bailouts. Did they vote anyone out of office? Did the re-election rate of 90% budge? Are there &amp;quot;Occupy Democrats&amp;quot; like there were &amp;quot;Tea Party Republicans&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;But most importantly, did they stop future bailouts? The original uproar about the 2008 bailouts (TARP) was originally authorized to spend $700 billion, of which they spent $431 billion and they were all paid back.&lt;p&gt;What about with Covid relief? This time the politicians learned not to go through legislature and just use the Federal Reserve directly. This time they were able to disburse 4 trillion in asset purchases, most of which was held by large institutions (banks). $1.3 trillion in mortgage backed securities! Another $3 trillion was spent on liquidity measures, other load purchases, lending facilities, etc. So in total a 10x spend from the proposed 2008 bailout which caused all the uproar. Note this doesn&amp;#x27;t include any money for income support, stimulus, etc. It was just giving money to banks.&lt;p&gt;Occupy just taught the politicians how to do things under the radar.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.covidmoneytracker.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.covidmoneytracker.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>selimnairb</author><text>“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“&lt;p&gt;Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose, which is a reasonable description of concentration of wealth and power across Western countries and especially the US. Occupy attempted to employ more empowering and less alienating peer-to-peer governance.&lt;p&gt;Occupy didn’t “succeed”, probably due to both internal and external forces, but it wasn’t nihilistic.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>game_the0ry</author><text>Agreed - media portrays OWS as broken movement with no goals and no hope of changing anything. That&amp;#x27;s neo-lib PR - corp media does not want you take OWS issues (pro-union, anti-corporate, Medicare for all, etc) seriously.</text></comment>