Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, ctd

"One looks cooler. The other smells better." Jacob Weisberg contemplates their political impact:

Where the Tea Party is anarchic in principle and conservative in style, Occupy Wall Street is anarchic in style and liberal in principle. Tea Party rallies are dominated by middle-class, middle-aged white men who pack up their coolers and go home at the end of the day. The Occupy Wall Street encampment, which I visited a couple of times last week, is more like a Phish concert that forgot to end. The Tea Party, remember, was launched by a guy in a suit on the floor of a financial exchange; it’s the backward-looking movement of people worried about losing their place in society. Occupy Wall Street was spawned by a poster of a ballerina perched atop Wall Street’s bronze bull. It is the image-conscious, forward-looking movement of people worried that they may never live in the kind of country they want. Occupy Wall Street looks cooler. The Tea Party smells better.

And yet both seem equally pathetic. I suspect it is rather easy for those – often with more time than sense – to throw themselves behind whatever movement they wish, refusing to acknowledge its ultimate futility in bringing about meaningful social change. Both have no well-formed idea of the change they wish to see in the world. How can we possibly take them seriously?