Discovering America

Not too many people in what Sarah Palin calls the "lamestream" media think the Occupy Wall Street protests can last, so long as they don't have a clear agenda, even though their agenda is perfectly clear; they're demonstrating against corporate hegemony and a concentration of wealth that benefits only a few of us.  Since the "lamestream" - er, mainstream media are part of that coporate culture, of course the media are going to say they don't know what they stand for.

Right now, the one thing keeping Occupy Wall Street from making further inroads is the inability of the young, socially liberal people behind the movement to rally others who are not so young or socially broadminded to the cause.  A recent protest in Lower Manhattan attracted  attention from some construction workers who did not harass the protesters, as happened in the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, but those same hard-hats did not join them either.  This was despite the fact that these construction workers are the same blue-collar workers the protesters in Occupy Wall Street are trying to reach.  And the reason for that can be boiled down to the federal holiday being observed today.

Columbus Day.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are trying to create an America where exploitation not only isn't tolerated, it's not celebrated either.  Columbus, of course, is now viewed as a genocidal colonialist who was instrumental in ravaging the Western Hemisphere and destroying its indigenous cultures.  But blue-collar guys like those construction workers - many of whom, I'm sure, are Italian - think of the Columbus they learned about in grade school, the intrepid explorer who discovered new lands and whose actions led to the settling and founding of America.  And when you contemplate that, you understand why conservatives refer to abortion, school prayer, and Shari'a law, issues that have nothing to with economic well-being - to divide people and keep God-fearing white ethnic working stiffs from joining the rainbow coalition of Occupy Wall Street protesters they have much more in common with economically.

So it all comes down to an Italian navigator who's been celebrated on side and scorned on the other.

I know how to make the two sides reconcile their cultural differences.  Working-class whites should agree to let Columbus Day be abolished if the left and the black nationalists agree to give up Kwanzaa.

Speaking of holidays, I'd like to wish my Canadian neighbors a happy Thanksgiving.  Be thankful for your single-payer health care system.