When the right mentions class warfare, many so-called liberals shrink from the term, but what they should say is, "You're damned right it's class warfare. The top 1% are making war on the rest of of the country, and we need to stop them."I'm honored that David chose my comment as his QotD. As an excuse for self-promotion, I want to say a few words about the Occupy movement. Far too many of us see Occupy as a failure, but I do not agree. Occupy awakened a good many of us to focus on the 1%, the very wealthiest in our society, and their disproportionate ownership of capital, even as the group drew attention to the flim-flammery of banksters and financiers who played a large part in plunging the country and the western world into the Great Recession, the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression in the last century.
In my history book, the Occupy movement did not fail but rather succeeded in changing the conversation to call attention to widening inequality in the US, thereby influencing the electorate to vote for a second term for Obama and to hold the Senate for Democrats. By a near miracle, the Affordable Care Act became law and provided health insurance for millions of citizens who were previously uninsured.
We sometimes miss the success of movements and policies that seem to us as failures in the short term, but, in the long term, are proved to have great influence for good.
