On Occupational Protest and "Mob Justice"

Abstraction= a lack of concreteness or the physical.

Occupational Protest=occupying or inhabiting public space until a political objective is met.

Mob justice=circumventing an existing justice system to deliver some "better" alternative.

I've offered a simplified definition of something (abstraction) that philosophers have debated for thousands of years.  That debate is not the purpose of this blog, but the lack of agreement of definition is why I post here.  The purpose of this blog is to question the claims of the supposedly "future-oriented." Before they "break" our current society of imperfect laws with its more reasonable level of public consent, I believe that we need to make sure "their plan" is better.

A Re-print from November 1, 2011 for the purposes of future expansion:

Holding Up A Paper Copy of This [Post] for A Mirror Picture Or Appealing to Emotion Because Of The Tragedies I Might've Lived Through Doesn't Make My Argument Right:

               The organizers of Occupy Wall Street protest an abstraction: "greed."  I will not support changes that affect me during the time I have on earth because many of the protesters want to attack an idea, "greed," want to replace an abstraction, "capitalism," with another abstraction, "socialism," and might have some more "moral" system for action to impose on all Americans.  I am not convinced of the protesters'  definition of "greed."  Therefore, I find their proposed plan, occupying public city streets and the destruction of Wall-street, absurd and destructive of the services that taxpayers already pay for and the opportunities that we already have.
                What is "greed?"  Its reflexive application to people is debatable and that makes its use as a motivator for counteraction very dangerous.  There is no American "greed" law that universally defines everyone who violates it.  "Greed" is simply a moral judgement that humans [may] use against each other to get more resources for themselves.  It is an abstraction because it describes a human's immoral use of some resource (money, power, etc.) for their own desires.  It is a label that separates the "greedy" person or group from the "victim."   "Greedy people" are those human beings who wrongly acquire too much of something, which means the labeler is doing the judging of right and wrong and the amount of the resource that makes it "too much."
            Therefore,"greed" is a description used to attack the "1% richest Americans," or the "government bureaucrats" that want more money and power, or the "free- loaders" who want more tax money from the rich for more services so they can do less, or the "social security beneficiaries" whose "generation" is spending their "grand-children's" payroll dollars that were meant for their grand- children's pensions, or "interest groups" like unions who want increased benefits and pay for their exclusive group of workers at the expense of the business owners and non-members.  Is everyone really "greedy"?  It doesn't matter. I'd argue that the problem with anti-greed protests is that you can't march against a vague human quality, an immorality, and expect any less "greed" in the world as a result.  Can we really destroy a "label" by yelling them?
               Therefore to me, it is counterproductive to "occupy" or inhabit public city streets, to make messes in public areas that have to be cleaned up on the taxpayer's dime, to commit crimes to protest unnamed corporate "criminals," to engage police in areas where they shouldn't be policing in such force, just to attack executives who are perceived by the occupiers as "greedy."  Please cite the broken laws and please contact the prosecutors with the appropriate evidence.  The response I might get to my previous request could be "that the prosecutors are corrupt and paid for by the big corporations."  If this speculative abstraction isn't the conspiracy you think fits your beliefs, then let me know, provide evidence of systemic prosecutorial misconduct, and then I'll withdraw my abstractions and work with you to remove actual corruption.  But, I won't support the police jailing any executives, prosecutors, or politicians until I know they've committed a crime against some law on the books right now (the Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, so we can't try someone with a new law after the fact).  Unless protesters are supposed to be the new police and judicial power in the country too?
                And when the corporate criminal abstractees have been jailed, we must also have a process whereby the defendant receives a "fair" trial in a courtroom and not in the streets. While we might debate the "fairness" of our justice system, I can write with certainty that a trial in the middle of the street is not only prohibited, but it is certainly more unfair.  Where will the evidence safely be kept?  In someone's tent or blankets?  Who's in charge of the rules?  To those who argue against America's detainee policy under Bush AND Obama, yet support the "anti-greed" protests, is street justice the due process we want for captured Al-Qaeda who happen to be American citizens?  Are American streets to be made the new court for justice, places comparable to actual warzones where American Al-Qaeda are captured or killed in their alleged treason?  Are unnamed executives treasonous too and worthy of execution at the whims of a crowd and without due process?   We need not make American streets battlegrounds and we shouldn't allow protesters to destroy executives simply because protesters choose to occupy streets, consider neighborhoods as warzones, and assault the "greed" abstraction.  I want some evidence, some proof before someone's property is searched and seized or before someone is jailed simply because a crowd's emotion demands.   
                Do protesters really prefer street justice?  Most law-breaking occupiers get booked and taken into the police station, perhaps tear-gassed in their crowd if they don't follow the law before their apprehension.  That means they get some "reasonable" level of due process regardless of what they said in the street.  Not being executed or tortured for mass protest, well, that is truly a rarity in global history. Luckily in America, we even get to evaluate the actions of police-persons who fire recklessly at the free-speakers, adjudicate "fairly" those officers who endanger life.  There is definitely not a "perfect" review process for the abusers, but a much better one than the streets offer.  And even when a likely police-abuser is discovered, even the accused police-person gets their own disciplinary process to face potential removal and/or criminal prosecution.  There is much more "fairness" for all with this  imperfect-process for both the protester and the executive, than by simply demanding justice from the "1%" with some repetitive chant!  (Is chanting really an argument anyways?) 
 We should simply stop trying to break abstractions just to fix them. 
                Our society revolves around a "fair" process, an abstract principle sure, but based on laws on the books right now that are vastly more accurate justice than anything protesters scream for at some pedestrian's face.  This due process right is something the protesters seek to deny to others. I'd argue that protesters shouldn't destroy "justice" for unnamed brokers and then claim with any consistency that they are not getting justice when they're arrested.  If a protester defecates on someone's porch and they get arrested or if a protester gets hit in the head when protests become physical with the police, they get due process and if found guilty, receive a punishment.  Sure it's not fair 100%, but no, I'd rather not want myself turned over to "99%" street-abstracters for justice.  Getting beaten by police enforcers in the real world won't purge the "greed" abstraction from humanity and doesn't build a case for a lack of due process because you chose to be somewhere or do something when the laws say you can't.
                In fact, nonviolent resistance is most effectively applied when there is an an achievable goal, rather than protesters wanting some nebulous change while attacking a vague immorality.  The classic effect of nonviolent protest is that when an authority is resisted, protesters suffer beatings, hunger strikes, and jail in order to wear down the resolve of the authorities and force change.  It is a cycle that works in favor of the protesters IF they have an authority with some semblance of morality and they are able to win public opinion to their side(so it hasn't worked against Nazi or Stalinist authorities who kill internal opposition and successfully manipulate public opinion).  Attacking a moral absence (greed) with nonviolence is not comparable or as resolvable as Gandhi using nonviolence to drive the British out of India or Martin Luther King Jr. and company destroying illegal segregation with boycotts, marches, and speeches. 
               [The 2011] protest has no foreseeable endpoint and has an enemy that is nothing more than a concept.  How do you end something that might be part of human nature?  Will emotion and yelling really work?  I'd rather have my retirement remain stable than crowd emotion taking my bank's property which then negatively effects me.  I'm more comfortable with the prospect OF SOME KIND OF RETIREMENT rather than mob justice, or someone feeling a little better because some guy who made a lot of money when others didn't is humiliated and put in jail for an unnamed crime (or as demanded by the "crazies," executed).  It's revenge really--who knows for what--and that's the opposite intent of the justice system that we all have to live under.
                Destroying Wall-street and the brokers who work there is not an achievable goal in a country where the majority of its citizens have some investment in it for retirement.   The protesters gain the most public favor by appealing to those who lost a job, to those who have financial troubles, or have lots of housing or student debt.  These are the unfortunate effects of a complex macro and microeconomic downturn, but also the consequences of individual decision-making.  Some practical help is probably warranted to assist these affected groups to get them back on their feet.  To be "unemployed" means that you're not productive labor, probably drawing on public services, and those combined with debt makes for the biggest drags on the macro-economy. 
               But, tax policy, government spending, and regulation are already debated by the political parties and elections actually lead to change if people actually show up to vote (Obamacare, for example, is actual change, no matter your opinion of it).  Maybe the change is slow, and in some cases counterproductive, but humans don't know everything about the world or the consequences of their actions and probably won't while I'm on earth.  So, I want the proposed change to be fought over, the change purposefully slow just like our laws demand, so that the best proposals we can manage are the result and so that we don't screw things up more while I'm still here. 
                Real approaches to these problems would revolve around government spending at some level, charitable assistance, or perhaps even a tough-love approach that leads to more individual motivation and self-improvement.  Each  can be debated with reasoned arguments, past successes and failures, in a calm forum.  However, yelling at "greed" in the streets or taping your mouth shut with a dollar bill is not a spending bill to forgive student debts (a debatable subject), nor a hard-earned paycheck sent to a newly hired mother.  But, the occupier crowd does mean more drain on services (police, fire, medical, sanitation, etc.) that are already strained because of the effect of the slumping economy on budgets in all levels of society.
                To tear down Wallstreet because some of the people that work there get paid according to their contracts affects me negatively as well (my own retirement and bank accounts).  The Constitution and subsequent laws also prohibit the violation of contracts.  With employers punished because of an abstraction, I will have less income, be less likely to be able to help the affected groups when my tax dollars are translated into services.  For example, student loan burdens can be reduced because of federal forgiveness policies or grants.  Those federal policies use my tax dollars and yours too (if you pay).  Destroying America's capital means reducing the money that everyone has too, so a "destroyed" Wall-street translates in broken services because tax rolls decline which means less help for students because the federal government doesn't have the funds. That is why I wrote that attacking a concept and trying to inflict real damage on real people because you apply an abstraction to executives and brokers is self-defeating.  I do not want an economy of the "lowest common denominator."
               Frustration is not public policy and I do not want a crowd emotion to adversely affect me or my lifestyle.  Simply destroying Wallstreet when a complex problem isn't fully understood (and may never be) simply means that life is going to be made more difficult. Why?