To me, this is just a restating of the theme of ‘resentful losers’.

From the Merriam-Webster website:
“Supercede has occurred as a spelling variant of supersede since the 17th century. . .” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supercede).

@ Tim Burke,

Great post — spot on analysis, as always.

“the single least interesting, least useful criticism of Occupy in circulation is that it lacks a concrete set of demands, that it needs some kind of concrete policy platform that politicians could adopt.”

I’m going to disregard the part about having policy that politicians can adopt, but I will add that I think strong core values or beliefs are needed to keep the group together especially considering the heterogeneous nature of occupy participants. A diverse group identifying a flaw or a problem with a system is great but if there’s no basis on which to agree on how to move forward then you have a problem.

Add to all of this the cultural issues such as American’s increasingly reliance on individualism (since the 70s, and the personal responsibilities 80s). I believe that the culture(s) surrounding the issues that occupy participants highlight have to change before any real solutions or movements towards solutions can be attained. And I know that this isn’t a novel thought- on the OWS website concepts like neoliberalism are passingly referenced. They’re rarely address head on probably so as to not alienate or put off current or future participants.

It could be said that that’s what this movement is about, providing a basis on which to start the process of changing culture but I don’t think that’s the case here. Only time will tell. The question I ask myself is: What would the average occupy participant do if their individual financial situation (and we can extend that to their families and friends’ situations) was everything they desired… In other words, if everything remained the same currently and they were part of the one percent, what would they do?

I don’t think that original post was arguing that the fundamentals of the American system (representative democracy, capitalism, etc.) have failed, but rather that they are no longer being implemented. The changes which allowed the American political and economic system of the gilded age to “absorb the demands of movements like OWS and the tea party” in the first half of the 20th century were immense, from the rise of unions to the economic upheaval of the great depression to FDR’s drastic changes in how the government functioned, including the New Deal and the concept of an “economic bill of rights” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights) for all Americans which underpinned it.)

The idea that the only way to solve the economic and political problems the US faced in the 21st century is to implement a set of reforms as comprehensive and far reaching as (though not necessarily identical to) those of the first half of the 20th century seems to be exactly what the original post suggested.

I think you undercut your own argument here. If it’s a systemic failure in the American political system, it’s one that’s been present throughout a large part of American history. We’re in the Gilded Age, redux. And in that situation, the political system was able to absorb and reflect the demands of movements similar to both the Tea Party and OWS. That we are in a particularly chaotic period of political history no one doubts, but that the system has failed seems an overreaction.