Today, I saw a status that my friend posted on her Facebook wall. It contained an infographic poster about how society view a "crazy" person. One of the comments had a link to Occupy Wall St Posters Tumblr site where this poster came from. It was indeed educational, in a sense that I learned the other views of the protests.
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| http://owsposters.tumblr.com/ |
I admit, when I heard about Occupy protests, I was confused. I read Wikipedia articles about them which I think was the reliable source for least biased information at the time. The media covered mostly on police brutality and the "One Percent" side of the story. After reading the articles, I didn't see how these protests would accomplish anything. Although the protesters' actions were admirable in my eyes, they lacked clear vision of their goals. Which is probably why these protests didn't make a considerable impact on America but they probably would make in history textbooks.
From looking at this Tumblr site, it seems that Occupy Wall St has deeper cause. It is a political issue about how the government we have today runs and its overtone is that our government rules favorably toward a group that can give a lot of money. This site argues that the government tend to oppresses the citizens with taxes and laws that ban some freedom in order for the rich to gain more money. Our government uses contrived reasoning that rich can empower economy when it has money to run its company, while taxing middle/lower class more to make up the loss. This site questions the government's fidelity to Constitution when money rules and people are no longer have the say.
I have had disillusions with the government recently. I also question the public as well. I can't blame one or the other but I certainly can feel how broken this country is. After reading many infographic posters, my mind stirred that led to my knowledge on American history in high school. I also watched Liberty's Kids on PBS along with it. If my memories are not mistaken, I just found United States as a great nation of regressive irony. If I have to compare to an example of world history in equivalence, I would say French Revolution in 1790s.
We all know on surface, that French Revolution happened because the poor got sick of being mistreated by the monarchs and nobles so they rebelled. They wanted freedom and ability to rule themselves in democratic fashion. However, after they killed the monarchs as a beginning point of democracy, they faced the Reign of Terror. The oppressed had become the oppressor. So they reverted back to monarchy with Napoleon who called himself king.
As such, the American Revolution happened because the people in colonies got sick of being taxed without any representation or consultation. The British Empire wanted to impose series of taxes on colonies to pay a larger portion of the costs of French-Indian War. After the colonies successfully gained independence from the British Empire, the colonies was facing economic depression as result of a costly war. So the newly formed government (with intent of representing the people), it imposed the heavy tax on people who could barely make a living to pay off their debt to the merchants. By merchants' demand, this government would jail those who couldn't pay tax or debt and take their lands. It led to Shays' Rebellion because the debtors were not being heard and most of them were veterans (they were mostly farmers as well) who fought for the colonies and did not get paid. They weren't represented in American government just like colonies weren't represented in British Empire.
Likewise, we today are facing the same problems. We are in debt to the companies and rich people. Taxes in some states and interests are high. The congressmen draft up bills with little regard to the public, but much regard to the lobbyists that represent the rich, for recent instance, SOPA. We are still taxed without representation. We can still see that rich get richer and poor gets poorer somewhere in America. I could see why the Occupy Wall St protests occurred because a similar thing happened 200 years ago.
The funny thing is that the history textbooks applaud George Washington's success in crushing the Shays' Rebellion while they minimize the reason or the irony presented in the rebellion in similar to applauding the government's expansion of the land while minimizing the Natives' sufferings at the hands of the government.
These mere speculations are convincing me to nod in agreement that history is doomed to repeat itself if we don't remember or don't learn from it.
From looking at this Tumblr site, it seems that Occupy Wall St has deeper cause. It is a political issue about how the government we have today runs and its overtone is that our government rules favorably toward a group that can give a lot of money. This site argues that the government tend to oppresses the citizens with taxes and laws that ban some freedom in order for the rich to gain more money. Our government uses contrived reasoning that rich can empower economy when it has money to run its company, while taxing middle/lower class more to make up the loss. This site questions the government's fidelity to Constitution when money rules and people are no longer have the say.
I have had disillusions with the government recently. I also question the public as well. I can't blame one or the other but I certainly can feel how broken this country is. After reading many infographic posters, my mind stirred that led to my knowledge on American history in high school. I also watched Liberty's Kids on PBS along with it. If my memories are not mistaken, I just found United States as a great nation of regressive irony. If I have to compare to an example of world history in equivalence, I would say French Revolution in 1790s.
We all know on surface, that French Revolution happened because the poor got sick of being mistreated by the monarchs and nobles so they rebelled. They wanted freedom and ability to rule themselves in democratic fashion. However, after they killed the monarchs as a beginning point of democracy, they faced the Reign of Terror. The oppressed had become the oppressor. So they reverted back to monarchy with Napoleon who called himself king.
As such, the American Revolution happened because the people in colonies got sick of being taxed without any representation or consultation. The British Empire wanted to impose series of taxes on colonies to pay a larger portion of the costs of French-Indian War. After the colonies successfully gained independence from the British Empire, the colonies was facing economic depression as result of a costly war. So the newly formed government (with intent of representing the people), it imposed the heavy tax on people who could barely make a living to pay off their debt to the merchants. By merchants' demand, this government would jail those who couldn't pay tax or debt and take their lands. It led to Shays' Rebellion because the debtors were not being heard and most of them were veterans (they were mostly farmers as well) who fought for the colonies and did not get paid. They weren't represented in American government just like colonies weren't represented in British Empire.
Likewise, we today are facing the same problems. We are in debt to the companies and rich people. Taxes in some states and interests are high. The congressmen draft up bills with little regard to the public, but much regard to the lobbyists that represent the rich, for recent instance, SOPA. We are still taxed without representation. We can still see that rich get richer and poor gets poorer somewhere in America. I could see why the Occupy Wall St protests occurred because a similar thing happened 200 years ago.
The funny thing is that the history textbooks applaud George Washington's success in crushing the Shays' Rebellion while they minimize the reason or the irony presented in the rebellion in similar to applauding the government's expansion of the land while minimizing the Natives' sufferings at the hands of the government.
These mere speculations are convincing me to nod in agreement that history is doomed to repeat itself if we don't remember or don't learn from it.
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