2011-10-14 - 10:11 a.m.
Last night, I drove past the Occupy folks, downtown, their tents and tarps and sodden, collapsed signs making that little concrete square look like a camp for the homeless, or at least the severely downtrodden. And maybe that's the point. Maybe they're not homeless, but just tired of looking, of being aimless, of being pissed off in that small, steady way.
But I'm not convinced there is a point. As I passed a group of them, shuffling, ragged, hooded young guys, a few girls clutching paper cups of Starbucks coffee, I thought: I get the Beats. They wanted to burn, to flail, to slip out of their church clothes. And I get the hippies, who wanted to get high, shout about Vietnam, have sex when they wished. And I get the punks, for sure, on a skeletal level. I understand the desire to sneer, to smash, against those who tell you what to do. But, fact is, after you push safety pins through your earlobes, after you dye your hair blue and shape it into a razor-sharp mohawk, after you stomp the shit out of everything, where can you go from there? Is the problem that these kids downtown by the water have little concrete to protest against? Or is it that, four-five generations into this New American Age of Luxury, we've already run out of angry masks to try on?
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