I understand my comment might give one the impression that I am confusing the chicken (the financial crisis) and the egg (the Occupy movement).
Since Occupy could not have existed without the Crisis, certainly some blame goes to the Crisis.
That said, Occupy shaped perception of the Crisis. Occupy trained the public to view the Crisis in terms of bad people, instead of systemic problems like incentives.
The Occupy movement, with its permanent smoke-pit adolescents like Tim Pool, Matt Taibbi, Max Keiser, and so on, has influenced public discourse ever since.
I cannot prove that Occupy, rather than the Financial Crisis alone, made possible our current dysfunctional politics (with its focus on scapegoating, conspiracy theories, magical thinking), but I notice echos of its 'memes' (in the original sense of the word), and its attitudes - not to mention I notice some of the actual participants.
I wish I could edit this, because now that I reread it, 'chicken and egg' doesn't make sense. It's more a question of root cause. So a better metaphor might be whether to assign blame to a misbehaving child or to the abusive father who raised him.
Since Occupy could not have existed without the Crisis, certainly some blame goes to the Crisis.
That said, Occupy shaped perception of the Crisis. Occupy trained the public to view the Crisis in terms of bad people, instead of systemic problems like incentives.
The Occupy movement, with its permanent smoke-pit adolescents like Tim Pool, Matt Taibbi, Max Keiser, and so on, has influenced public discourse ever since.
I cannot prove that Occupy, rather than the Financial Crisis alone, made possible our current dysfunctional politics (with its focus on scapegoating, conspiracy theories, magical thinking), but I notice echos of its 'memes' (in the original sense of the word), and its attitudes - not to mention I notice some of the actual participants.