- BitsBlog - https://bitsblog.com -

A Bomb Grows in Cleveland

Doug Mataconis, Outsde the Beltway [1]:

As James Joyner noted on Tuesday, five Cleveland area men were arrested after plotting to blow up a bridge in the area. Last night the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that one of those five men had ties to the Cleveland branch of the Occupy movement:

[…]

You might also want to think about being a lot more careful about who you associate with. But, then, this is what happens when you have a leaderless “movement.”

I do not agree.    There is nothing inherently violent about a grassroots, bottom-up. or leaderless moment[1]    Nor am I convinced the occutards are in fact leaderless, clueless yes, leaderless no   How blowing up a bridge in Ohio is somehow supposed to convince Joe Sixpack  to both pay for a new bridge and pay-off the occutards student loan balances is beyond me.

The problem with the Occupy movements is that they have no coherent message.   The occutards offer no path forward.  Indeed, I doubt they could even recognize forward.   Rather, the occutards are simply angry.   They see the success of others and they are jealous.   Angry, jealous, clueless people with no plan are enticed to go the Bill Ayers route.

The occutards want to consume goods and services, but seem totally unwilling to produce any

1.   Planned Parenthood is both strongly led and extremely violent.    The Tea Party is a bottom-up organization that is peaceful, polite, neat and non-violent.