American People Rejecting Conservative Ideology

I have been feeling so optimistic in the weeks since the political conventions as President Obama has pulled away from Mitt Romney in the polls. The reason I'm feeling this way is because that tells me the American people are waking up; they have taken a look at the radicalism of today's Republican Party and they are saying NO.

When the Tea Party won big in 2010 they got cocky and strutted their stuff on the national stage. They pushed the Republican presidential candidates to take extreme positions; Mitt Romney has not been able to recover and "pivot to the center" like most candidates do.

The 99% meme introduced by the Occupy Wall Street movement somewhat penetrated the nation's consciousness, but I think Romney's 47% comments (particularly the line that people in that group aren't responsible for their lives) really pushed the American people into a new awareness that there is something very wrong with our society.

This election was supposed to be an easy win for a Republican--the pundits have talked endlessly about how no incumbent has ever won re-election with an economy this bad. But it's starting to look like this election could be a landslide for Obama. And, in my mind, the major reason this will happen is that the American people are rejecting conservative ideology.

Act Don't Occupy

Today is Occupy Wall Street’s one-year anniversary. There are some protests in cities around the country today but it’s obvious this movement has died.

I think it failed because OWS became all about people camping out in city squares and fighting for the right to squat on public property. It looked like the activists just wanted to bring the country and the economy to a standstill. It appeared to promise only chaos and anarchy and destruction. No wonder most people rejected it.

What we need is for the people of this country to wake up and remake our political system with a new consciousness. And at the same time bring this new consciousness into our local business community, town by town. I feel like that is what many people are doing in many cities around the nation, including where I live (Asheville, NC).

I marked OWS’s anniversary by contributing to a local group who are acting, not occupying: an anarchist collective that runs a café called Firestorm Café and Books. They are financing a renovation by putting out “bonds” that will return 10% on your investment in a couple of months (in the form of a gift certificate).