Given this and a lot of other things I’ve seen over the past few weeks, I’m hoping this is a valuable learning experience for some young, naive people who had some pretty stupid ideas shoved into their heads by those who were supposed to know better.

I think that members of both groups have something at stake, but they’re playing different “games”: The Arab Spring was several tyrannies breaking out into freedom; OWS/99% is about economic injustice and structural political problems.

According to the Oracle at Wikipedia, both sides each suffered 50,000 deaths during the American Revolution. And 18th Century England was arguably more civilized than the Arab tyrannies that were overthrown this year. Something’s right with the world when millions of people can achieve their freedom at a cost of a thousand casualties. I can’t bring myself to say “only a thousand”, but they paid a lighter toll than many have.

Political revolution is inherently violent, but issues like distribution of wealth and lines of power in a technically-free society don’t have to lead to bloodshed. I think both groups are doing pretty well in their respective situations, to limit the violence on their respective scales.

Alternate text: apples and oranges…but my lungs needed the workout.

The media called ows “The American spring”. The Arab Spring started with a guy setting himself on fire. Between Egypt and Tunisia over 1000 protesters were kill by their own government.

And what do we have? Smiling kids with cardboard signs having sleepovers and pot-lucks.

I can Identify with their frustration, hell most of America can but I’m getting tired of watching what was a good idea degrade into “Woodstock, the morning after”