"Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans."

-OK,That right there is enough to make me puke,these ruthless sack sucken motha's have been pitting the haves against the havenots ...and winning in every case for a long time.Esp this smarmy little corporate smiley whore Cantor,they have been stabbing the little people in the back,denying UI benefit extensions,calling Obama the 'food stamp' President and now actively going after our little ole Social Security checks,which the would just love to throw on the roulette table on wall street.Two words for you Cantor,and I'm in too nice of a mood this morning to say them...

Well done, sir.

Cantor looks like a mafia hit man. I'd like to meet that
mf'er in a dark alley and wipe that fucking smirk off his face.

Good article.

The obscenely rich SHOULD be a bit concerned.

There is real discontent in this country. The filthy rich need to know that a good many of these protesters are people that struggled hard to attain a decent quality of Life and they aren't simply parasites.

THAT is the point that major news organizations seem to be missing.

Yes indeed. Be VERY AFRAID you rich fucks because we the peasants are righteously pissed off.

I didn't hear him [Cantor] say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol. And he and his colleagues were putting signs in the windows encouraging them. But let's not get down to that.---Nancy Pelosi

No, Nancy, since being above the fray has pretty much destroyed the Dems, let's do get down to that: Eric Cantor is the kind of vicious, lying, two-faced sociopath who makes your standard-issue hypocrite look like an icon of unsullied integrity. What else would you expect from a cynical little hustler who spends all his waking hours chowing down on Grover Norquist's ass? He's a natural-born hitman for the Teatard mafia. Somewhere there's a pic of him flashing his well-capped choppers that would make Dracula retract his fangs in fear.

But as WRP says, now he---and his co-conspirators---are scared. And to paraphrase Colonel Kilgore, "I love the smell of Repug fear in the morning." Or any time...

When I heard Cantor say that about pitting American against American, I surely laughed right out loud. These guys never disappoint in the hypocrisy department, do they? The over-the-top Tea Party thugs have been terrorizing Americans for awhile now and I'm proud to say that the Wall Street protesters are much better spellers to boot. I'm SO sick of the politicians--at this point in the game, this is our only hope. It'll be interesting to see how Obama reacts when he finally realizes that the protest is about him too. Perhaps he doesn't get it either but you can bet the Democrats will try to lay claim to this (which they do not deserve with just a few exceptions). I say Elizabeth Warren for President! The funniest thing I read today is that "Joe the Plumber" has filed his paperwork to run for Congress in Ohio (oh, holy hell! say what?!). Things just keep getting crazier (and I thought it wasn't possible after either years of Dubya). Thanks, Mr. Pitt, for another sensible essay.

"The financial powers-that-be are desperate to paint this peaceful, meaningful movement as some kind of civilization-annihilating upheaval..."

Ah, but it is, its intention is the annihilation of THEIR ill-gotten civilization and they know it. They're NOT going to go gentle into that good night.

I noticed that in order to support their biased point of view of what's happening, Faux News kept showing the same short clip of one of the protesters who was being arrested resisting the arrest. ONE PERSON that wasn't just being passive about being arrested unlike almost all the rest who were being co-operative with the police, run that one clip over and over again to give their audience the impression that a veritable rioting mob scene is what's happening, something akin to Chicago 1968.

and manage to take the Senate, if not the presidency in a year. Violent protests spurred by the police could just as likely take us rightward as towards more equal division of wealth or jobs or social supports. I'd love Pitt to be right but "smelling fear" is not exactly data-based, and not the same as confirming it. Certainly, citing a little hysteria from a bank guide to avoid conflict is not exactly proving the point this bank is shaking in its boots, let alone others.

Krugman, too, today talks about "panic among the plutocrats" but I disagree, as yet, and I remember the 1960's or the labor wars of the 1890's, and the result -- well, the '60's ended up getting W. elected for he was the cultural culmination of the anti-war, anti-corporate protests. And look at those numbers of challengers to the status quo compared to today's handfuls.

Likewise, the plutocrats survived the '30's -- and they hold nearly total political sway. Do you think, in this time of high unemployment, the 1% will have any trouble hiring all the security people they need to keep order?

I hope the protests grow and I hope street action makes the oligarchs sweat, but modest evidence doesn't yet convince me, certainly not because of what rightwing propagandists like Cantor spout, or Orrin Hatch. They go to extremes with no evidence at all -- talking up class warfare and mobs to incite fear, not to make owners tremble (perhaps the opposite). I question how peaceful campers in the low thousands scare the richest among us -- esp. when there are few if any serious confrontations. True, big protests start with small steps but it will take a lot more than blarney from extremists to convince me top dogs are wetting their pants.

Absolutely

How did you gain your wealth ? Was it honorable ? Was it legal ? Did people die from your personal gain ? Did you crush hard working americans to get to the top ?

And so, if people have died because of your greed, it only stands that you should die, too.

We can almost hear the cogs in the minds of those think tank lackeys turning as the protests against their rich bosses continue, and the greedy bosses order them to come up with some sort of plan to stop the truth tellers and protesters who expose these folks for just what they are, the super selfish on steroids.

We can probably, as William noted as already happening, that the MSM will barrage us with a shit storm of lies and bullshit propaganda that tries to paint protesters and jobless and homeless as a small group of lazy, hippie bums who are too sorry to go out and find work and who want to live off of the government till...and that the government cannot afford them anymore.

(But we can afford 5 trillion dollar wars and we can afford to print 16.5 trillion dollars and hand out loans to our bankers and the Western world bankers at 1% interest, and we can afford to hand them 800 billion free money, and we can afford to allow Congress and government to borrow 2.5 trillion dollars from Americans who paid into the SS trust fund, and this money has not been paid back).

Yes, these guys are nervous, but I don't think they are scared yet.

Yes, the think tank lackeys read history too, but their sick minds put a conservative "spin" on what they read. They have to do this in order to please their bosses who demand that they "believe" in the cause of selfish greed and self interest (of the bosses of course).

For example, if a conservative think tank lackey were reading Russian history, he or she would try to figure out what the Czar did wrong in controlling his serfs and how he might have won the day by duping them and oppressing them in different ways from what he did.

For this reason, we can expect that the current oppressors of the US population will devise some innovative schemes to stem the protests and discredit the protesters.

Technology allows the easy identification of protest leaders, and they can expect all sorts of devices to be used to distract and intimidate them. Most of these devices have been used in the past, even including murder of some. That, however, just ups the ante when it occurs and if enough people are angered by violence against protesters and jobless, it can create a much larger shit storm against the rich and famous.

Lackeys have the pressure on them too, including think tank employees and politicians and police.

Think tank lackeys might send agents provocateurs into protest movements to lead them off track. Protesters need to be aware of new people who try to lead the protests off track.

Bought politicians and officials will often pass laws and regulations that make life difficult for dissenters and protesters.

Police bullies will do what they love to do best, bully anyone who challenges the establishment status-quo. These guys will beat and pepper spray people. The see force as the means of making people comply with directions. Fear equals respect in their eyes.

Expect increased secrecy from government and from media and from establishment in many areas except the propaganda area. In the minds of these think tanks, duping and fooling and mind-fucking the citizenry is what their game is all about. Move thinking this way. Move it that way. Throw some fog and some smoke and some mirrors up so that it keeps the masses confused.

Now, at some point, if the big guys feel overconfident and unafraid or are just plain crazy for power, they will turn loose violence upon the American people and public. This is what Gandhi counted on and it served his purposes extremely well.

This is like the wrestler or karate expert parrying and forcing his opponent to use his own strength and own weight to defeat himself.

When General Dyer ordered over 1000 peaceful Indian protesters shot down, this drove the final nails in the coffin for the British Empire. It was finished.

Stalin tried to hide this stuff from the Soviet citizenry, but do it anyway. His "black maria" sedans rolled up at night and people were disappeared forever to the gulags or were simply exterminated and buried without a trace. But this stuff cannot be hidden from the public.

You can create a climate of fear and terror, but when people have nothing to lose, they get really serious about resistance, and resistance become deadly. We see this in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We can stay there for a hundred years, but we will never subdue the peoples there, and as long as we are there, we can expect some of our occupation forces to die there.

So, it's all a question of degrees and innovation on the part of the rulers and their lackeys.

One thing about this bunch, especially the far right ultra-conservative end of it, is that they are crooked, mean and stubborn, and they seem to believe their own simplistic agenda of beating down fellow American citizens. In fact, they appear to hate people who have less than themselves.

The neo-liberal end of the spectrum is somewhat different. I think some of these guys are simply overwhelmed with their own arrogance and a belief that they are superior to the people they try to control. They see the citzenry as a bunch of unwashed rabble that needs controlling and directing and if a few hundred thousand slip into poverty so they can progress their global agendas, then tough shit, so be it. This ruling class accross the spectrum is arrogant beyond belief.

This arrogance comes, I think, from the spoiled and somewhat, by world standards, lavish lifestyles they were raised in. American parents, working day and night, for their own material success, lavished the kids with things and stuff and a life where reality was a television, a computer games, fast food and sex with after school friends. The only real value or meaning this crowed learned while growing up was to push yourself to the limit to impose yourself upon the world around you and to take all you can from others when the opportunity arises, and television and movie entertainment taught them that violence is an acceptable way of doing this, especially if you are powerful enough to get away with it... and nowadays, they play a real life version of Dungeons and Dragons.

So, protesters can expect the traditional rules of history to apply, but they can certainly expect some very innovative resistance strategies from these arrogant think tank lackeys that the rich and powerful have employed in their service.

On cardinal rule of history in these things that always applies to rulers and also the oppressed, however, and everyone needs to remember this, is that however much the level of oppression and violence escalates, at some point, the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction to balance things out. It might take one month, one year or one hundred years, but this always happens.

I have some doubts about this bunch being very scared yet. I think they are too stupid and arrogant to be scared yet.

Provoke the masses. I don't think these arrogant assholes actually have a sense of how much rage is out there.

These taunts of we are the 1% 's is pretty provacative. It's an In -Your-Face-Insult.

It will be amusing to you rich people until someone actually does you harm because of your arrogance.
Be very careful. You are in more danger than you realize. The anger on the street is very, very real.

Let me put it this way: I would bring harm to you if I could, and I'm a gentle soul.

So stop and think. DO NOT BE COCKY OR ARROGANT.

Thank you, William Rivers Pitt for this column and 'thank you as well to "all" who have weighed in on this issue.