These protests have been a long time coming. The abuses by the financial and banking sectors, opaque government, secret wars, police intimidation, and political cronyism have all taken their toll on the middle and working classes. Remember the old Bruce Hornsby and the Range line from their 1986 #1 hit, 'The Way It Is'? "The man in the silk suit hurries by, As he catches the poor old lady's eyes, Just for fun he says 'Get a job'". They were onto the crude undercurrent of classism a quarter-century ago.
The real problem is not that the 1% don't see the chasm that exists between their luxuried lives and that of the street poor. The real problem is not that they don't care. The real problem is that they ENJOY the difference. They enjoy knowing that tonight while the two veterans, one from the Vietnam war and one from Iraq or Afghanistan, sleep under a bridge, they'll be home, warm, fed, dry, and secure. It's that delectation that derives from the suffering of others that is the core of the problem. All else is symptom; this is the disease.
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