By Kevin OBrien
The Plain Dealer:
What a lucky, lucky week this has been for Greater Cleveland -- especially for whichever unsuspecting souls were driving across the Ohio 82 bridge across the Cuyahoga Valley while five petty criminals associated with Occupy Cleveland were trying to community organize it.
The Occupiers, authorities tell us, thought they had rigged the span with plastic explosives that would detonate when they punched a code into a cellphone.
The only thing that went up in smoke, though, was their plot. They were working with dummy devices -- fitting -- sold to them by an FBI informant whom they failed to recognize as the Man.
I'm sorry. Your call to anarchist glory cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again. And again. And again.
General Electric was lucky, too. Its lighting plant was to have been the site of an Occupy Cleveland protest about taxbreaks, singlepayer, Afghanistan, environmental destruction, corporate greed, Citizens United, job training, student loan debt, gay rights, defense spending, teacher pay, immigration policy, Chinese currency, shenanigans, Iraq, Glass Steagall, foreclosures.
And, of course, the Occupiers' No. 1 concern: people who live more responsibly and thus have more money than they do.
Once the alleged bomb plotters' arrest became public, the unions and leftist organizations that were going to bring the party favors to the GE May Day demo backed out. In Cleveland, rigging public bridges for destruction is still considered bad form.
So it seems that the "mainstream" Occupy movement -- here, at least -- still sees some value in the good opinion of the 99 percent, which is to say the percentage of Americans who are in no way associated with the Occupy movement.
Hence, the desperate attempt of Occupy Cleveland and its enablers to distance themselves from bomb planters with whom the record shows that they are all too well acquainted.
The would-be bridge busters are getting emphatic down-twinkles from the "real" Occupiers.
(If you don't know what twinkles are, you owe it to yourself to have a look. The 90 seconds you'll spend learning this valuable skill will provide a blazing insight into why the movement's more "energetic" elements are frustrated at the pace of the revolution.)
The arrestees are being dismissed as "fringey," which is downright hilarious, considering who is offering the description. Their self-description as anarchists is being presented as an indication that they're outside of the Occupy "mainstream."
Yeah, right.
Take the anarchists out of an Occupy protest and you're down to half a protest.
More likely, the bomb plotters are just a little ahead of the curve.
The people who proclaim the nonviolence of the Occupy movement are, for the most part, sincere. But they're riding the tiger.
Movements that are destructive in their ends, as Occupy is, have two choices: die when the public is not persuaded or turn to violence to justify continued existence. Our luck in Cleveland, thanks to the FBI, is holding. Other places -- most notably Oakland, where a more militant strain of Occupier has held sway -- haven't been as fortunate.
As the local Occupiers try to regain their stride, we'll hear comparisons to the violence and division supposedly preached by the Tea Party, the movement Occupy was ginned up to counter. We'll hear how Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was really the leading edge of the Tea Party.
Most people, though, will have the sense to recognize the difference.
The Occupy people say the existing social, political and economic order is unjust. They want to blow it up, if you will, and to replace it with . . . well, they'll cross that bridge when they come to it, assuming they haven't blown it up.
The Tea Party people know exactly what they want: a country that operates according to its Constitution. We haven't been there in a long time, but going back will be worth the trip.
Whose approach is more constructive?
Here's an idea that might generate some useful data: Let's have the FBI infiltrate both movements. Ten years from now, if they both last that long, we'll tally up the arrests and see which side has occupied more jail cells.
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