Political nitpicking

Here's my problem with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Their general principles are reasonable: 1% of America holds the majority of the wealth, and that's wrong. As a former Marxist, I am in agreement that this is not okay. However, that seems to be the only thing everybody agrees on. There are signs that say "End the war!" and while I also want the war to end, I can't help but feel that these protesters need to focus. This movement lacks cohesion. I went to Occupy Northampton a while ago, and I grew increasingly frustrated with the hippies there because as far as I could tell, nobody has any actual suggestions as to what should be done. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that nobody can agree on what issues to stand for.

I am a pragmatic person and I firmly believe in compromise. I used to be militantly principled (again, when I was a Marxist), but I quickly realized that that's stupid. If your mentality is "My way or the highway," you're going to find yourself taking the road pretty often. Just look at Andrew Johnson. You have to present your wants and needs in a way that's attractive to the person in power, but failing that, you have to tell them what you want. The social equivalent of the Occupy Wall Street movement would go something like this:

Customer: The establishment is unfair! This system has got to change!

Store owner: Is something wrong?

Customer: The corporate fat cats are swimming in pools where there are flakes of gold leaf instead of water, that's what's wrong! This nation's wealth is unfairly distributed!

Store owner: ...I meant with the store. Why are you shouting in the middle of the produce aisle? Sir?

Customer: Sir? And how do you know that I'm a man?

Store owner: I apologize, you have a point. What can I do to help this situation?

Customer: Fellow Shop-Rite patrons! This will not stand! We must show these corporations that we see through their lies!

Poor Shop-Rite manager. He would like to help, but it's hard to be helpful when you have no fucking clue what the problem is or what you can do to fix it.