Time to Occupy Congress

After sifting through the latest polls, the Economist concludes: "America has swiftly soured on the Occupy Wall Street movement. OWS is now even less loved than the positively ancient tea-party movement. ... It's time for OWS to relinquish our cities' public spaces to the actual public and get on with the tiresome and frustrating grind of actual democratic politics." To back up this thesis, they quote Cato Institute think-tanker Julian Sanchez who wrote: "To imagine protest not as prologue to politics, but as a substitute for it, suggests a denial of the reality of pluralism, and an unwillingness to find out what democracy actually looks like." Both Sanchez and the Economist oversimplify matters, but their core assertions are worth pondering. The messy protests were worthy (and, I think, necessary), but it really is time to Occupy Congress via the ballot box. Real change won't occur until We the People wise up, undo the disastrous effects of 2010 mid-term elections, and throw the (intransigent) bums out.