Tuesday, November 22, 2011

"Horizontalism"?

It's the organizing principle of the "Occupy" movement, which is neither organized, nor principled in the sense that it has a particular purpose or direction that anyone can articulate.  And, by definition, no one can articulate it because "horizontalism" means "leaderless", in opposition to "verticalism" which means "hierarchy".  Whatever else these truly unwashed masses stand for, they certainly stand, or sit, or pitch their tents, against hierarchy

But, of course, without someone like a leader to tell us, we're only guessing, aren't we?

Mattathias Schwartz of The New Yorker is to be commended for communicating all this fairly well in what is supposed to be, I think, a sympathetic, or at least non-judgemental report about "The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street."

I say I think it's sympathetic because, well, let's just hope Tom Wolfe is taking notes for a future novel and leave it at that. 

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