OWS, Hope, Change . . . yada yada yada.

From where I sit, out in northwest Missouri farm country, I can’t yet decide if OWS is going to have any immediate or long-term impact on the direction of our nation, or of the world. The movement seems largely to be tilting at windmills.

For instance, I’ve read--and many OWS’ers are well aware of this--college tuition has increased 900 percent over the past 30 years, yet salaries for entry-level jobs requiring a college degree have remained fairly stagnant. Is there any chance of the OWS movement significantly rolling back tuition costs? No. None. And in a sense, they wouldn’t want to--rolling back tuition costs would mean elimination of a lot of jobs on campuses all over the country. Is there any chance of the OWS movement significantly increasing salaries paid by the lovely corporations running this country? No. None.

Does OWS have any shot at all at decreasing corporate influence on our nation’s government? No. We have the best Congress money can buy, and congresspersons will NOT give that money up. Even if OWS managed to find, back, and get elected “pure” candidates, those candidates, once elected, being human and all, very likely would very quickly succumb to monetary apples offered them by the myriad corporate “Eves”--and they would find ways to justify that to themselves.

And the evil corporations are not comprised solely of their CEOs and other multimillion-dollar executives--they also employ a lot of real people, most of them among the 99% who aren’t the “movers and shakers” of our political and economic world.

I love OWS and everything it stands for--but I still cannot figure out how it can succeed, and trust me, I’ve been trying.

It is going to take someone with a lot more imagination than I’ve been blessed with to come up with a real, tangible, doable plan--with real, tangible, accomplishable goals. It is relatively easy to see and rail at problems. Solutions are more elusive. The people--or “persons,” as the Supreme Court refers to corporations--will never give up or even minimally share their power. Why would they? Politicians will never give up the bounty they receive from those in actual power.

Much as I would love to see 435 representatives and 100 senators, maybe even a president (and I actually like Mr. Obama) out on the unemployment line, along with a few hundred or thousand corporate CEOs, I do NOT want to see their secretaries and housekeepers and cooks and on and on and on in the same line.

The question is how to “hurt” the bosses enough to get their attention, without hurting the many people who depend on them.

I would make a LOUSY revolutionary.

What I’m afraid of is that we’ve already slid too far down the slippery slope towards the end of “America as we know it” ever to recover.

OWS gives me some faint sliver of hope, but it’s just that, a faint sliver. People seem to be waking up, to be catching on to the essential etiology of what ails us, but it may be too late. We have reached the point of wanting “change,” but are essentially powerless to effect that change, on anything more than a purely individual level, if even that.

Come to think about it, maybe that IS the key--we all must find ways to effect change on an individual level.

When I figure out what that means, I’ll let y’all know.