Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party

I'm not sure what to make about the headless Occupy Wall Street movement, but I do find it interesting that various Tea Party followers are none too happy about the OWS movement being compared to the Tea Party movement.

The Occupy Wall Street folks are totally different from the Tea Partiers. For starters, the Occupy Wall Street people are a bunch of anarchists, while the Tea Party followers just want to get rid of government.

Or so the joke goes.

According to the above linked article, the Tea Party folks are citing the "safe and clean" Tea Party rallies to contrast with the "lawbreaking troublemakers" in the OWS movement.

I'm not sure how much that holds water, though, when the Tea Party's inspiration itself was an act of breaking and entering, followed by destruction of property. With more than just a tinge of racial scapegoating (they tried to blame it on the Indians).

But I do see a key difference: While both OWS and TP think that things have gone to hell and they're not going to take it anymore, the former may see government action and regulation as the solution to the woes caused by fat cats on Wall Street who largely don't produce anything but get fat on the efforts of others, while the latter thinks that government action and regulation is the bane of the nation's woes which have been caused by fat cats in Washington who don't produce anything but get fat on the efforts of others.

I've used fat too many times in that paragraph.

Why I chose this picture: Like the Occupy Wall Street movement, it depicts being headless, and like the Tea Party, it hearkens back to the 18th century. 

...