It is worth a listen. It is a clear-headed defense of Islam, yes. More importantly, Safi provides a very coherent rebuttal of racial, ethnic, or religious profiling.

The Onion, ever brilliant, published an item last week titled: “Study: Majority Of Americans Not Informed Enough To Stereotype Chechens“. Sadly, this is probably true. But while it points to a specific weakness (our “exceptionalism” tends to lead to an exceptionally weak understanding of geography) it also highlights rather clearly the problems with trying to profile people and make assumptions about behaviors based on stereotypes and only the weakest understanding of world geography and other cultures.

Between Safi and The Onion, we can learn a lot. And that’s no joke.

While I am not normally prone to tears, all three made me cry today.

The first chink in my armor came from the myriad postings about the 65th anniversary of Israel’s independence. I find this a difficult moment to “celebrate” because 46 of those 65 years have been overshadowed by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the domination and destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihoods. Alas, too few Americans (Jewish or otherwise) really seem to care. Worse, the American Jewish community has suffered a terrible kind of gaslighting, wherein our identity has been confused and conflated with that of the Jews of Israel, our co-religionists but not for the most part our co-citizens. All of this made me sad.

Then, hearing the amazing recording of King reading his “letter” from 1963, I found myself even more mournful: at the loss of King, but also at the seeming loss of moral courage in our society. Who among us today has the combined strengths of conviction, poetics, and oratory? In a nation where political considerations override human lives in debates about everything from guns to healthcare, where a president who has the poetics and oratory seems to lack the conviction to stare down a government program of assassination or to push firmly for the rights and freedoms of the oppressed around the world (c.f., Palestinians), what is there to do but cry?

Run, of course. The answer is to run in a marathon, an experience that I can only imagine must be fundamentally life-affirming. Except that this year, it was anything but that. And so I cried, several times today, as I listened to and read news reports of the young boy who was killed, and the young wounded woman seeking out the man who helped her, and the many others hurt, and the many more searching for ways to help. That the tragedy of the Boston marathon also has such a life-affirming feeling to it should not be lost. But it is also hard to ignore the broader context of terrorism in America, from Oklahoma City to New York City, while recalling too how fortunate we are in comparison to some (e.g., Iraq, Syria). And hard to ignore the broader context of all the ways in which we inflict harm on ourselves and our moral standing by failing to promote peace and freedom, failing to stick up for the poor and oppressed both at home and abroad, and the very poor ways in which we handle the grievances we stir up around the world.

For anyone following the news, it’s been a long day. So let’s end this day, and try to work harder for peace tomorrow.

Or perhaps I should say: the Israeli CEO of the Israeli company SodaStream, which has a factory in Occupied Palestine. And his question was posed to Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, after seeing the degrading treatment some of Birnbaum’s Palestinian employees were forced to endure as a security measure when they accompanied Birnbaum to Peres’ house.

The entirety of the interview and related story are worth reading (here), as is making the effort to digest these comments and others of Birnbaum’s, such as: “Our factories are apolitical. We don’t take sides in this conflict.” or “…we provide our Palestinian employees with respectable employment opportunities and an appropriate salary and benefits. We ‘even’ purchase medical insurance for them from a private company, because I am not confident that the money we pay to the Palestinian Authority for such social benefits will actually be used for medical insurance.” I’m not sure it’s possible to be something in between the problem and the solution, especially in a situation where clarity may be hard to come by but articulating an overarching humane and moral response is not. Sidestepping bigger questions of moral impact by paying for health insurance–which certainly has its own (positive) moral impact–feels instinctively wrong, once the initial good feelings wear off.

***

In fact, it reminds me of the old arguments for “separate but equal” citizenship rights for white versus “colored” Americans.

As does this “news analysis” of the New York Times, by Leo Rennert over on the American Thinker blog. In a nutshell, Rennert is unhappy that as a result of “selective interviews with disaffected Arabs, Rudoren, the Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief, tells her readers that Israel’s treatment of its Arab citizens raises ‘real concerns over the health of Israeli democracy.’“

More from Rennert: “But is this ultra-gloomy assessment accurate? Far from it. Arabs in Israel are on an equal plane when it comes to legal, civil and political rights. Yes, there are remaining gaps on the economic and social scene, but these gaps have steadily narrowed. In fact, Israel’s Arabs enjoy far better lives and better living standards than their counterparts in neighboring countries.” He then goes on to cite a range of statistics about living standards, educational attainment, and consumerist acquisitions of cell phones and refrigerators.

Here’s the thing: the statistics–while heartening, if true–do not disprove the assertion by some of those interviewed that Israeli Arabs suffer from persistent discrimination. Moreover, it is all too easy to be denied equal rights as a matter of practice, even if those rights exist as a matter of law. These numbers represent communal improvements and are not insignificant, but in this context they validate the separate-but-equal view that held sway in the US for decades: oh, well, blacks are getting an education and their health is improving, and that’s what matters, not that we force them to sit elsewhere on the bus, use different public bathrooms, or in some cases prohibit their presence near ours altogether.

***

At the end of his post, Rennert also takes a swipe at Arab Israeli political parties, and suggests that it is somehow “better” for Israeli Arabs to focus on “bread-and-butter issues,” as if there’s something wrong with Israeli Arabs who decide that they are concerned about Palestinian treatment by Israel AND decide that this is a valid political issue around which to organize as Israeli citizens. That also sounds to me like an old American problem, as embodied in the McCarthy/HUAC era: you can be political, as long as you’re political correctly. For Rennert, being “radicalized” about the situation of the Palestinians is clearly politically incorrect for Israeli Arabs.

No doubt Rennert would approve of SodaStream employing Palestinians whose land is occupied by Israel and whose movements are tightly controlled by the security needs of the Occupation. That Palestinians take these jobs is, of course, understandable: you’re a Palestinian with a wife and children to feed; there’s a job, offering an “appropriate” salary and benefits, but it is a job with an Israeli company. What any of us would do in such a situation is difficult to say. But it is Birnbaum’s nation and his fellow citizens who have sustained the occupation of the West Bank for decades. It is the Israeli dissection of Palestinian lands and destruction of Palestinian businesses, olive groves, and lives, that have created a situation where people must make the kinds of complicated moral choices at play here, even if Birnbaum thinks his factories are apolitical. Just because choices must be made does not make the outcomes or implications less political, or less morally fraught.

But do not ask me to “stand with Israel.” And do not ask me to “stand with Palestine.” I cannot; I will not.

I stand with the people of every nationality, religion, or ethnicity who live in fear for their lives and livelihoods, who worry about how to protect themselves, their families and their children. I stand with the Israelis and the Palestinians who are forced to wonder under what arbitrary moment they may find themselves in mortal danger–merely for being Palestinian or Israel; merely for living–and, especially, with those who, in the face of such terror, are brave enough to resist the temptation to view the conflict in Manichean terms.

The blame for the present debacle falls squarely and evenly on the governing bodies on both sides, in Palestine and in Israel. Sitting in synagogue this morning, listening to my compassionate, erudite, and peace-loving rabbi carefully choose his words and frame his remarks on the subject, it occurred to me that perhaps the best framework for articulating my views is one that follows the traditional form of the Al Cheyt confessional said by many Jews on Yom Kippur. It might go something like this:

For the sins we have committed before You by believing that there is no partner for peace.

And for the sins we have committed before You by refusing to pursue peace before war.

For the sins we have committed before You by exercising power.

And for the sins we have committed before You by believing that power and might make right.

For the sins we have committed before You by those who should know better.

And for the sins we have committed before You by those who never had the chance to learn.

For the sins we have committed before You by using doublespeak, to speak of peace while engaging in war.

And for the sins we have committed before You by equating peace only with victory.

For the sins we have committed before You under duress and willingly.

And for the sins we have committed before You through having a hard heart.

For the sins we have committed before You by instilling fear in the hearts of the innocent.

And for the sins we have committed before You by mistaking aggression for bravery.

For the sins we have committed before You by using fear, oppression, and repression as a tool of politics.

And for the sins we have committed before You by cloaking theocracy in democracy.

For the sins we have committed before You in thinking a Jewish life is worth more than a Muslim one.

And for the sins we have committed before You in thinking that a Muslim life is worth more than a Jewish one.

I am an American, and a Jew. As an American, I “stand with” my country, but part of my standing with it is also standing up to it: speaking out when I believe it is wrong, and when the actions taken by my government do not represent my views or my values.

That I am Jewish does not mean that I am an Israeli. Nor does it mean that I can support or “stand with” Israel–especially when its actions betray the values of the Judaism we allegedly share.

And I cannot stand with Palestine, despite my deep sympathies for their plight and an unwavering belief in the right to Palestinian statehood. But the government(s) of Hamas and Fatah are complicit, along with the Israelis, in de-prioritizing peace and in stoking the embers of a conflict that periodically flares up, at great cost to the Palestinian people.

Instead, I say that now is the time for Palestinians and Israelis–the people, not the nations–to stand with each other and demand a cessation of hostilities. To demand change.

Perhaps the place to start is by atoning for their mistakes, and asking for forgiveness from each other as a first step in rebuilding a comprehensive and meaningful process for peace.

I have written “I” here, but I was hardly alone. I did all of this with friends new and old, with unaffiliated Upper West Side neighbors who responded to a call for help, with people from the Manhattan JCC, and with a group from my synagogue. I did it with the help of friends who used Facebook to post about places in need, people who posted to Twitter about people with needs, and the encouragement of many friends both within and outside the region.

And nearly everywhere I went in the Rockaways and Staten Island, I saw volunteers connected to Occupy Sandy.

So I write, now, to offer an apology to the folks at Occupy. Here you have it: I’m sorry.

In May of this year–before the hurricane, before the election–I stated that I was distinctly unimpressed with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Among other things, I wrote:

Unfortunately, beyond gifting us the convenient marketing idea of the 99% versus the 1%, OWS has not accomplished much—and marketing slogans are useful, but they’re not enough to create or carry a movement over time. Beyond that one framing device, OWS hasn’t taken us anywhere new: complaining about capitalism is hardly a novelty, nor is focusing on the most nefarious or cronyistic aspects of it, especially after the spectacular crash we have gone through in the last three years.

Instead, I said, if…

“…the Occupy-ers really want to have an impact, a transformational effect on our society, then they should take steps to influence our society directly. Instead of expending oxygen saying there’s no explicit political agenda, or arguing over why it’s important that they remain leaderless … move away from political protest and get engaged in real social change. Perhaps the most valuable thing these people could give is their time—time spent doing something rather than, er, nothing.”

That is exactly what has happened, and I suppose one could say I called this outcome rather presciently. But I could never have predicted Hurricane Sandy, and what was missing from my complaint and my suggestion was the creation of the network in the first place. If OWS had not happened–whether you consider it a success or not, or whether you consider “success” beside the point–the network that enables Occupy Sandy to help so many people is clearly a direct outgrowth of the methods tested and the network built during the height of Occupy Wall Street.

Some issues still exist; the insistently leaderless nature of the Occupy movement has its drawbacks. On my first run with supplies, I was directed to go to a church in Belle Harbor. By the time I got there, an hour later, they were no longer accepting deliveries and there was some confusion as to where we should go. On my second run: same problem, a full distribution center and clearly we should have been sent somewhere else. This time, as it began to get dark, the shelters began to close–but no one (Occupy or otherwise) seemed to have a clear sense of where we could go to unload a car full of items, rather than haul them back to Manhattan. As responsive as the group has been, especially via Twitter, the lack of a “central command” means just that: there’s no single master plan.

Overall, though, the impact in hurricane-stricken areas been a well-deserved, well-earned triumph for Occupy. I would not wish the destruction of Hurricane Sandy on anyone, but it has demonstrated a capacity for caring and community engagement that goes miles beyond neighborliness. Personally, I am hoping to make another trip and put in another day of labor. So, I am sorry, Occupy folks, and you have my apology. And I hope when the hurricane crisis fades, you will be able to take what you have learned from this experience and reapply it back to the political arena. Clearly, our nation needs more hands-on help than just slogans about the things that divide us.

Coming soon, part II: New York Neighborly State of Mind

“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God,” Mr. Mourdock said. “And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Those two sentences caused a bit of a firestorm, resulting in a statement of clarification from Mourdock:

“God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick.”

Feel better now? You probably shouldn’t–but likely not for the reasons you think.

***

I believe Mr. Mourdock when he says that rape is horrible and he hadn’t intended to suggest otherwise. I also believe him when he says that he’s pretty sure God doesn’t want rape either. But in reading and re-reading Mourdock’s different statements, his phrasing–perhaps less deliberate in his debate remarks, and surely more careful in his subsequent clarification–raises a different question about who is responsible for a rape, and for everything else that happens in the world.

If Mr. Mourdock believes, as he says, that God “intended” a pregnancy to happen after a rape, then surely this does also mean that God’s will is an active and omnipresent force, reigning over everything: from the decisions of the rapist, to the decisions of the rape victim, to the decisions of all the voters who might (or might not) elect him to the Senate, to every decision he has made or will make going forward. Including his remarks about rape, God, and pregnancy. In other words, if one espouses a view of God’s role in the world that is fundamental, how can one possibly draw lines to say this is where God is influential, focused, attentive … and this is where God is not? How would any of us know? For Mourdock himself: if wins his race, he will almost surely thank God. But will he also accept defeat as God’s will?

The only real alternative to this fundamentalist point of view is to ascribe certain actions and occurrences to a nearly as powerful but much more malign force, i.e., Satan. There is a long history of that, but it is also not without its problems: if Satan is responsible for the horrible actions of the rapist, how do we know that Satan is not also responsible for the pregnancy that might result from the rape? How can Mr. Mourdock be so sure that God didn’t intend for the rape to happen, but did intend for the pregnancy to happen?

***

Of course, hearing statements to the effect of “Life begins at conception” always makes me think: duh.

From a hardcore scientific perspective–let’s put God out of this equation for now–it seems quite likely that this is true: life begins at conception. The fertilization of an egg and the creation of a new being, one with a different (but related) genetic composition from its host, all sounds like “life.” Is it a life capable of an independent existence untethered from its host (also known as Mom)? In the case of humans not for many, many weeks. Is it a life about which anyone can say anything beyond the host’s individual hopes, expectations, anxieties, or devastations? No. Capable of independent thought? Not yet. (Is it a life according to Judaism? No.)

But this doesn’t mean that it isn’t a life, in a scientific way.

Nor does this mean that there aren’t priorities greater than this unborn, unsustainable life.

The abortion arguments remind me of the ways in which Democrats and Republicans, the devoutly religious and the devoutly atheistic, “liberals” and “conservatives,” can talk past each other without ever really getting it. I know very few people who support abortion rights who also believe that abortion itself is a good thing in and of itself. Yet too often people who are “pro-choice” are therefore accused of being “anti-life.”

This misunderstands the arguments in favor of legal abortion, which not only weigh the life of the mother over the unborn “life” that cannot exist without that mother, but also recognizes that illegal abortions have always occurred and are much more dangerous for everyone involved. Instead of fixating on making abortion illegal, those opposed might instead work harder to prevent unwanted pregnancies from happening in the first place. (And I don’t mean by teaching abstinence.)

At the same time, in the zeal to protect abortion rights, the question of “life” often gets less consideration than it might. Perhaps if those who are “pro-choice” acknowledged more readily the scientific possibilities for defining life–rationally, through empiricism and not theism, much the same way one believes in the truth of Darwin’s theory of the evolution of humans–they would find themselves with more respect, maybe even cooperation, from those who oppose abortion out of theological motives. People would continue to disagree, but might do so from a better perspective, one infused with respect rather than hatred.

And ultimately, we might be able to avoid having arguments that place men like Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock in the position of making statements that are offensive, even downright stupid, out of a desire to express their holiness while they sit in judgment of others.

It also doesn’t hurt that both the facts and the talking points for the Clinton era–in terms of economic expansion, bi-partisan management of Social Security, welfare, and other “entitlement” programs, and tax policy–are in many ways better than those of the Reagan era. (Especially since Republicans like to forget the ways in which Ronald Reagan raised taxes, skipped pursuing anti-abortion legislation, and subtly abandoned other conservative dogmas in favor of bi-partisan cooperation to expand the military and, of course, “bring down” the Soviet Union.) Yes, Clinton’s speech was long. But he gave the crowd what they seemed to want: a smart, policy driven rationale for electing Obama and rebutting the thin arguments of the Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan campaign.

However, as impressed as I was by Clinton’s speech, it was difficult not to escape a certain kind of negative nostalgia, too. Every time Clinton sucked on his cheek in between making a point, every time he raised his hands and wagged his fingers, it recalled the worst moments of his presidency. It isn’t that I care especially whether Clinton had affairs while in (or out of) office; I don’t. Ultimately these are issues between Bill and Hillary Clinton. It isn’t even that he lied about them, since this isn’t an especially shocking response. The problem was the person with whom he had the affair–and the collective Democratic response, as led by Hillary Clinton.

Because there is no getting around it. First, Clinton had an affair with someone who worked for him, an affair that can only have been between unequals. Who on a president’s staff is his equal? Certainly not an intern, a star-struck post-college intern. If he wanted to have an affair with some wealthy supporter or other outside lady–perhaps equally star-struck, but less implicitly susceptible to coercion–that would have been a different story. But if you or I had an affair with an office intern, whatever might have been “consensual” would have been immediately considered irrelevant in the face of the workplace power dynamic, a dynamic that could only be worse in the White House. Bill Clinton should have known better and should have done better.

Second, once it became known, Hillary Clinton and a generation of likeminded women rallied around him to condemn every voice that sought to question Bill Clinton’s integrity. No, the Oval Office blow job was not an impeachable offense; but neither was it forgivable. For Hillary Clinton to throw over all the feminist principles to which she had dedicated her life–including the principle (is it a stretch to call it that?) that women in the workplace should be treated as colleagues, not as sex objects–must have hurt. But apparently it didn’t hurt so much that she wasn’t willing to do it.

All these years later it is clear that the Republicans who tried to impeach Bill Clinton overreached. They paid for it politically, too, as well they should have. But all these years later, the Democrats who continue to rally for and be rallied by Clinton would do well not to gloss over this history too readily. This is not about the issues in the Clinton’s marriage; most marriages are complicated and difficult to understand from the outside. This is about being clear-headed in the face of an alluring nostalgia, and about remembering what your principles are, why you believe in them, and not allowing them to be swept away by rhetorical flourishes.

After all, if you want an example of the dangers of lost principles, just look at the Republicans. If Bill Clinton’s stature is like Ronald Reagan’s, then George W. Bush’s is the opposite: the Republicans’ 21st century Herbert Hoover and clearly The Man Who Will Not Be Named By Republicans During This Campaign.

There are plenty of policy based reasons to disagree with or even dislike Paul Ryan. If you need to rehash those arguments, feel free to Google them yourself, or just read this recent opinion piece from FOXNews. Instead, let’s look at a different and more obvious reason to distrust the Republican candidate for Vice President: his complete failure to understand rock music.

Shortly after his selection as VP candidate, there was a small dust-up over Ryan’s stated affections for Rage Against The Machine. This was firmly rebutted by the band’s Tom Morello. (Headline: “Tom Morello: ‘Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against’“) One might have thought such a simple episode would be enough, a hint to Ryan perhaps to stay away from those types of pop culture references since they’re so often loaded. Not to mention that it follows on a history of unfortunate Republican expropriations of rock music, such as problems with the McCain campaign and Jackson Browne in 2008 and Newt Gingrich and an argument with the band Survivor earlier this year.

No such luck for Paul Ryan. Instead, at the Republican National Convention last week, he said this: “We’re a full generation apart, Governor Romney and I.  And, in some ways, we’re a little different.  There are the songs on his iPod, which I’ve heard on the campaign bus and on many hotel elevators. He actually urged me to play some of these songs at campaign rallies.  I said, I hope it’s not a deal-breaker Mitt, but my playlist starts with AC/DC, and ends with Zeppelin.”

Hmmm.

Now, I believe it is possible to separate and distinguish between art and its politics: to seek and find aesthetic value in a work of art, even if I disagree with the artist’s politics. I’m no monarchist, yet the works of Velasquez, court painter to King Philip IV, still wow me. I find Wagner’s anti-Semitism despicable but some of his music appealing. And I think Ted Nugent is on the lunatic fringe of American politics, but I’ll own up to owning two of his songs.

But most of us don’t pretend. We don’t use our cultural likes or dislikes to help shape our public persona for the purposes of getting elected. Unlike Paul Ryan, I don’t espouse a view of the world that sounds more like an imaginary portrayal of pre-Hoover America, when there was not only no rock music but no safety net for those citizen in poverty, out of work, or in dire need of medical help. I don’t espouse politics and policy that are aligned with the hard-right elements of the Catholic Church, a group that no doubt has some very firm and erect positions on AC/DC’s delight in “American thighs.”

Paul Ryan, you will recall, is self-identified as an observant Roman Catholic. Ryan touts his “heartland” roots–though in fact it was often in “heartland” places like Janesville, Wisconsin that there were objections to the introduction of rock-and-roll music. Ryan and I are roughly the same age, so we are both too young to recall personally the era when Ed Sullivan didn’t want to show Elvis Presley to a “family audience,” and The Rolling Stones had to change the lyrics to “Let’s Spend The Night Together” for a live broadcast. We are too young to have experienced it personally, but not too young to know the history. And those examples–AC/DC, Elvis, the Stones–are not even political, they just reflect the cultural conservatism that Ryan also likes to display proudly. Except when he’s flaunting his AC/DC.

I would also like to know if Paul Ryan has any U2 on his iPod, and if so, what he thinks when he hears Bono on TV talking about our collective responsibility to help the poor around the world. Bono, after all, has taken his celebrity and notoriety and used it to raise the profile of many issues Ryan scorns. Bono presumably recognizes that Ryan-esque ideals of self-reliance are great–but unrealistic when you are hungry, have little access to food or clean water, and lack housing, health care, or any of the other assets that Paul Ryan and the rest of us largely take for granted. Oh, right: and Bono is someone who considers himself a Christian, too, and finds his faith and the life of Jesus meaningful in guiding his path. One can only admire how Christianity can embrace such divergent points of view; talk about a “big tent”!

Finally, Paul Ryan didn’t mention The Who, but I would definitely love to know if he has “Who’s Next” on his iPod. Can’t you picture it? Maybe he’s out for a run–on Capitol Hill or perhaps back home–and he’s plugged in and totally stoked. Out for a six mile run, and he’s in the last quarter mile, and the adrenaline is pumping. And there it is, shuffle serves it up: Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, loud and proud with Won’t Get Fooled Again:

There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Yes, I can see it all before me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve been there myself. But meet the new boss? Not quite. Take a bow, Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. But know this: I cannot possibly vote for someone who thinks he can appeal to me through his playlist and yet is so disconnected from what it all means.

It isn’t that the IPO failed. It didn’t fail: it sold millions of shares and raised a significant base of capital for the company, as well as money for Facebook’s founders and early investors. That qualifies as a successful IPO.

Nor are most investors upset that the valuation was wrong. If they thought it was wrong, they had the option not to buy the shares in the first place, despite having been among those offered first crack.

People aren’t really upset about the role of Morgan Stanley in bringing this IPO to fruition, or about Morgan Stanley’s fees, or even about the technical glitches on the NASDAQ exchange (that caused some very real trading problems).

Here is the real reason: Investors–those big, frontline, so-called “institutional” investors–are upset because they weren’t able to flip Facebook’s stock for an immediate and magnificent profit. They never had any intention of holding the stock, no intention to evaluate its share price and its price-to-earnings ratio and say “I’m going to hold this for 5 years–or 10 years–because it seems like such a solid investment.”

They are not investors so much as opportunists. And they are upset because flipping the stock requires the broader world of mom-and-pop investors to be foolish enough to believe in The Next Big Thing and want to buy its shares at any price. This is what the hoopla is really about. Most of these major investors probably don’t really care about Facebook as a business past that first day of trading. Sure, some will hold shares over time; some will take a percentage of their overall investment and hold it back, to see what the market does. But most are upset because the secondary trading didn’t turn into a bonanza.

That represents the biggest flaw in this whole process, and it is difficult to feel sorry for these major investors who were unable to flip their investments in Facebook as rapidly and lucratively as they wanted.

Before you jump all over this simple statement of un-support, one qualifier: I believe unambiguously in the right to free speech and freedom of assembly. The New York Police Department, along with the police in Oakland and other cities across the US, as well as those on many university campuses, have not handled themselves especially well throughout these protests. Whatever I think about OWS, I fully support the right of these people to gather and speak, free from harassment, pepper spray, marginally legal spying tactics, etc.

Unfortunately, beyond gifting us the convenient marketing idea of the 99% versus the 1%, OWS has not accomplished much—and marketing slogans are useful, but they’re not enough to create or carry a movement over time. Beyond that one framing device, OWS hasn’t taken us anywhere new: complaining about capitalism is hardly a novelty, nor is focusing on the most nefarious or cronyistic aspects of it, especially after the spectacular crash we have gone through in the last three years.

What would be new is working to point society in a different direction. New might be having a message that is married to a set of priorities, and a plan (beyond demonstrations) for how to get those priorities accomplished. If you look at the most successful movements for change in our society over the last forty years—from the civil rights movement in the 1960s to the marriage equality movement now—they all had clear priorities and plans for action that were more than just demonstrations in the streets. They combined their outrage with focused social action and a compelling narrative.

By comparison, OWS and its related protests all feel naïve, as if “Freedom Rock” actually represented the rebelliousness of the 1960s. OWS’s use of smartphones and technologies like Facebook and Twitter to spread their message is done seemingly with no self-awareness of the irony here. (The Daily Show, as usual, nailed this quite effectively in its segment “Occupy Wall Street Divided.”) There’s no aggressive, visible “use their tools against them” push, or a wholesale effort to deploy less corporatized networking systems (of which there are a few, such as Diaspora). That sort of thing would require leaders, for one thing—leadership that the Occupy movements have expressed an explicit desire to avoid. It’s also harder to spot and address the irony when you don’t really have a clear message or understanding of the change you seek. The New York Times’s David Carr nailed the problems in all this in describing the protesters’ desire not to have a political focus. But, again: no focus, no impact.

The economic disparities in our society are hard to dispute. Hell, even the 1% aren’t arguing the point! Nor are such august, pro-capitalism sources like The Economist. But identifying this issue isn’t enough, and over time it may even erode sympathy (to the extent that it exists; it’s hard to tell how widespread the support for the Occupy-ers really is) for that message when there’s nothing else to back it up.

If the Occupy-ers really want to have an impact, a transformational effect on our society, then they should take steps to influence our society directly. Instead of expending oxygen saying there’s no explicit political agenda, or arguing over why it’s important that they remain leaderless … move away from political protest and get engaged in real social change. Perhaps the most valuable thing these people could give is their time—time spent doing something rather than, er, nothing.

Some ideas: Flood the social services systems with support, with active volunteerism. Hit every soup kitchen, homeless shelter, and family service program in the country—especially those for the elderly and for children—and give those working hours to them. For those who are not much for social contact, haul off to farms across the country and agree to help harvest crops for free, in exchange for farmers giving 5% of their yield (for free) to local food banks. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are actually places where there’s a real shortage of farm labor because of all the immigration disputes in the US right now. If farm work isn’t your thing, hook up with the various local “improvement district” type organizations in cities big and small, and put your time to work cleaning streets, maintaining public gardens, and potentially even addressing derelict homes and buildings that are a result of the foreclosure crisis.

Alternatively, OWS folk could embrace the idea that our problems are fundamentally political and social, and decide to tackle those issues directly. So, how about a peaceful movement to Occupy Capitol Hill (or your local statehouse–like the effective coalition of groups in Wisconsin last year)? That would be much more compelling than Zuccotti Park, and would start speaking directly to those who make policy—and can change policy. OWS might even trigger a Constitutional crisis over the right to free speech versus the trumped-up “security” rights of lawmakers and other government officials; such a fight could be very useful.

No, the Occupy-ers won’t get paid for this work; but they were not getting paid for camping out in Zuccotti Park, either. What they will do is demonstrate to everyone that the thing they are most concerned about is the people in our society, and not just the self-aggrandizing glamor that comes from seeing yourself on the evening news when you’ve “successfully” protested somewhere.

The real turning point in my views about the Occupy-ers came with the launch last November of the selfish, over-intellectualized Occupy Student Debt campaign. The group’s simple message was what you might call faux-radical: when a million people sign on, that group of a million will formally abandon their student loans. This “break the debt” concept was bundled with some very valid ideas about the problems of our college and university educational system, a desire for it to be more affordable and accessible, etc. But ultimately I found this morally bankrupt, an attempt to fight the “system” that was more about freeing individuals from their burdens than actually pushing for change. The Occupy-ers had jumped the shark. Or, to put it in context: once again a protest, not really a movement. (Interestingly, there is a new or different group operating under the Occupy Student Debt banner, and their website says they are “not affiliated in any way with the ill-conceived campaign urging borrowers to voluntarily default on their student loans that was launched in late November 2011. We strongly advise anyone with student loan debt NOT to participate in this form of protest, especially given that the law, as currently written, allows lenders and collectors to profit from defaults.”)

Here’s the thing: right now, we are in an era in which far too many of the 99% are focused on getting to that 1% range as their singular life goal. And who can blame them—no one has given them any real alternative way of looking at life beyond the lens of wealth. But Occupy [fill in the blank] isn’t doing that either. Indeed, I can understand why many Americans may simultaneously be sympathetic to the protesters who get knocked in the head in Oakland or pepper sprayed by a cop in New York and yet, still, not rush out to join the “movement.” Until OWS decides it wants to be a movement, with goals that address the actual problems faced by our country, and until it is willing to grow up enough to accept both the challenges and benefits of real leadership, they’re destined to be marginal. Considering all the attention that they have received and continue to receive, it’s actually kind of a shame, not to mention one big lost opportunity.