Originally posted at BIG Government
Apparently, liberals have a problem differentiating the literal meaning of certain words. Either that, or they feel comfortable altering meanings to accommodate things they say they stand for but would rather not actually have to live out.
#OccupyWallStreet began as movement for economic justice but has grown into a situation where demonstrators appear to be confused about what the movement and the word “occupy” actually means.
As thousands of uninvited progressives take to the highways and byways to inhabit places like Wall Street, Cleveland, Hartford, and Seattle, the same tendency to accommodate amorphous definitions of the word “occupy” seems to be infiltrating a nationwide liberal movement.
Growing numbers of protesters are taking a stand against greed, corporate wealth and economic inequity. Yet amongst marchers who demonstrate to uphold sharing and caring in Tarpaulin Towns springing up across America, there are some who are exhibiting counterproductive behavior.
The fact that some of these people are confused is understandable. One meaning of the word “occupy” is to “engage the attention or energies of someone else.” That definition may explain what a fellow in Seattle, accused of indecent exposure, did on the five occasions he performed lewd acts in front of children. Being a participant in the “Occupy Seattle” protests, the offender may have mistakenly interpreted “occupy” to mean “engage the attention” of 13-year-old girls on a swing set. Or could it be that the alleged offender was just engaging energies better left unseen by those around him?
The same could be said for free-spirited activists on the streets of New York City who have let their freaky fairness-flags fly by dispensing used condoms and human excrement alongside police cars and on street corners and engaging “the attention of others” by exposing innumerable pairs of “sinfully bare breasts.”
The official term “occupy” also includes the act of “taking up a place or extent in space,” which could explain what happened in Cleveland when a 19-year-old girl, after demonstrating against corporate greed, was told by event coordinators to share a space with a fiscal fairness activist named Leland “due to a shortage of tents.”
As the old saying goes, “Occupy can mean one thing to one person and something else to Leland,” and who’s to tell Leland his definition is wrong? So allegedly Leland “took up,” so to speak, with his tent-mate against her will, and after the sleepy, satiated suspect had occupied her private space by force, he “slept in a sleeping bag” provided compliments of the “sharing the wealth” rally.
As a result, the “sexual assault incident in [Cleveland’s] Public Square,” which Leland evidently understood to be “occupying” is now “being classified as a “kidnapping/rape.”
What discussion about comparative interpretations of a word like “occupy” would be complete without discussing Shawn Coleman, the infamous agitated “Occupy Hartford” activist who was arrested for brandishing a knife when asked to share a blanket in “Turning Point” Park’s canopy tent town. Maybe when it comes to blankets, Shawn takes the word “occupy” literally, which to some means “to take or hold possession or control of.”
The same holds true for the “occupiers” who are presently looting, pillaging, and stealing personal items like computers, cameras, thousands of dollars in monetary donations, and even umbrellas and fold-up beds in Zuccotti Park. It could be that just like the word “truth” can mean different things to different people, to some “occupy” could connote taking hold and possession and control of other people’s personal property, which is what the spirit of the “occupy” movement is all about anyway, isn’t it?
Let’s face it, occupiers have quite the role model in Barack Obama, the Occupier-in-Chief is presently attempting to, albeit poorly, perform the functions of the office and position of President according to how he loosely interprets documents like the US Constitution.
It appears as if the President of the United States and the group he proudly identifies with have difficulty differentiating between “residing in as an owner or tenant” on both Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue and desecrating, dishonoring, and seizing public property.
Thus, the definition of “occupy” has been reduced to a cacophony of definitions, including having “creepy thugs…running from warrants” looking for “cheap drugs and free food” and a place to be “fed, get wasted and crash.”
The chant “Occupy, occupy, occupy” is now being misused as an opportunity to rape, plunder and partake of “free chow” in the form of $16-a-pound smoked salmon and cream cheese.
With that in mind, someone needs to inform the 99% demonstrators that “occupying” doesn’t mean stealing the innocence of children, forcibly occupying the bodies of young women against their will, divvying up fellow occupiers’ personal possessions without permission, or knifing a person because he or she wants to share a tent and a blanket.
