Several years ago during the height of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ madness, I wrote a Townhall column about who made up the gaggle of protesters involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. I described them as a collection of freaks, misfits, and losers, most of whom could barely spell ‘Wall Street’ in one of their rare sober and coherent moments, much less understand Wall Street’s unique place in our Capitalist, free market economy. Their participation in the protests was all about just being there and belonging to something. In their otherwise ordinary, empty, and unfulfilling lives they needed to become ‘Belongers’. Wailing against ‘the man’ was the perfect foil for them to vent their anger and frustration at their own failures and shortcomings in life.
I offered as an example a time from my youth when my buddies and I volunteered to fill and stack sandbags during some local flooding. Our motives were not entirely altruistic, we had seen some news reports which showed video footage of some very attractive young ladies working hard to hold back the rising waters of the Missouri River. We viewed volunteering as a legitimate excuse to skip school, and as an opportunity to meet young ladies. I don’t recall if our efforts were in any way successful in helping hold back the flooding in that particular area - probably not, but each of us scored a couple of phone numbers for all of our hard work that day. And we belonged to something bigger than ourselves, even if we really did the sandbagging primarily to meet babes.
Fast forward to the present day and all of the anti-Israel protests taking place across the country, and in particular on college campuses. My guess is that a fair number of the young men participating in the protests each have a little black book in their back pocket, along with an ink pen to quickly jot down any phone numbers of attractive young ladies they might meet. I suspect most of them couldn’t find Israel or Gaza on the globe, nor have any clue at all of the history of that volatile region of the world. Certainly not the fact that Israel isn’t occupying anything that doesn’t historically belong to them in the first place. Their primary motivation, just as my buddies and mine was years ago, is nothing more noble than to just scope out babes.
Oh, they’ll scream “Free Palestine” in unison while being led in organized chants by some college professor who’s never held a job in private industry, who never served in the military, nor actually did anything constructive in their life, and who’s entire post-puberty existence has been in the ultra-leftist climate of academia. Where they too did whatever was expected of them so that they could also ‘belong’. Likely also the only place where they could receive a paycheck for producing absolutely nothing of value. Most of those leading and participating in the current anti-Israel protests are simply the most recent version of the ‘Belongers’ that I first wrote about years ago who were protesting Wall Street.
The ‘Belongers’ reappear regularly whenever something happens in the world, whether they know anything about it or not. They just feel compelled to belong. To give their empty and vacuous lives some meaning, even if it’s only a temporary fix until the next cause appears, and then they will be able to belong to some cause once again. Rarely do they really have a good understanding of the issues involved. Just being there and belonging is what matters.
Also belonging to a particular cause that is misguided simply doesn’t matter to nor bother a ‘Belonger’. What matters is that at least for a brief span of time their lives will have meaning and value. And they will be surrounded by other ‘Belongers’ with whom they can commune. One big happy family of ‘Belongers’ who gather together to add meaning to each others’ lives.
One other thing that ‘Belongers’ can also count on is that the particular cause being protested will always have financial and logistical support (as with the current anti-Israel protests), likely from leftist organizations like CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood, and many other leftist anti-American groups. More often than not some so-called celebrity, often a washed-up Hollywood figure whose best years are long behind them will step forward to offer their support since they themselves want to belong again. Being out of the limelight is tough on their fragile egos.
Unfortunately, this is one thing that we can rely on in America nowadays, expecting the ‘Belongers’ to show up to glom onto whatever the cause of the moment is. It’s what community organizers need and depend upon to fulfill their goal of “fundamentally transforming” the United States of America. And make no mistake about it, that’s what is underway. A concerted effort of “fundamentally transform” our country. The current protests are just one aspect of that well-coordinated and choreographed effort.
It’s going to take a lot of ‘Belongers’ to succeed in that. But unfortunately, there are a lot of empty, vacuous, and misguided people out there who can be easily manipulated. And all they crave is to feel like they belong to something, whether it’s right or not, or even whether it’s good for them. Just being a ‘Belonger’ is what matters.