I'm afraid I've been thinking, a dangerous pastime, I know.

I've learned a lot in my classes. Much of what I've learned is a lot of what politicians and "pastors" are spouting is pretty much plagiarized from the Cold War era. I mean, they aren't even really trying to put a spin on it. Crazy.

My most eye opening class has been African Colonialism. In this class (and the others) Karl Marx keeps coming back up. In historiography, my professor pointed out that we are all Marxists to some degree because our society has been impregnated by the ideas for so long. That was interesting. Something to think about. But it was my Colonialism class that really made me understand how Marx is still relevant today (and not necessarily in a good way). I had to write an essay about cultural hegemony. What does that mean? Cultural hegemony is a Marxist concept that Gramsci elaborate which is that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by a one social class. To accomplish this they manipulate the societal culture (beliefs, perceptions, values) so that this ruling class worldview is imposed as the societal norm. This worldview is held as universally valid (status quo) and beneficial to all of society, even though it only benefits the ruling class in reality. 

It's crazy to me that people claim to not understand what Occupy Wall Street is really about. This cultural hegemony is what it is about. It's not anti-capitalist, it's not class warfare (at least not begun from the bottom up), it's not just some bored loonies. It's rejecting this cultural hegemony. The values of the 1% are not beneficial to all and Occupy is rejecting that hegemony and is calling for balance. Shouldn't we all be?  I don't know about you, but I'm not really excited about the idea of a revolution. But we are walking down this path, just a bit later than Marx would have thought. I hope that we can stop pretending we aren't comprehending the 99% movement and we can strive to bring balance back. Balance of earnings, balance of the greatness that occurs when government and public enterprise work appropriately together. I'm not looking forward to Marx saying, "Told you so."