I agree overall with your post, especially about the various distractions they have us all protesting over. But, I don't really think OWS had them particularly scared. It was just yet another ineffective protest by powerless people.
What boggles my mind is how so many still think "protesting" makes any kind of difference at all. Talk about doing nothing about the underlying systems. Standing out on the street impotently yelling about something is pretty much one notch above "impotently posting to the internet about something". You think anyone in charge looks at a 100K person protest and says "Ohmygosh, they're really angry about this! Maybe I should change the status quo!" Hahaha never. You might as well pray--in both cases, nobody is listening.
Occupy had exactly zero chance of changing anything, because in order to actually change things, you need to be in the rich club or one of their bought-and-paid-for politicians. And all of those people are already on the gravy train--they have no incentive to change anything.
I disagree. Protests DO change things, just not as much or as instantaneous as people want it to be now that people are so accustomed to "instant gratification" due to social media and the like.
We haven't seen change on the economic front, because as the OP who you responded to is all the "distractions" people got them outraged upon. Black Lives Matter for instance was doomed to fail because of it's dubious origins, and lack of clear objectives. But media promoted it because it doesn't hurt the rich and corporate folks at all and serves as a distraction away from the root of the issues. People nowadays are just WAY too susceptible of getting their attention distracted away from the most IMPORTANT subjects.
What I find the most irritating is the people who talk about "nothing can be done now" or "we are powerless", are many of the same people who I have had to argue against a while back who never once cared about political lobbying or corporate monoliths and in some cases argued against me. Now those same people who once said that are no longer to be found.
Protests and majority opinion do matter. In fact most of these corporations attained this level of power in government because majority of people LET IT HAPPEN. For example until covid, the majority sentiment of people were "Business = good no matter what" camp, and political lobbying was barely talked about. In fact, I've had the wonderful experience of being the minority being vocal on wonderful online forums getting pushback saying I'm an idiot about businesses becoming that large is not a bad thing (thanks libertarians). Opinions do matter, and if majority of people were against the consolidation of corporate power, it wouldn't have gotten this bad. Corporate power is susceptible to shareholder sentiment, and shareholder sentiment is whether you like to believe it or not, dictated by regular people. But corporate power is consolidating more and more and used it's power through regulation so it's less dictated by regular people.
Now the same people who called me the idiot are the same people saying "its hopeless", or "we are powerless" or "we have to find a completely new system" instead of thinking that they were a huge part of the problem. We can still turn things around through protests and constant and persistent pushback however, it will just be harder and require more drastic measures. emphasis on "constant", which will be very difficult considering how people nowadays want "instant gratification" and want things to change "instantly". The biggest hurdle is the belief we can't change things. All you have to do is hurt their bottom line (FOR LONG ENOUGH, very important) and all the rich greedy numbnuts will fall in line easily considering if other greedy numbnuts will do the same thing, but the powerless people don't believe anything affects rich people.
What boggles my mind is how so many still think "protesting" makes any kind of difference at all. Talk about doing nothing about the underlying systems. Standing out on the street impotently yelling about something is pretty much one notch above "impotently posting to the internet about something". You think anyone in charge looks at a 100K person protest and says "Ohmygosh, they're really angry about this! Maybe I should change the status quo!" Hahaha never. You might as well pray--in both cases, nobody is listening.
Occupy had exactly zero chance of changing anything, because in order to actually change things, you need to be in the rich club or one of their bought-and-paid-for politicians. And all of those people are already on the gravy train--they have no incentive to change anything.