The American middle class does not yet realize that the American democratic system no longer works for their benefit. Many suspect but for the most part do not yet believe that the American political system, especially at the federal level, now belongs to the Predatory moneyed elite.
The American class war, undertaken in earnest since 1980, has been lost. The federal government which acted as the protector of the middle and working classes after the Great Depression has been taken over or neutered. And who are the predatory elite? They are the upper financial classes - the Wall Street Banks, the executives of the large and mostly monopolistic corporations (i.e. Wal-Mart), the inheritors of large fortunes (Koch Brothers, Richard Scaife, etc), and the multinational corporations like BP and News Corporation.
In the absence of an effective political system that responds to the needs of the middle class the worst hit by the loss of the class war are the middle class youth. But while they are the worst affected, they are the least invested in the propaganda that tells Americans that the American democracy will work for us if we just go vote. That no longer works because there are too few politicians effectively working for the middle and working classes. Let me go into further detail.
The purpose for the conservative class war is so that the predatory moneyed elite can extract as much money and power from the middle and working classes as possible. The moneyed elites have been attacking the federal government - until now the protectors of the middle and working classes - and trying to weaken its control on America both economically and socially. The US Supreme Court has said that money is political speech, but first wealth is power. The moneyed elitists have used their power to weaken the control the federal government had on America both economically and socially. They want to cut revenues and privatize the functions so that the only thing left for the government to do is tax the population and hand the money to the predatory elites. Every policy the GOP Presidential candidates have suggested has had this goal. Consider Romney's recent suggest that the VA be privatized through vouchers.
The privatization of government functions is a major part of weakening the federal government. There are two purposes of privatizing federal government functions. Health care is only one example. The first purpose is to shift more taxpayer money to private business, even though the health care for example will cost a great deal more than if the government provided it. As long as the VA is a government-run operation it will remain low-coast and efficient, but not a source of profit to private industry. It will cost more because the health care providers have no reason to hold down the profits they try to get.
The second and more important purpose is to weaken the federal government. Remember the federal government is the only level of government that protects the general public from predatory businesses like banks, crooked companies (see the FTC), Oil companies like BP, and discriminated-against minorities and discriminated-against women. So where is this going?
The predatory moneyed elites want to take America back to the kind of government that pre-Revolution France had under Louis XIV - XVI or for a more modern example, like the governments which currently exist in effectively all of Latin America. See Francis Fukuyama's new book "The origins of Political Order."
Fukuyama describes the French Aristocracy as the great political opponent to the central government - the King of France. For the modern American equivalent of the French aristocracy in a society sharply changed by the industrial revolution consider the predatory power of the American moneyed elites. They have targeted the middle and working class of America because that's where the money is. The reason why the French could not defeat the British in war is that the French aristocracy was exempt from taxes. The king had to tax the people to fight the wars and could not field as large a military force as the more powerful centralized British government could. A major reason for the French Revolution was excessive taxation of the lower classes while the Aristocracy were free from taxes (sounds like Norquist's goal to me.) So let's step forward to present day America.
In order to allow the predation on the American population those organizations and people have used their concentrated political power to weaken the federal government - in the way conservatives have been doing since Reagan was elected President by General Electric. Another element of weakening the federal government has been the abandonment of the rule of law. Check out Glenn Greenwald's new book. Fukuyama points out that one of the three most important factors in an effective modern government is the rule of law, but he also points out that the central government has to protect that. The aristocrats (or predatory moneyed elites in my update of his book) will resist the limitations that the rule of law places on them.
The predatory moneyed elites currently have sufficient control over the American federal government so that the political system is no longer an effective tool for the middle and working class Americans, but they conceal this with a propaganda blitz from the MSM and others. But the youth has been the first to recognize that the political system no longer works for us.
That has led to the Occupy Wall Street movement and to the confusion of the pundits and the elites regarding what OWS means. See Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.
It's my opinion that the OWS people are simply the first to realize that America no longer works for the 99%. They are the most heavily affected as well as the first to give up on the existing political system. They are also the people with the energy to actually go out and demonstrate. Since they recognize that the political system is no longer working for them they are placing their bodies on the line, much as the people in the Arab Spring have done.
This is a brief statement of my case. The predatory elites have used the power of their wealthy to take control of or neuter the federal government and shift the flow of money from the middle and working classes to their own pockets. The "puzzling" characteristics of OWS come directly from the recognition of the theft which has occurred in what used to be middle class America. The lessons from the Arab Spring are being modified to fit America's needs.
I don't know where this is going, but this is where I think America is today.