Nor is the situation of Occupy encampments across America vis-a-vis local, state and federal authorities analogous to the situations of protesters along Avenue Habib Bourguiba, in Homs or at Pearl Roundabout. There is undoubtedly some kind of "thrill," some sense of "importance" obtained by the rhetorical association of Occupy with the diverse anti-authoritarian opposition movements which have been labeled in the West as "the Arab Spring," but such associations are facile.
For all her problems--and there are many--America is not Tunisia, or Syria, or Egypt or Bahrain. President Obama is not Hosni Mubarak or Bashar al-Assad. The OPD and NYPD are neither mukhabarat nor baltadjiya. The evictions of encampments are not the Battle of the Camels.
Such analogies are a form of revisionism, a simplistic rewriting of the origins of the opposition movements in MENA and the conditions they confronted and continued to confront. In effect, they are an exploitation of those movements.
Reality-based community, right?