WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: #Occupy Protests Are An Exercise In Nostalgia. “The news that 175 people were arrested over the weekend in a Chicago OWS protest started me thinking about the ritualized nature of left demonstrations. The drums, the chants, the defiance, the arrests — and, sometimes, the glass smashing and the fire setting: it all unfolds according to a predictable pattern that in its modern form is essentially unchanged since the Vietnam War.”

They’re sure a lot less orderly than the Tea Party events.

Plus this: “Right now they are more likely to hollow Wall Street out than to change its ways. Financial businesses are already looking at ways to cut costs by getting out of the high priced glass canyons of lower Manhattan; dispersing the financial center into anonymous malls and office parks across a wider area (and perhaps in states that don’t have an income tax as zillionaires nervously eye possible changes to the federal tax code) looks much more attractive if Wall Street is going to be a target for protests.”

Related thoughts from Jeff Goldstein. “To be clear: these ‘grievances’ on parade are not the point of the protests, at least, not to those who are orchestrating all this. Instead, the point of the protests is to con weak-willed pragmatic panders like Romney, or weak-willed and frightened ‘leaders’ like Eric Cantor and John Boehner, to allow for the grievances, to sympathize with them, to begin speaking in the language of the left’s carefully crafted narrative, and to make concessions while remaining constantly on the defensive.”