Karoli points out that many African Americans are not exactly wallowing in sympathy for the pepper-sprayed OWSers.

Police brutality is an issue, but then, it’s always been an issue, and it should definitely be a part of this national conversation we’re having about inequality. Handcuffs, rubber bullets, pepper spray and clubs are routine for people of color. Routine. So he and others have a point when they ask why it’s only an issue now. Whether you agree or disagree with Black Canseco, I think there are points of agreement about the militarization of police. They’ve perfected those arts in neighborhoods where many would never go.

This is sorta kinda what I was saying a few days ago, after much shrieking that the U.S. had entered into some unprecedented state of police brutality. And I said, it has always been the case that any group that could be singled out as “fringe” or “not one of us” could be brutalized with impunity in the U.S. Only very occasionally has brutality carried out on behalf of the establishment evoked any widespread public sympathy for the victims. Most of the time the public sides with the police (or military/militia/hired muscle), if they even hear about it.

The NYPD and LAPD have long and very public histories of brutality. Doesn’t the name Abner Louima ring any bells, people? In recent years many incidents came to public attention only because someone caught the situation on video.

I keep reading that OWS participants are disproportionately white (and male), and this gives us a clue why. The attitude that NOW police brutality is an issue must be a turn off.

This also points out why it’s terribly ineffective to try to be a movement for progressive change in government and the financial sector while behaving like a counterculture. Making yourself an easy target for the establishment is counterproductive in the long run.

But there seems to be a lot of collective amnesia these days. Steve Benen wrote a post seconding Nicholas Krostof’s post about the things Obama has accomplished. Many of the comments amount of a lot of “Obama is no better than Bush” screeching.

One guy complained that Obama is really a moderate Republican, if you look at Republicans of 30 years ago. I’d say 40 years, but yes, that argument could be made. But you could make exactly the same argument about Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both of whom were mostly center-right on many issues based on that same standard. (Note that since LBJ, Democratic nominees who came across as liberals were all defeated in a landslide.) So where has this guy been since the mid 1970s?

And another was complaining that she’d never thought she’d see a Democrat threaten the safety net. Again — Clinton? Welfare reform? The repeal of Glass–Steagall (not Clinton’s idea, but he didn’t see to fight it very hard).

It struck me that it’s like people have been asleep for 40 years and just woke up and blame Obama for everything that’s gone wrong since the fall of Saigon.