Wall Street and Penn State: America Sees Itself More Clearly

In his Daily News column, Stanley Crouch writes that he is pleased with what he calls the enlightenment of America. He cites as examples the Occupy Wall Street protests and the response to the cover-up of child sex-abuse allegations at Penn State. He says that they show a willingness to undergo deep self-examination.

Last week, as the wings of a flightless bird overshadowed everything with its crass commercialism, a number of developments gave me reason to celebrate a wide range of enlightened American moments and decisions.

It is true that ours is a time absent of political compromise and any fair sense of profit, wages and protection of the environment. The most naïve among us assume that, if left alone, the market itself will decide what is right and wrong simply because business is an arena in which only the moral triumph.

Naïve garbage.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement is far from naïve, an expression of long-simmering public disenchantment with our national financial sector and the ominous power it has over Washington. OWS has yet to articulate anything besides slogans about “equality.” But it is so grounded in public despair that it will not go away just because Fox News says it should.

Sometimes, we Americans take a long time to come around. But eventually we see things as they really are.

Read Stanley Crouch's entire column at the Daily News.