At least that’s my take on Vanderleun’s excellent piece titled The People of the Mud, which explores the psychology of those useful idiots populating the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Or would the proper description be pathology?

A small sample:

“Yearning for the mud” in America is a compulsion that comes over people when they have, for complex reasons, a need to immerse themselves in self-degradation. It’s usually a mix of drink, drugs, and weird sex until the soul is obliterated by the abused flesh. Why? Hard to say but it is often the case that, when they look at themselves, they can’t stand what they see.

This obliteration of the soul and the abuse of the flesh is one of the central tenets in many of our post-modern, secular lifestyle religions. For them the “signo” of “In hoc signo vinces” is the full body tattoo project, an earlobe plug, and the multiple facial piercings with a coke nail as an accessory.

Most people try some of these things for a time in their youth, but soon grow out of it when age and experience get the upper hand. Others grow out of it via deep psychoanalysis and a few trips to the rehab clinic. Still others are simply killed by it, their lives bracketed by dates that are far too close together.

Many, however, never kick this yearning for the mud and were, in the past, thought of as “perverts” but are now more kindly seen as “differently minded.” Seeking the safety of number they now live in those urban sinkholes of the soul they laud as “enclaves of Alternative Lifestyles.”

Please do take the time to read the whole thing.

And pray for those afflicted souls who wallow in such an amoral state.

Having experienced what Vanderleun describes while pursuing the rock and roll lifestyle, his words hold a truthful resonance to me. The youths in OWS simply want to be part of a larger movement, to feel like they contributed to “something.” Unfortunately, their professors have sold them snake oil in the form of a wrongful cause. Heck, most of them have no idea why they are there except for the party and the debauchery, utterly clueless as to how they are being co-opted and used by the very government they should be protesting in the first place.

Note to OWS: If you want to have a TEA Party, you can still join ours. But please, be sure to bathe and clean up after yourself. We don’t leave our protests in a state of disarray, in case you haven’t noticed.

The People of the Mud will now be added to the Prime page.