I thought Gould was right. And reading his post, I was also alerted to an insight that Douglas Rushkoff had at CNN.com. "We are witnessing America's first true Internet-era movement," Rushkoff wrote, "which does not take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals and understand itself as having a particular endpoint. ... unlike a political campaign designed to get some person in office and then close up shop, this is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc. As the product of the decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability. It is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus. It is not like a book; it is like the Internet."

Hmmm.

What does it mean for a protest movement to be like the Internet?

For me, that was one of those get-up-and-get-a-beer lines. "A Get-up-and-Get-a-Beer-Line isn't a bad line," explains Mickey Kaus. "It's often a good line, a line cherished and protected like a beloved child by its proud author. But it's a line packed with so much resonant meaning, or so many different possible meanings -- all interesting and profound! -- that you get up to get a beer ...."

I got up and got a beer.

Then I went to a nearby beach with my fiance and her dog. The dog's name is Isabel, and once she reaches the sand, she runs very fast in a huge circle, encircling us in paw prints, then sprints to the water, where for reasons unknown she pulls all the stray pieces of kelp she can from the shoreline up to dry sand. As she does this vital work, there is sun-speckled blue water all the way to the horizon, occasional pelicans gliding by, a bluff as backdrop with small waterfalls trickling down.

I'd forgotten all about Occupy Wall Street.

Yet J.J. Gould's piece and Douglas Rushkoff's thoughts must have been working their way through my subconscious, because when I got home that night, a post started to form in my mind. I still didn't quite grok what it meant to have a non-narrative protest movement that resembled the Internet more than a book. But I worked out some other thoughts on screen for an hour, finally coming up with an item titled "Occupy Wall Street's Biggest Strength Is Neutering It."

Roughly 11,000 people read it, as best I can tell.

Here is the CliffsNote version: If you're raging against the symbol of Wall Street, your message is going to resonate with a lot of people. But it's so abstract that it's going to provoke a backlash too -- after all, for some people Wall Street remains a symbol of free enterprise and meritocracy. The case against symbolic Wall Street turns out to be weaker than the one against actual Wall Street, I wrote, since actual Wall Street's firms did specific unethical and illegal things.

To practice the kind of grounded-in-the-real-world critique I was preaching, I even offered a specific criticism of actual Wall Street.