Among the iconic images that have emerged from the Occupy movement have been several that perfectly encapsulate the arrogance and ugliness of the 1 percent and their lackeys, tools and fools. Who will ever forget the Wall Street insiders drinking champagne while both literally and figuratively sneering down their noses at the protesters, or Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen being carried bloodied from what the Oakland police and their allies had turned into a battlefield here at home, or the inflamed face of an elderly Seattle woman as she was helped to flee a police pepper spray attack, or a non-violent and unarmed young woman taking a full stream of pepper spray straight in the face during the crackdown in Portland? As many predicted, those who stand to lose if this nation begins to live up to its stated and increasingly mythical ideals of freedom and democracy and fairness and justice would not let this go on forever. It amused them. Then it annoyed them. Then they got scared. Then the truncheons were swung.

The Occupy movement is entering a new phase, but it is not going away. When the powers that be come to terms with that reality, their responses will degenerate even further, and it remains incumbent upon all who want the Occupy movement to succeed that the movement itself remain non-violent, and that one of its prime goals be to attract and inspire ever greater numbers of supporters. The polls continue to show strong support for the economic goals of the Occupy movement, even as the politicians continue to wage their Shock Doctrine class warfare, and the movement must consider whether each planned action will inspire or alienate potential allies in the wider public. This is a time for determination, for principle and for clarity. The truth and the facts remain on the side of the Occupy movement, and supporters of the movement must ensure that they remain so.

This past week saw a strong viral reaction to a thinly sourced report that claimed Department of Homeland Security coordination of the obviously not coincidentally concurrent crackdowns on Occupy encampments across the country. The story itself is not as important as what it revealed about the movement, its supporters and its enemies. Many people took the story at face value. Others pointed to the dubious sourcing. On both sides, many took their personal beliefs to be proven facts, but the reality is that little on either side was proved. There was a report that DHS was involved in the crackdown. It was thinly sourced. It was in no way proved. But neither was it in any way disproved. That the story accords with what many have come to believe about the Obama administration, and that it came to be repeated by many usually credible activists and observers, does not in any way validate it. But it's also true that neither the story's thin sourcing nor the absurdity of its echo chamber concatenations being conflated with verification does not in any way invalidate it. Nothing has been proved. But with tensions and fears now running so high, rumors will be taken as realities. And with tensions and fears running so high, realities will be obfuscated by rumors.

The Obama administration's economic policies have done little to address economic injustices and imbalances, and its consistent acquiescence to Republican demands understandably has confounded many liberals and progressives. Theories are plentiful, but the facts are that income inequalities continue to expand, most of the people who flouted laws while wrecking the economy have not even been adequately investigated, and a lousy deal that would allow the crooks to escape criminal justice and retain most of their booty is being forced on state officials, some of whom are all but alone among elected officials in balking. Starting a year ago, the White House extended the Bush tax cuts, then embraced austerity fever supposedly to address deficits, the bulk of which those tax cuts had created, then abdicated any budget leadership in favor of a special commission that was supposed to meet in public but hasn't and is now free either to slash and burn the social safety net, or failing to agree how to do that, merely fall back to mandated hacking and chopping at it.

In the past month, the White House has pivoted to long overdue attempts at job creation, but it has been too little far too late, with the actual goal having long ago been eviscerated by the falling dominoes of procedure and policy that the extension of the Bush tax cuts made obvious and inevitable. No serious person actually believed that the Democrats would stand firm next time. No serious person believes it now. Any serious person has to question for what exactly this administration stands. It's not true that there has been no fight; it's just that the fight most often has been put to liberals and progressives rather than to the Republicans. The president's spokesman last week responded to a query about the crackdown on the Occupy movement with bland platitudes about the movement's goals and a more realistic reference to the concept of law and order being maintained—the application of law and order apparently being necessary only when people rise up in the streets to protest the lack of law and order being applied to the people who deliberately and criminally broke the economy and fleeced millions of people of their homes and their life savings. It's little wonder that one thinly sourced story accusing DHS of directing the crackdown came to be taken by so many as true. It's also little wonder that the administration's most ardent defenders would care so much about the questionable source rather than the distrust the administration unquestionably deserves for its consistent role in perpetuating the class warfare visited since the Reagan era on the less than extremely affluent.

Further enabling the credulousness with which many greeted the thinly sourced story about the federally coordinated crackdown on the Occupy encampments has been the administration's appalling record on personal privacy and its expansion of the national security state. Here, too, the concept of law and order has been absent. Not only has the administration ignored much more than probable cause for investigating the Bush-Cheney team's program of domestic spying, it actually argued for immunity for complicit telecoms, and apparently even expanded the program to such a degree that a few Democratic senators of conscience have spoken out in stark warnings, the full depth of which they could not explicate lest they have to extricate themselves from legal ramifications they most certainly would have faced for violating security clearances, even as those violating laws on privacy faced and face no legal ramifications at all. The administration is even attempting to change the Freedom of Information Act so that the government is allowed to lie about whether or not requested documents even exist. And the Obama administration's proclivity for secrecy may be the most frightening aspect of this entire expansive story. And at this point, who really cares about the sourcing of one viral story about one concurrent multi-city crackdown on the most promising social movement this nation has seen in decades? The real story here is that the administration's economic policies do not represent the best interests of the 99 percent. The real story here is that the administration has mostly protected the best interests of the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. The real story here is that the administration has forgiven, enabled, and expanded the apparatus of the national security state. Yeah, the Republicans would be worse. The Republicans are worse. The Republicans will be worse. And that too is the real story.

For years now, digby has been making the case that "if you build it, they will use it"—that once the apparatus of a national security state is fully constructed, someone inevitably will take advantage of it. This argument gets to one of the cores of the defense of the Obama administration made by those who believe it to be relatively benevolent. This argument presumes that we need not fear such potentially dangerous capabilities in the hands of someone they, at least, trust. And while not arguing one way or the other on that, there is something even the president's most ardent supporters need to consider, and that is that he will not be president forever. No matter what happens next year, Barack Obama certainly will not be president in just over five years. And lest the Democrats suddenly emerge with both the political skills and policy goals that could relatively easily put the Republicans out of everyone's misery once and for all, we will eventually have another Republican president, and the Republicans aren't likely to have by then transmogrified into something that can be even relative to their current iteration be described as benign. And whatever it is about which Democratic senators recently warned will then be in Republican hands. Most likely extremist Republican hands. And lest the Democrats suddenly emerge with both the political skills and policy goals that still could relatively easily rectify many of the economic and social inequalities and injustices in this country, that future Republican likely also will face social and political movements, and that future Republican won't likely look upon them with anything less than virulent hostility. And that's the real story here. It's about precedent. It's about laying the groundwork for the future. It's about hoping that the Democrats do suddenly emerge with both the political skills and policy goals that still could relatively easily rectify many of the economic and social inequalities and injustices in this country, because if they don't they have now laid the groundwork for something that could be far more dangerous.