How The Lion King Explains Occupy Wall Street

I've touched on some issues I think have inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement, most notably student loan debt and a severe lack of job opportunities.I think that covers at least a certain section of the Occupy movement. More broadly, however, I think there is within the movement a sense of powerlessness; that government has grown to be unresponsive to the majority of Americans. Martin Gilens, a political scientist at Princeton, did a study on this subject. He went through over 2,000 survey answers, given from 1980-2000, and concluded that policy changes happen with the majority of wealthy Americans favor it; it didn't matter how many poor or middle-income Americans favored a particular policy, government didn't enact policy unless there was a majority of upper income Americans in favor of it. This dynamic reminded me of a scene from the film The Lion King.

Simba had just run away after his father, Mufasa, died. After collapsing from exhaustion, a group of buzzards swarm around Simba's unconscious body. Cut to the awkward duo of Timon and Pumbaa charging in to partake in some Buzzard Bowling. After bowling the buzzards away, the duo discovers the unconscious Simba. The following dialogue ensues:

Timon: Geez! It's a lion! Run, Pumbaa! Move it!
Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, it's just a *little* lion. Look at him. He's so cute and all alone! Can we keep him?
Timon: Pumbaa, are you nuts? We're talking about a lion; Lions eat guys like us!
Pumbaa: But he's so little.
Timon: He's gonna get bigger.
Pumbaa: Maybe he'll be on our side.
Timon: A - huh! That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Maybe he'll b-... Hey, I got it! What if he's on our side? You know, having a lion around might not be such a bad idea.

Now imagine that Pumbaa is poor or middle-class. He gave his opinion, they should keep Simba for protection. Timon, imagine he's both the upper class of American society as well as the governing institution, disregards the idea, even calls it stupid; call that the governing institution side of Timon. Upon further consideration, "upper-class Timon" comes to the same conclusion; Simba would be a nice bodyguard. Because "upper class Timon" thinks that keeping Simba around is a good idea, they keep him around. Pumbaa's opinion did not matter, it was entirely Timon's decision.

This is not a healthy dynamic. Gilens does not, unfortunately, get into pinpointing the exact reasons for this, but he does lay out some possibilities. There's the obvious one: richer people give more to politicians. He concludes by saying that he hopes that his next project looks into the mechanisms by which the wealthy actually influence policy.

I suspect it's only a matter of time before Pumbaa joins the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Down with Timon!