Lame, pat, pre-pack­aged put­downs of Oc­cupy Wall Street: We all deal with ‘em, whether we’re ar­gu­ing with a neigh­bor, ap­pear­ing on Fox, or an­swer­ing the jeers of rel­a­tives who’ve just re­ceived a chain email that “re­ally puts the pro­test­ers in their place.”

Here are a few easy come­backs for your next ar­gu­ment. They cover every­thing from the sup­posed “hypocrisy” of demon­stra­tors who buy card­board (re­ally!) to snarky com­ments about scruffy-look­ing an­t­i­cap­i­tal­ists with beards.

1. They say “Oh, look. The demon­stra­tors buy stuff from cor­po­ra­tions!” You say “Whad­dya ex­pect? Cor­po­rate lack­eys in gov­ern­ment have forced every­body else out of busi­ness!”

I don’t know who came up with this lame pic­ture, but it’s mak­ing the rounds on Wall Street - and with all the other Amer­i­cans co-opted by its pro­pa­ganda:

Hey, bankers! Is that the best you’ve got? Re­ally? Be­cause this pic­ture is so lame that it ac­tu­ally gave us sev­eral of our talk­ing points. We’ll start with this one:

Cor­po­ra­tions get gen­er­ous tax breaks for not hir­ing peo­ple and ship­ping jobs over­seas in­stead. They make money from those free trade agree­ments pushed through by their func­tionar­ies in the gov­ern­ment. And Wall Street’s mak­ing bil­lions for not lend­ing to smaller busi­nesses that might com­pete with some of those mega-cor­po­ra­tions.

Now you’re call­ing the demon­stra­tors hyp­ocrites for buy­ing stuff from cor­po­ra­tions. Who else are they going to buy it from? Every­one else was dri­ven out of busi­ness!

In a very real sense, that’s why they’re protest­ing.

2. They say “They hate busi­nesses!” You say “No, they hate par­a­sit­i­cal busi­nesses.”

Want to know some­thing ironic? If the demon­stra­tors had their way, most busi­nesses in this coun­try would ac­tu­ally do bet­ter. Why? Be­cause the banks aren’t lend­ing to any­body but the mega-cor­po­ra­tions who are al­ready sit­ting on a ton of cash.

If the sys­tem was re­formed, banks would lend to those smaller and medium-sized busi­nesses that ac­tu­ally hire peo­ple. What’s more, debt re­lief for the Amer­i­can con­sumer would un­leash a buy­ing wave that would spur wide­spread eco­nomic growth.

These “anti-busi­ness” pro­test­ers would be great for busi­nesses - all, that is, ex­cept for the dis­hon­est and so­cially use­less ones. You know, like the ones that un­der­write politi­cians, think tanks, and tele­vi­sion net­works - who then pro­ceed to make fun of demon­stra­tions, as they’re paid to do.

And you won­der why they’re protest­ing?

3.​They say “But it’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal to buy cor­po­rate prod­ucts and then protest cor­po­ra­tions!” You say “You sound like a Com­mu­nist.”

That’s right - like a Com­mu­nist. I spent a lot of time in East­ern Eu­rope as protests very much like these were over­throw­ing the So­viet em­pire. You know what the old-timers in those coun­tries said back then? They said “These peo­ple are protest­ing the State, but they’re wear­ing clothes made at state-run fac­to­ries and wav­ing signs made with state re­sources! What hyp­ocrites!”

(Well, they said it in Hun­gar­ian, or Czech, or Pol­ish. But the mean­ing was the same.)

Tell your de­bate op­po­nents they sound just like old Com­mies as they de­fend the un­com­pet­i­tive, in­flex­i­ble, and to­tal­i­tar­ian sys­tem the cor­po­ra­tions now run. Don’t blame the demon­stra­tors. They can’t op­er­ate within the new sys­tem until we’ve re­formed the old one.

That’s why they’re protest­ing.

4. They say “Did you know they paid all the TARP money back? They weren’t bailed out.” You say “Fine! Give every con­sumer in the coun­try an in­ter­est-free loan!”

This is one of the inept moves that CNN’s Erin Bur­nett tried on a pro­tester. She, and every­body else using this line, must be ei­ther con­fused or fi­nan­cially il­lit­er­ate.

Here’s how the real world works: If you (we, ac­tu­ally) lend the banks a tril­lion dol­lars at 3% below the usual rates, that’s the same as giv­ing them a cash gift of $30 bil­lion -- even if they pay all the money back!

And when you count the Fed­eral Re­serve’s ac­tions, like pur­chas­ing the banks’ toxic as­sets through the “Maiden Lane” dummy cor­po­ra­tion, the bankers have got­ten bil­lions more in ad­di­tional bailout money. The demon­stra­tors are right: A few mega-banks de­stroyed the econ­omy, and we bailed them out.

This ar­gu­ment’s as hol­low as a mega-bank’s promise. And that’s why they’re protest­ing.

5. They say “But still, they buy cor­po­rate stuff!” You say “They’re called Oc­cupy Wall Street, not Oc­cupy Main Street. Any­body in that pic­ture using an ATM?”

They keep com­ing back to this one, for some rea­son. That’s why the pic­ture says things like “hat by J. Crew.” Oh, snap! Oh, wait -- what’s your point again?

They’re protest­ing banks, for cry­ing out loud, not hat com­pa­nies!

As we were say­ing: Lame.

6. They say “These pro­test­ers don’t un­der­stand the free mar­ket.” You say “What free mar­ket?”

Eco­nomic the­ory says that one of the basic el­e­ments of a free mar­ket is trans­parency. Yet as of this writ­ing Wall Street’s fight­ing tooth and nail against a process that would allow more trans­parency in the de­riv­a­tives mar­ket. They don’t want trans­parency - and that means they don’t want a free mar­ket.

We haven’t had a free mar­ket for decades. We’ve had a lootoc­racy that makes money through de­cep­tion, con­fu­sion, and ob­fus­ca­tion.

Peo­ple should con­duct their busi­ness in the light of day - and gam­bling with other peo­ple’s money should be il­le­gal. The words “free mar­ket” and the phrase “Wall Street” don’t be­long in the same para­graph, much less the same sen­tence.

That’s why they’re protest­ing.

7. They say “Ha ha! Look at that bearded guy in the san­dals!” You say “Hmmm ... A bearded guy in san­dals protest­ing the money­len­ders. Where have we seen that be­fore?”

They love mak­ing fun of the demon­stra­tors’ looks, but it’s pretty dif­fi­cult to step out­side the sys­tem and live out­doors with­out look­ing a lit­tle rough in the eyes of the mon­eyed classes. Jesus and his dis­ci­ples prob­a­bly looked pretty rough to some peo­ple, too. I’m sure the rich peo­ple looked down their noses at Him after He over­turned those ta­bles.

That’s not done in po­lite com­pany.

Think about it: A guy rides into town on a don­key. Then he says the mon­eyed in­ter­ests are ex­ert­ing too much in­flu­ence on the gov­ern­ment - and on some of the re­li­gious elite, too. And what was that about the wealthy? Oh, yeah - “It’s eas­ier for a camel to pass through a nee­dle’s eye than for a rich man to enter heaven.”

3,000 years of moral law con­demns peo­ple who make ex­cess prof­its from money with­out con­tribut­ing to so­ci­ety. Every sin­gle prophet to make those ar­gu­ments - which is to say, all of them - was con­demned by the plu­toc­racy of the day.

No mat­ter what you be­lieve or don’t be­lieve spir­i­tu­ally, it’s clear that oli­garchic wealth has cor­rupted our pol­i­tics, pol­luted our cul­ture, and de­based our basic sense of moral­ity.

And that’s why they’re we’re protest­ing. I’ve been to New York’s demon­stra­tion, and Wash­ing­ton’s. Next stop is LA. But they’re all over the coun­try.

If you haven’t been to one yet, why not stop by? ‘m not an or­ga­nizer, just an ad­mirer, but con­sider this an of­fi­cial in­vi­ta­tion: Your pres­ence is re­quested as democ­racy - and his­tory - un­fold be­fore us.

Dress is ca­sual. If you’re part of the 99%, come as you are. (San­dals op­tional.)