Here's some thoughts.
I watch the news. A lot. I've never been one of these "ignorance is bliss" types, although I've been jealous of those types for pretty much most of my life. I mine the news for information and ideas that I can use in my creative pursuits on a regular basis. This practice usually makes me depressed, cynical and pissy as a trailer park mom on child support payment day.
But I keep watching. The fucking news. Hoping and hoping that something will come along, that something will happen that is going to turn the country, if not the world, into the direction of progressive thought or at least something we can all agree on as common sense.
That day has come.
These Occupy Wall Street Protestors have earned my love in a way no blowjob ever could.
They may not have a leader. They may not have a centralized, cohesive, articulated or even well thought-out message, but, in the end, fuck you. They don't need one. This is not an organization we are dealing with. This is not a political party we are dealing with. This is not your fucking khakis!!!
This started just a couple weeks ago with twenty hippies in a park refusing to go home and now it's people screaming "FACSIST!" in cops faces.
I hear people on the news trying to compare them (or in some cases distance them) from the Tea Party movement.
The truth is this is the movement that ate the Tea Party. Or at least they ate the part of the Tea Party that mattered. The Tea Party got started by some right wing think tank with a good PR team that could mobilize people who were pissed off. At the end of the day those people were run, led and organized by Republicans.
the Occupation on the other hand is just chaos. It's everyone. It started with a few people with a broad, undefined message and now it's grown into God knows how many thousand or million people with a broad, undefined message.
And the part about their message being broad and undefined seems to be the cornerstone of the right wings criticism of them.
"Oh, typical liberal," they say. "You whine about a problem, but you don't propose any solution."
Which is obviously a bullshit counter argument. I mean, seriously, do you only complain about problems you have a solution to? Do you go see a doctor only when you know your diagnosis? Do you only take your car to the mechanic when you know what parts need to be replaced? No. Of course not. A person can be smart enough to notice a tumor without being dumb for not knowing how to deal with it.
And the tumor in this country right now comes down to a break down in equality.
Economic equality.
And when I use the words "economic equality" I don't mean what you probably think I mean.
Most people think that when I say "economic equality" I'm griping that some other guy has a lot of money and I don't. This is not the case.
Under the constitution of this great nation everyone is created equal. Remember that, because I'm going to get back to it in a second.
I make in the range of 25k per year. I'm comfortable with that being a single guy who doesn't own a car and lives in a shitty apartment. I'm also comfortable with the idea that other people make millions of dollars a year and live in massive fuck-off awesome mansions. Massive fuck-off awesome mansions sound nice, but I don't want to do what those people had to do to get to be millionares so I'm happy with my 30K a year job and modest apartment. Happiness is the key here. Me and the millionare are both free to persue that.
The problem originates at the point where the millionare gets to; lobby harder than I can, because he has more money; gets to advertise his political viewpoint further and wider because he has more money; gets to purchase campaigns (which is what the Citizens United ruling under the Supreme Court allowed them to do) simply becaucse he has more money; gets to say that the law does not appy to him because he has more money.
This is the state we live in. One voice no longer equals one vote. One voice equals a sound bite if that voice is lucky and in the right place and time when a camera is around and again only if that voice says what the network owners want to be heard.
A dollar, on the other hand, that equals a vote these days.
And that's a problem.
We don't hate the rich. Hugh Heffner is still cool. Let him keep his mansion. He earned it.
We hate the rich who exercise control. The ones whose desicions affect the rest of us, but avoid the consequences of those desicions. We hate those rich who tell us what we can and can't have regardless of the fact that we are equals to them under the constitution. We hate the rich assume a level of control that should be beyond the average citizen.
I've been telling my republican friends for years that capitalism should not be a game of survival of the fittest but instead a system where everyone thrives and only the most ambitious get to have the mega wealth. They all say, "Sorry, it's a game. There's winners and losers and the losers go hungry."
Ok, shithead. You wanted survival of the fittest. You got it. Welcome to the jungle. The rich are on the menu.
