Just recently in Oakland, an “anti-Wall Street” protest (I am still uncertain what, exactly, is meant by “anti-Wall Street,” and I’m losing faith that the protestors do, either) turned violent. Police arrested over four hundred of the over five hundred protestors who threw pipes and bottles at them. Some of the protestors burned an American flag.
Last October, in a separate protest, a teargas canister fired by police struck protester and former Marine, Scott Olsen in the head. The extent of Olsen’s injuries, if any, have not yet been released, but many of those arrested in Oakland cite Olsen harm as the insubstantial justification for their obscene, destructive, and profitless behavior.
Martin Luther King, Jr. did not achieve his ends through violence, and neither shall we. Demonstrations such as the one in Oakland only encourage the misbelief that those calling themselves the 99% and those sympathetic to them are out-of-control anarchists.
Actually, I would like to take a timeout here to address this term, “anarchist,” because I intend to use it again during this posting. I believe that a world without the need of a governing body should serve as a model for every government’s endgame. This makes me sound like a libertarian, but I consider myself far removed from that party’s current ideologies. I plan to address this issue more in my next posting, though I will admit right now that most true libertarians have beautiful, if impractical, intensions.
Most people—to include most of those idiots who consider themselves anarchists— misunderstand the term. We associate anarchy with rioting, arson, looting, and worse. By this point, we might as well redefine anarchism to reflect such a dystopian setting (some dictionaries have). But anarchism means (used to mean) that people demonstrate the opposite behavior, that people get along to the point that a governing body to police them becomes unnecessary. It’s a nice thought. Perhaps, one day, such a world will grow feasible. Currently, it is not. Sorry libertarians (as I said, I’ll discuss this further in my next posting).
For now, back to the <sigh> rioting.
I remember attending occupy Orlando. I remember leaving after the first hour, having realized by that point that my attendance would prove a complete waste of time. The protesters—much like those in the “Occupy” protests around the country and even in parts of Europe—had no freak’n clue what they hoped to accomplish. They had no set goals, no demands, and no idea how they would achieve those goals or demands. They had chants and cheers, though. Lots of them. In most cases, those chants and cheers rhymed and fit nicely on picket signs.
The occupy movement is largely credited with having started when several of America’s unemployed, in an act of raw frustration, decided to camp out on Wall Street. They had hoped to make the rest of the country take notice of them and (in many cases) their college loans, upon which they had defaulted. Nearly each protestor arrived in a clean suit, with a college degree and an impressive résumé in one hand, and, in her or his other hand, unpaid bills and eviction notices. Then, idiots poured in.
People came to chant mindless catch phrases. People came to juggle and wear silly costumes. One man arrived dressed as a Viking, another as an alien from Star Trek. If any of these "protestors” had a plan for fixing their grievances (assuming they had any), few presented those plans in an executable format.
Instead of frustrated, unemployed people staying home and going unheard and unrepresented, frustrated, unemployed people came to Wall Street to go unheard beneath the riotous cheering of other people who just wanted to jump onto the bandwagon.
This “movement” spread like a disease across Paris Hilton’s groin. Since few of the attendees had any clue why they had even arrived, it proved easy for certain news reporters with agendas, such as Fox News, to pick out and carry on interviews with confused idiots. These idiots happily supplied the airwaves with such gems as, “The rich are evil,” “Corporations are bad,” and “Down with government.” During the Black Friday sales events, many people pretending to be sympathetic to the 99% decided to block doors, disallowing shoppers access to the stores, because “Corporations are evil” (for the most part, the shoppers just shoved them out of the way).
Corporations are not evil any more than .357 is evil; evil people can use both for evil purposes, but our country can’t survive without businesses. I like having giant bookstores and gyms. I like getting to choose between Outback Steakhouses and vegan restaurants (though everyone at the latter dresses up as if they’re going to some weird, tree-worshipping service).
Businesses create jobs. Jobs are good. Our country’s lack of jobs served as the catalyst to this whole “occupy” movement. Those fed up Americans who started the movement, before it transformed into a circus, didn’t want to destroy businesses, they wants those businesses to offer them each a job.
Certain people—such as those working for Fox News—would have us believe that the middle and lower classes have some vendetta against the successful, that we wish to wage class warfare against them. We don’t. We just want our upward mobility back. Most of us are all too willing to work. Studies show that unemployment is a massive source of stress and depression. Few people want to sit around and do nothing. Have you ever met a retired person who didn’t search desperately for something to obsess about?
I’ve spoken with people who, although not rich, are “well off.” These people tell me that they haven’t turned a profit in years. To the lower and most of the middle class, this is a death sentence. One person angrily informed me that when he finished college (back in the seventies), he bussed tables for years before he found work in his field. He wanted to know why my useless generation wasn’t willing to do the same thing.
We are. Where are the tables?
My fists clench when I hear about entire families who live generation after generation on welfare—but this stereotype is no longer, if it ever was, the norm. Our country is overflowing with men and women who have been able to support themselves all their lives until recently. Saturated in their own shame, they now need governmental assistance just to feed their families. I can’t imagine how that must feel. Now those failed by their government face demonization by their government.
Welfare recipients are easy to demonize. They’re lazy, right? That’s the only reason that they can’t find work. Right?
If you’re a lawyer prosecuting a supposed rapist, you want men with daughters on the jury. Why not women? (Stay with me here. I’m bringing this back to the topic at hand. Promise.) According to what I’ve read on jury selection, it is because women are more likely to believe that they would never fall victim to rape so long as they “play by the rules.” Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t go to a club while wearing an overly provocative dress. So, these studies would suggest, women, out of a subconscious need to separate themselves from the victim, are more likely to place portions of blame on a rape victim. “This person did something wrong,” the logic goes. “Something I would never do. Therefore, I will never find myself in this person’s shoes.”
Perhaps this is why so many people hate former Penn State Coach, Joe Paterno after he more-or-less ignored evidence of child molestation by his colleague, Jerry Sandusky. After all, we would never ignore such evidence, right? Right?
“If I work really hard and do everything perfect, I’ll never end up losing my job and needing governmental assistance. Right?” When we fear sharing another person’s fate, we tend to demonize that other person, to place the blame squarely upon his or her shoulders. That’s why it’s easy for our government “go after” those on welfare.
Imagine that you’re a single mother. You’ve been out of work for three years now. You’re a professional with a college degree and a long work history, but employment in your town has vaporized. You’ve sold your car. You’ve swallowed your pride and applied for welfare. You’ve had to move your family to a less-than-safe neighborhood.
You haven’t given up, though.
You’ve never stopped searching for work. You’ve sent your résumé all over the country. You’re willing to move anywhere. Perhaps you’ll return to school. Things will get better. They have to. This is America.
Then, one day, your city passes one of our Welfare to Work Programs, or one of the programs that run along the same lines. While some of these programs work remarkably well, there are others. Your city just passed one of those “others.” All of the sudden, you have to get up at five in the morning, make a bagged lunch for your children before you walk to the nearest bus stop. You ride a bus to the other side of town, only to get off, fill out a mountain of paperwork, get on another bus, go to another part of town, work four hours for less money than you took in while on welfare, take an hour lunch where you sit and ignore your growling stomach, work another four hours, fill out more paperwork, get back on one bus, get on another bus, walk home, and crash onto your bed to get a little sleep before you have to do it all over again tomorrow.
A person in such a program has lost many options for improving her life.
How about the idea of asking welfare recipients to submit to drug tests prior to receiving their checks? What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t the taxpayer deny federal aid to a drug addict?
Not so fast. What people fail to realize is that welfare recipients must not only make the trip downtown to take their drug test, but that they are also each expected to pay for the drug test. If you’re on welfare, scraping together the bus fare for the trip downtown proves difficult enough. Coughing up money for the test might prove impossible.
The second that you cannot afford to take the test the day it’s due, you risk losing your benefits forever.
Now you have to explain to a potential employer that you lost your benefits because you “declined” a drug test.
The trouble with our thinking towards welfare is that we’re always searching for a system to weed out those who don’t “truly deserve it.” This does nothing long-term to help those who do, and therefore does nothing to help America, or the world, as a whole. We ought to better aim our focus at offering the poor real opportunities to improve their lives so that they can improve our country. Making a poor person travel sixty miles a day to sweep floors or paint fences for a hopeless wage is not a long-term option. It’s a Band-Aid over a sucking chest wound.
A person who loses his or her welfare benefits seems a lot more likely to commit a crime. It cost the American taxpayer far more to imprison someone than to send them to college. It seems, at a minimum, a preventative measure to send our underclass to college. In most of Europe, college is free, and the number of prisoners in all of Europa doesn’t hold a candle to the number we put behind bars here in the States.
“Where’s the money going to come from?” I can hear you asking. “How can we afford to send everyone to college for free?” Again, it’s cheaper than putting the poor in prison. It’s cheaper than putting the poor on welfare. It’s also cheaper than sending the poor to war.
The protestors who mindlessly chant, “Corporations are evil,” don’t know what they’re talking about, and they aren’t newsworthy. Those idiots should not serve as a typical sample of the countless fed-up Americans struggling to find fulltime employment.
Most Americans don’t want to “punish the wealthy for their success.” We’re just tired of seeing the deck so stacked against us. We’re tired of facing that ultra wide gap between peace-of-mind and struggling-just-to-come-up-for-air. And the deck is stacked. From tax loopholes, to higher interest rates, to unreasonable late fees, reconnection fees, and overdraft fees, getting out of debt is a little like climbing out of a tar pit. This is why the real 99% (not the partying and rioting protestors) are frustrated.
So please, news reporters, stop wasting time interviewing morons who brainlessly repeat phrases like “Corporations are evil,” and start reporting on the real issues that are causing the real hindrances. For the greater part, the poor and middle class do not hate the wealthy. We want to be the wealthy. We want success and a place in life in which we can take pride, and we want that pride in the form of gainful employment. We’re not asking that the government “punish the rich,” just that they level the playing field a bit.
Most of the poor and middle class work hard. They maintain an America that allows the wealthy to stay wealthy. Wait for the garbage men to go on strike. Lose the construction workers, plumbers, oil-changers, educators, daycare workers, and taxi drivers. Lose the people that brew your coffee, print your business cards, or detail your car. America will always need these people. Let’s reward their hard work by ensuring that they each have the opportunity to work harder at something greater.
Nothing, nothing, proves more American than upward mobility. Level the playing field so that we can each play our parts to the best of our ability and accomplish our person destinies in what little time we each have in this world.
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