A World Quite Mad

A single snow flake can start an avalanche.

A single drop of rain can precede a flood.

One person can change the entire world.

I know what you're thinking. The first two are true and the third is bullshit. But it's not. Think about it for a minute. I'm sure you can come up with a handful of people who, if they had never lived, the world would not be the same place. Maybe more than a handful. They may have had help, they may not have done it alone, but without them, things would not be the way they are now.

The corporate media is determined to undermine the Occupy protests. They're dismissing it as a bunch of hipsters who don't want to work. Corporate shills Trolls online are calling them communists, as if they even comprehend the meaning of that word. Communist, liberal, socialist, fascist, conservative etc. have all lost their meaning because of the misapplying of these terms to things/people/movements that do not fit into their definition. The mainstream media are owned by powers that wish to see us made into serfs. If you think this is also bullshit, I suggest you turn off Faux News and take a look around. Corporate profits are up 22% since 2007. Why are so many people out of work? Because they're pocketing the money on the backs of their workers. But that's just the tip of the iceberg and only one of the many problems that are facing us today.

Why are CEOs making more than ever when the average American's salary has fallen? More importantly, why are so many Americans hoodwinked into thinking that if there is regulation of a system it won't benefit them? Why do these same people think that regulation equals communism? Or that providing for the poor equals communism? (Jesus was apparently a communist in that case.) Public education in this country is the first thing cut, and when you think about it, from an almost conspiracy-theory-esque sense, that's been a boon to the Corporatocracy. What better way to control the masses, to make them believe your propaganda newscasts than to give them a lackluster education and discourage critical thinking skills. I'd like to believe that it's a serendipitous by-product of unintended consequences, but after a while discounting the multiple "coincidences" tends to make one question their sanity anyway.

You may also think that everyone is just too lazy or too comfortable to do anything about it. After all when we can sit around and poke at facebook or lose ourselves in online games, why would we want to put ourselves in danger of being arrested, pepper-sprayed by police or worse? But always, always throughout history, there comes a tipping point. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that, "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." What happens when everyone has had enough? What happens when a military you have equipped and trained (and that qualifies for food stamps with what they are paid) have themselves had enough?

The congressmen and women in Washington are no longer working for We the People. They have been bought by the Corporations. They have turned their backs on the Constitution of the United States in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Except the thirty pieces of silver wasn't enough for them, and the billions weren't enough for their Corporate masters. It's never enough; they must have more. And that "more" comes at the expense of the middle class. At the expense of US. And that is why things have gone they way they have. People may have been willing to forget about it if it hadn't gone so far, if they were able to have a decent life, send their kids to college and have a nest egg for retirement. Instead they have seen their wealth vanish and the price of their home plummet. They give up 40% of their income in taxes, and their children graduate from college tens of thousands of dollars in debt and are not able to find a job. They have seen their hopes and dreams evaporate. And meanwhile, the super rich are getting richer and pay no or few taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code.

Every single politician in Washington ought to be recalled and sent home. And every single lobbyist should be standing in the unemployment line. Free elections should be called with NO CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP AND NO CORPORATE MONEY. We the People want our country back. We want our Constitutional rights restored to Individuals and stripped from Corporations. We want our jobs back. Those are our demands. We may not be able to Occupy Wall Street because of distance, but we can Occupy our towns. And when we can't do that, we can Occupy the Internet. We are here and we aren't going away. We aren't shutting up. We aren't going to accept serfdom so that 1% can accumulate more and more. We're fed up and we've had it.


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

PS. As an aside, if you had asked me in 1995 what the greatest threat to this country was, I'd have told you it was religious fundamentalists. And maybe it still is to some degree because they are the ones who have been hoodwinked by these Corporate bastards. They are the teabaggers and their hangers-on, funded by Corporations. I however would never have thought that business would become so corrupt, and our politicians so enamored by their money, that our very democracy could hang in the balance over money. Ideology yes. But money? It seems so ridiculous. As they say, truth is stranger than any fiction.

Yes, you read that correctly. Or at least the right-wing wackos in Iowa think so. Maybe it's really just a tempest in a teacup, but I have to rant for a moment, so keep your arms and legs inside the car and hold onto your ass.

Where do these people get off? Who in the hell do they think they are? What do they think gives them the right to upend our democracy and impose on us a western style Sharia (aka theocracy)? WHAT THE FUCK?!

Okay, I feel better now. I'm sure it won't last. Between the mess with the economy and these fucktards running around begging to flush their freedom down the toilet, I don't hold out much hope for humanity or this country.

And the right-wing bloggers are complaining that the "liberal media" took it out of context. I'm sorry, but there's nothing to take out of context. I know that their reading comprehension skills rival a first grader's but really.

"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President."

What do you think that says? Hmm? I think it implies that a child was better off under slavery solely because they had two parents. And the kicker, it's not even fucking true. Children were often sold away from their birth families. Parents were often sold away from their children.

I have a suggestion for these "pro-family" (and I use that term loosely) asshats, and that is, if the corporations that are backing them would pay people a fair wage, one parent could stay home with their children. But right now, that's usually not possible. The behavioral problems with children stem from having to rely on daycare. Daycare teaches children that the peer group is in charge because one adult to twenty plus children is bullshit. And that has nothing to do with marriage or divorce, but rather with economics, like everything else that has had to do with economics, from slavery and the Civil War right down to the war in Iraq. It's all about money. And you can take that to the bank.

If I hear one more time that Fascism is a left-wing ideology, I think my head might explode. So, I decided to make a political spectrum chart, for dummies. I was going to do it as a line, as that would be simplest, but it's too simple. In reality, even a graph like this is too simple. No one is in one particular spot on everything. I had difficulty placing people. This is all my opinion, based on what I know of the people here.

I was going to put Ron Paul on here, but couldn't. That man is a contradiction of himself. I'm sorry, but he says that the government shouldn't interfere in people's lives, but he's for the government telling me I must carry a pregnancy to term as he thinks abortion should be illegal. Psst, the Nazis did that too. He's also mixed on business, sometimes for it, sometimes for unions. You know, I just couldn't figure him out. All I know, is that I think he's a bit of a kook. Sure, some of the things he says seem reasonable, but he invariably will say something that makes me think he's an idiot.

So, you know, American politics tend to be sort of toward the middle. I think that G.W. Bush polarized everyone, and threw all of that off. And Clinton a liberal? Ha! Sure, on the personal level, but he was very pro business too.

It's not easy to put people in one particular spot, so keep that in mind before you flame me on where I put someone. Like Marx. While his ideas were taken and terrible things were done with them, his ideas are actually more democratic, in that the masses are in charge, not a single ruler. So that's why he's on the left of authoritarian, whereas Stalin, who claimed to be Marx's heir, was a totalitarian bastard.

As for Che, I think he was pretty anarchist, despite his support and work for Castro. It seems he didn't get along with anyone very well. He was also pretty ruthless, which IMHO, being a ruthless asshole doesn't really help your cause. But perhaps, he did what he had to, which I suppose is what any of us do. That still doesn't excuse killing people.

So where the hell am I on here? Like I don't even know. I'm definitely liberal, in the sense that the government should be regulating banks and corporations, not my life. I'm liberal also in the sense, that if you want to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will save the world, I'm cool. I don't really give a damn what you believe, so long as you leave me and everyone else in peace.

As for corporations, I think they're mostly bastards and that CEOs make way too much in comparison to the people who do the actual work. I think that people should make more money, I don't think they pay people enough for the jobs they do. It's caused us to prop up our economy on credit, because the people making $8 an hour at Wal-Mart can't afford to buy anything. They can barely get by, and so as cheap and easy as it was to get credit until recently, well, we know where that went. It's gotten us into what may be a depression, of course that'll be hindsight. Henry Ford, as much as an anti-Semitical bastard that he was, paid his workers enough to buy his product. If you don't pay people enough, they can't buy your shit. Or they buy it with credit as I said, and well, that only props everything up so long.

Did I mention regulation. That should be the role of the Federal government. Regulating banks. Seriously. That and providing social security, highways, and money for public works and the arts and humanities, and research. Hey, I work on a government funded research project, I'll not bite the hand that feeds me. I really think the government should regulate business. Not people.

But I can't label myself a communist, because I think communism, while it looks great on paper, especially a lot of things that Marx thought, is an EPIC FAIL in reality, because people are greedy. The collective, the people are never in charge in those cases, it's always some dictator. Why exactly that is, I'm not entirely sure. I guess it could be because people can't work together without leadership. That would be anarchy, which apparently has never been tried in a peaceful setting. People think of anarchy as violent, but it could be peaceful I suppose. If people weren't assholes.

So there we come to the crux of the matter. Whatever political or moral ideology you subscribe to, people in general are stupid bastards. And some people are determined to be leaders and utilize their power and money to gain more power and more money. Sometimes it's under the guise of organized religion. In fact, that's probably most of the time.

I've been accused of being atheist because I can't or won't tell people what I think "god" is. As if some mere mortal could define a supreme being, bind him/her up into a book, market it to the masses and call it infinite. We ain't got a fucking clue one about the nature of our planet or life here, much less the divine or the universe. It's like a blind man trying to describe to another blind man what the ocean looks like. "It's very wet," he says. But he can't see it. And even that's an overstatement. Because we usually can't feel or hear "god", whatever that is, and I daresay if you're hearing "god" you should probably go take your medication. I suppose sometimes we might sort of feel something that feels like the divine, but that doesn't mean we know what it is. Does this make me an agnostic? Some might think so. Except that if there is a "god", it might as well not exist, as it seems that "god" has done little for this planet, except in the promotion of genocide, murder and despotism. Oh sure, some people have done good and been motivated by their religion, but more often than not people have done bad and/or used religion as an excuse to do bad, or have lived in absolute fear because their neighbors would kill them if they found out they didn't believe the same way they do. Basically, an uneducated and ignorant people who believe that what amounts to fables, is inerrable truth, are not long for a democratic republic.

Well, this turned into a long rant and it is quite late. On that last note, I think of this...

"The epitaph [of Simon de Montfort] says, for those who can read it, that he is a saint and a martyr... And I have heard it said that this must be so -- if by killing men and shedding blood, and damning souls and causing deaths... by killing women and slaughtering children, a man in this world can win Jesus Christ, certainly Count Simon wears a crown and shines in heaven above." --Song of the Cathar Wars

Oh, and PS, I added Olbermann because I can. I don't claim to know where he actually stands on these things, but he seems pretty liberal so I just picked a spot.