I never wanted to be rich. Famous, perhaps.
As a child.
However, when I used to pretend that I was being interviewed on late night talk shows, talking into the bathroom mirror as a prepubescent, middle class runt, I found myself pitching social views more than talking about how large I was living.
I attribute the roots of this outlook to where I grew up and where I went to school. I remember when my small elementary school from the more “blue collar” side of my neighborhood closed after the second grade, and how we were shipped off to the rich kid school which had built an add-on to accomodate us.
Before cars were the key to getting laid, Starter jackets were what we men coveted when seeking the limited attention from our female classmates. They were status symbols. You weren’t “cool” unless you had a Starter jacket.
As my social conscience still had some years to develop, I opted for a Miami Dolphins Starter jacket for Christmas ’93. Some of a more libertarian persuasion may equate this with freedom.
As time went on in this school, though, I learned that “cool” was decided upon by having things. This narrative driven home by the rich kids, who’s turf we were now on, who decided what cool was and wasn’t.
Nothing is more important to the lives of children than not being seen as a loser. Especially once the ladies start “sprouting”.
I didn’t grow up with money. I’m middle class in and out. My dad is a teacher. Mum works the phones, from home, for an insurance company. What have I considered to be dream jobs while growing up? An archaeologist. A zoologist (who doesn’t go through an animal phase, right?) A writer. A news correspondent. And now, a professor.
Nowhere in there does it read “millionaire”, “king of the world”, “movie star” or much else associated with vast sums of wealth (I assume that the “king of the world”, although a fabrication, would be quite affluent).
So, when did I decide that wealth (and lots of it) were owed to me? Why have I let myself become duped into supporting a movement seeking handouts because we want to be rich too? Where did it all go wrong?
It didn’t. I don’t want to be rich. And I’ve been at this shit too long to let my principles go that easily. What I do want, though, is a functioning democratic process.
Please, spare me the inept, myopia-laden criticisms about ‘Merica being a constitutional republic and not a democracy. I find it worth limited accolades that people do try to think thoughts at times, but the shot in the foot of this pre-packaged rebuttal lies in the definition of what a republic is. The basis of a republic is the fact that it’s leaders are elected. Democratically elected.
A republic is streamlined democracy. It’s not mob rule, but the people still have a major role in it. Oh, and you don’t need a permission slip to have democracy either.
Thus, I take issue with the popular charges of being an entitled know-nothing who is looking for a handout via my involvement and advocacy of the Occupy movement. I’m not looking for a handout. I’m looking for democracy.
Outside of university loans, I never took anything from the government. And I took that money and graduated with one of the best history degrees in the United States, while working part-time jobs, playing men’s lacrosse, and even balancing a girlfriend or two in the mix all while never taking below 17 credit hours (12 is full-time).
Wait, I did have to drop a course once which pulled me down to 15 credits. “Oops.”
I was taking five history courses one spring, and had to drop because I literally had no time. Upon meeting with my department head to complete my request to drop, she asked what I was doing to myself because, “Nobody takes five courses in one semester, Derek.”
Also, I managed to fit in campus activism, intramurals, *College Democrats, debates with the College Republicans (*which was the reason I was involved with College Democrats, I was the College Anarchist and adopted them into my schemes from time to time), panel discussions (with college faculty), and facilitating my increasing alcohol tolerance while only ever receiving lower than a B on tests twice (which includes my nemesis: math).
So, when I did have to take, I worked. But, I ended up graduating into this recession, and have yet to land one of those “real jobs”. My search for that has been elusive, even requiring expatriation to South Korea at one point (and an eventual return in coming months).
I’ve been advised, more than once, to take up a McJob. Often is also the highly ironic claim that those protesting need to “get a job.” But this helps nobody. I’m taking away a job from someone who needs it, forcing them out of work and thus perpetuating the system. The US is going to need more than low-wage, low-skill jobs with high turnover rates.
To end the anecdotal digression here, I’m not looking for a handout. Neither are the Occupy protesters.
A person cannot provide for their well-being on minimum wage. Rent? Utilities? Car payments? College loans? Health care? Dependence on the government remains. The cycle continues, and as buying power decreases among those working low wage jobs, the economy is even farther away from growing. It takes at least 88 hours of minimum wage to pay for rent, on average, in New York State.
Up to 85 percent of Wall Street protesters (on Wall Street) are employed, and even boast a higher rate of employment than the Tea Party. But it really doesn’t matter. Well over a quarter of the “50 percent of Americans who do not pay Federal Income Taxes” are the working poor. Thus, having a job does not necessarily indicate the ability to provide for one’s own survival.
By the way, just over half of those who don’t pay any Federal Income Tax are retirees on Social Security, so let’s put that stat to bed.
In any case, the “solutions” presented to the Occupiers are virtually meaningless. They lack any and all foresight.
Why continue to contribute to the propping up of a clearly flawed political and economic system? Why not just wait to vote in 2012? Hell, we’re all accused of being Obama zombies anyway. Why are we even making a fuss?
Because we’re not Obama zombies. I’m sure, without checking any sources to validate this claim, that many, if not most, Occupiers voted for Obama. However, this goes back to an earlier point: these people voted for something different than what they got. I like to contend that it doesn’t matter who sits in what office, it’s the pressure from the public that really matters.
President Obama has underperformed, though I expected nothing from the man, and never voted for him anyway. Unless it was his plan all along to overshoot policy proposals in order to dupe the Republicans into a compromise that he had in mind the whole time. I doubt that though.
That said, however, why would it be so surprising to see Americans depart from the typical avenues of their compromised democratic process in order to “peaceably assemble” in order to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”? It’s called direct action. Google it.
Again, with that in mind, why are we Obama zombies again? If you can convince me of the logic behind that assertion, I will pay for an escort and you can go have yourself a time.
When I vote, I would like to know that if my person wins, that they will be respsonive My Congressman during the health care debacle was a Democrat. I voted for him. He championed health care locally and held a local town hall meeting when those were all the rage. That was the summer of 2009 during the emergence of the Tea Baggers and Sarah Palin’s “death panels” which were as based in reality as a protagonist in an Ayn Rand novel.
When Mr. Congressman from the 24th district of New York State went to Washington, he ultimately voted against health care. It passed anyway. Still, I was incensed.
Who got to him? Who paid for his vote? That’s the nature of the beast that the Occupy movement is battling. It’s a money beast. More formidable than even a media Reichbeast like Ann Coulter (that’s paraphrased from Matt Taibbi because he’s got more clever insults than me). That’s why it’s crucial to keep the pressure on our elected representatives.
The public’s faith in Congress is not only historically low, it’s improbably low. Some media outlets have reported an approval rating as low as 5 percent. What’s driving this?
Money. And the influence of it on our elected representatives.
Sure, it’s not the only reason. Republicans voted in on Tea Party platforms in the mid-term elections have done their best to stall progress at all costs. Not only that though, when it comes to economics, and fixes, there’s no stone cut formula for doing so.
Relax though, because although I personally think that Obama’s job bill deserved a chance, Congressional Republicans did recently lead the charge to reinstate that “In God We Trust” shall remain our national motto.
It also created 4o million jobs in economically repressed areas. (No, it didn’t)
When public policy looks nothing like public opinion, you deserve to be a bit upset. In fact, you have a Constitutional right to be.
How long has public opinion turned against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Well before Republicans thought it was cool to blame it all on Obama.
Public health care? Support for this goes back for nearly the entire 20th century.
Fairer trade practices? Education? Shared sacrifice? We want, and have wanted, more. And we’ve wanted it for decades.
A virtual oligarchy set up over 60 years of attacking government regulations on business as well as organized labor which now has the ability to inject unfettered amounts of capital into the political process has taken public opinion to task, and effectively done away with it.
Yet, when a group of mostly young people gather to remind us of the image of America that we’ve let go off, they’re met with instant resistance. We’re called anti-American (while ironically trying to improve America).
We’re accused of wanting handouts (when we never asked for them). We’re called entitled (because people misappropriate our grievences).
Rights are another element of this. Another ill-thought out objection to the Occupy movement. How quickly people are to remind us what rights we don’t deserve.
The Constitution, being a living document, and the fact that extensions of rights in America almost never originated within the government to later be handed to us out of benevolence, suggests that rights are determined by consensus.
This Tea Party-pushed, Randian notion of subjective freedoms has gone too far. There’s actually quite a strong consensus, throughout the world, of what constitutes freedom. But this is another story.
The Tea Party itself, despite sharing similar goals, is a mockery of a democratic movement. No intellectual basis. Too fast moving. Too reactionary. And itself propped up by the same type of bankrollers (the Koch bothers) who collude with government to kill everything from fair trade, a sensible tax code, representative democracy, labor power, worker’s rights, small business, environmental legislation, education policy, and hundreds of thousands of people in US war zones.
The Tea Party succeeded in delvering a Republican-dominated House of Representatives to America. Riding a platform of paradox, they who ran on reducing the deficit, small government and vague concepts of liberty have deliverd proposed big government legislation such as bans on Shariah law, abortion, gay marriage, and immigration.
Four million new, private sector jobs were then bestowed upon America by “God” (musket clenched firmly in hand).
Give me a break.
The process by which we decide who represents us is suspect. Lobbyists hold sway over policy from domestic to foreign. Among the Republian/Tea Party darlings who had been running for president in 2012, Herman Cain, the “outsider” who was a lobbyist for the last fifteen years. His commitment to delivering anything like democracy will have problems when put to scrutiny over his idea that America’s economy should resemble Chile’s under Pinochet.
That’s progress, America.
Rather: That’s progress, America?
But, forgetting how we got to the point we’re at which produced movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party (despite their flaws), we line up to accept the narrative which assumes for us that we all wish to be wealthy.
Being told that I don’t deserve handouts and to then get in line, suck it up, and work within the system reeks, absolutely reeks, of rhetoric that I have flat out rejected years ago which is the subjective basis of the American Dream is to accumulate wealth.
That’s someone else’s dream. Not mine.
Those defending the top percentage of wage earners because they wish to be a part of it all. Nothing but a piss puddle of greed spreading through those in society who are either terrible at math, or convinced that they’re making it by struggling through a system that has no longevity to it, and believing that someday they’ll break through and be rich too.
Okay. And we “dirty, fleabag hippies” are the dreamers, right?
If you don’t support the Occupy movement itself, you could at least take notice of the growing consciousness throughout the world that wants a major shift away from corporatism and the private tyrannies of multinational businesses. Away from sweatshops and mercenary wars. Away from police states.
And that’s where I draw my line. I won’t rail against government one minute, and cheer it on the next just because the truncheon has come down on the head of someone whom I consider subversive. Waiting for these anti-government (all of a sudden) Republicans to take note of this will be a long one.
I put my support around the Occupy movement, not because of it’s cute slogans, but because of the ideas enveloped in it all. People over profit. Reason over superstition. Fact over faith. Pragmatism over tradition.
I want change. I’ve been actively involved in cultivating it for nearly a decade. I’m not Johnny-come-lately, so the arguments against my own better be thought out if nothing else.
I won’t be deterred by people who have no functioning knowledge of civil disobedience, their own nation’s history, free-market capitalism, or democracy. All arguments thus far have been greatly lacking in at least one of those areas. Those who denigrate this into an anti-capitalist movement as opposed to a pro-democracy one.
It’s not entitlement I’m after.
It’s democracy.
And maybe getting something for my taxes other than weapons.
