Freedom is priceless: First they came for the homeless…then… we became homeless too.

A city in Florida is making it illegal for homeless people to carry possessions in public places.

My question is, how will they know whether or not a person is homeless? Are they just going to target people who are poorly dressed, assume they are homeless then take away whatever possessions they are carrying with them? If someone is walking home from the grocery store, carrying a bag of groceries and looking poorly dressed, might the police not stop that person and demand he/she give up the groceries? Suppose the police officer is hungry, for example, hasn’t eaten in hours and then this rather homeless-looking person shows up carrying a bag of groceries in a city that doesn’t allow possessions to be displayed on public sidewalks?

https://www.tumblr.com/think-progress/83441673147/florida-city-about-to-make-it-illegal-for-homeless

http://wonkette.com/547183/fort-lauderdale-will-magically-fix-homelessness-by-stealing-homeless-peoples-stuff-basically

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/city-pass-law-allowing-cops-seize-homeless-peoples-belongings

Am I trying to be funny here? Just a tongue-in-cheek little anecdote for today’s Mad Bag Lady blog entry?

Look, I know most Americans don’t care at all about the homeless. Whether you’ll admit to it or not, most of you still believe in the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” nonsense. You think that if you keep supporting the system, keep working hard at tiny wages for bosses who act more like slaveholders than business owners that one day someone will recognize your good “attitude” (slaves are notorious for having good attitudes toward their situation) and promote you to CEO of corrupt corporate America. So you dare not speak out on behalf of the homeless. After all, they’ve just made “bad choices,” obviously. Otherwise, they’d be temporarily embarrassed millionaires too.

Believe me, I get it. I get it.

But remember this: dictators always choose a scapegoat, deprive them of their civil rights first and convince the rest of the population to support it. But the real agenda is to deprive everyone of their rights. It’s just easier to start with the most unpopular people first. The homeless are just guinea pigs for an overall plan to eliminate our public spaces, privatize everything, and take away all of our rights (unless of course we’re wealthy and can afford to buy the streets and sidewalks so that we can do whatever we want on them.)

So Hitler attacked the Jews, for example. But ultimately, no one was free under Nazi leadership. What many people don’t know is that Hitler went after union leaders too.  Union leaders, communists and democratic socialists–anyone who wanted more civil liberties for the average person (as opposed to the wealthy elite) was the enemy of Hitler and the Nazis.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005686

http://www.johndclare.net/Nazi_Germany1.htm

This might surprise many Americans who’ve been brainwashed into believing that “socialism” is the enemy. In fact, Hitler was strongly against democratic socialism and communism.

Think about that for a moment. Please. Please think, and think for yourself, if only for a moment. Because it’s important to remember that “communism,” “socialism,” “capitalism,” etc., are all just labels. None of those systems are practiced in their purest forms (at least to my knowledge.) Most countries use ideas from all of these systems and combine them to create their own systems. (More about this will be addressed in a future blog.) The Nazis may often be thought of as socialists and may have claimed to be wanting to help the average German (who was struggling during the Great Depression) but the Nazis persecuted union leaders, democratic socialists and communists, threw them in prison or executed them. What the Nazis said publicly and what they actually did were often two different things, as we now know from history. (Oddly, I had a hard time finding any videos online about this. Most were filled with propaganda about the Nazis. However, I’ve read the history of Nazi Germany, and I urge you to do the same, so that you don’t believe the lies being told by people who assume you won’t take the time to actually read about it for yourself.)

 

But back to the point. Laws restricting the rights of the homeless to sleep on “public” sidewalks, to ask for money and now to own possessions of any kind affect all of us. Homeless or not, should you decide to “hang out” in public, you may be accosted by the police. And now, in some cities, you can have your possessions taken from you.

Is this what you want, America?

Perhaps I’m an unusual person because I value freedom over everything, including money. (OMG! OMG! You value something over money!) Yes, people. And I’ll even say it again. Freedom, civil liberties, civil rights–are more important to me than money.

I think we’ve all read about wealthy people who’ve been very unhappy in spite of their material wealth. Marilyn Monroe was a classic example. She was beautiful, wealthy and famous but very, very unhappy. She was not free. That’s right, Marilyn Monroe did not have freedom. As a woman, she was oppressed the way all of us females are. She was a mere sex object. And that’s all she was allowed to be. No matter how often she cried out that she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, that she didn’t want to be a “joke,” the business people who managed her career would not allow her to be herself. To be herself and a serious actress would have meant speaking in her own authentic voice, not the child-like, false-innocent ingenue voice that had made her famous. Being herself meant not flirting with every man–perhaps there were some men who irritated her. Perhaps there were times when she didn’t feel sexy, when she didn’t want to wear makeup or do her hair. Perhaps there were times when she thought about civil rights issues and politics herself. (From what I’d read, she’d had democratic-socialist ideas. That’s not surprising as she’d grown up poor.) But a sex object does none of those things. A sex object is pretty, mindless and always eager to please.

So tragic. So sad. Ms. Monroe seemed to have it all. But the one thing she didn’t have was that which is priceless, that one thing money cannot buy: freedom. Should she have dropped everything to pursue her own desires, she would have lost all that money, all her connections. And then what? Happiness, maybe. But money? She could have lost it all. Instead she gave up her life. So ultimately she lost it all anyhow.

Personally, I don’t see the point in that. But then who am I? I don’t have a lot of money myself, so I suppose nothing I say really matters, does it? Believe it or not, I was faced with similar choices to Marilyn’s. In some ways, my childhood was similar, and I too–yes, me, the mad bag lady!–was thought of as rather, shall we say, sexy… I could have slept my way to the top…

But I chose a different route. And look where I am today! Woohoo!

I haven’t committed suicide because I chose to be myself and not be commodified, but I, obviously, paid a financial price.

However, it could have been different if I’d had a large following. What I mean is, if millions of Americans had also chosen freedom –and we can do it now, all of us, we can choose freedom today!–if Americans were to choose freedom then the few of us who value freedom wouldn’t be the outcasts, the dregs of society. We’d be the heroes.

But today’s American heroes are sellouts. They live like Marilyn lived. It’s fun for a while until the years go by and you start to find you can’t be a commodity any longer. If you’re an intelligent person, eventually, you’ll start to realize that there are aspects of yourself you’ve had to suppress in order to appease those you’ve allowed to have power over you.

And increasingly, it’s getting dangerous to hold onto our humanity, to be ourselves. We’re all under surveillance. We go to work and our bosses are watching us via cameras all over the building. They watch us as we drive into the parking lot and park our cars. They see us applying that extra dab of lip gloss and straightening out the wrinkles in our clothes before we exit our car. They’re watching while we think we’re alone in the elevator and pulling the crease out of the back of our skirt when we forget someone else is there (behind the surveillance camera.) Even some public restrooms have surveillance cameras in them. But we ignore all that, telling ourselves no one is really watching us, and we adjust our bra strap, maybe remove our blouse to fix our bra, and all the while a man is watching us behind that camera in the restroom where we thought we were alone.

We have no privacy. No time to be ourselves, even when we’re alone. No time to lock ourselves in the bathroom to have a good cry–because they’re watching us there too. But that’s not enough for them.

Now they want the right to stop us and confiscate our belongings–but only if they think we’re homeless.

Well, guess what, Americans? We are homeless! All of us. They’ve taken our country away from us. We grew up living in the Land of the Free and the Brave, the land that claimed, “Give me your tired and your poor…” but our land was taken away from us.

So where do we go now?

 

 

An Open Letter to Stephen Colbert (Yes, I know he’s only a comedian… Only a comedian…)

But then so was Charlie Chaplin. And the US government was scared to death of him. (They’re not afraid of Colbert, though, having invited him to the White House for dinner.)

Unlike Colbert, Chaplin had a moral compass. He actually cared about people. But then, Chaplin had been homeless before his fame and fortune arrived.  And, as I mentioned in my previous post, temporary poverty can build character, can build empathy and compassion in a human being. Most Americans have lost the ability to show empathy and compassion for each other because they’ve never experienced real poverty. Sad but true. Doesn’t matter whether they’re liberal or conservative. Most Americans just don’t give a s*it. And will continue to not give a s*it until they become poor themselves.

Believe me, I know. I know because I was homeless. I’ve seen the way seemingly “good” people treat you once they realize you have no money or connections. (They give only to get paid in the form of good publicity for themselves. They give to make themselves look good–not out of kindness or compassion. Soon those two words will be removed from the American English dictionary altogether, I’m afraid. In fact, many Americans don’t want to help the poor as they see us as defective in some way. I truly believe that many Americans would like us poor people to just die and get out of their way.) Gosh, I hope people from countries outside of the US begin to recognize this. I want the world to know about the true America, the true USA. It’s not the Land of Opportunity at all. Not at all.

And do you know why? I’ll attempt to explain it here (though I really need to get to the point, don’t I?) Because Americans believe in a thing called “rugged individualism.”  What that means is that if you have a problem, it is your own, individual fault. It has nothing to do with the economy, the system, the social structure within which we live, or anything outside of you. It’s all about you. So when I began to struggle financially, everyone around me decided it must be my fault. Something had to be wrong with me. (One acquaintance tried to convince me that I must have a drug or alcohol problem because she couldn’t believe a person could become homeless otherwise! I had to argue in my defense, explaining that I don’t take drugs–not even prescription drugs–and I rarely drink. Alcohol has a bad effect on me, actually. In fact, I avoid artificial chemicals in my food as well. Though I can’t afford to eat everything organic, I do strive to eat as natural and unprocessed as possible. But frankly, I resent having to defend myself this way since I know plenty of people who are very well-off financially who drink alcohol/abuse drugs/eat frankenfoods everyday. But they’ll never be homeless because they vote Republican.) And of course, this rugged individualist thinking prevents us Americans from coming together and protesting the true cause of our problems. We’re all walking around suffering alone, blaming ourselves as individuals for choices that we did NOT make, that wealthy, privileged people made on our behalf and without our consent.

Whew! It’s so hard to reduce these complex ideas into a simple sound byte. I wish I weren’t an American so I wouldn’t have to dumb-down my ideas, but anyhow, I’ll continue the effort here.

Charlie Chaplin possessed a thing called “integrity.” Have you heard of it, Mr. Colbert?

Here’s the online Merriam-Webster definition of “integrity”:  “the quality of being honest and fair, the state of being complete or whole, firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values…”  Wait, I’ll stop there. A code of moral or artistic values.  Hmm…

You see, Mr. Colbert, Charlie Chaplin made a film, “The Great Dictator,” which was instrumental in influencing the US to fight Hitler. Most Hollywood bigwigs discouraged him from making the film. What Chaplin had to say was not popular, but Chaplin wasn’t concerned with popularity or making money. He was concerned about making the world a better place. What a concept! He’d already made a lot of money, already attained great success, so now his thoughts had moved higher up, higher than his own ego and his own desire for personal gain.

At the time, the US was not against Hitler’s regime. Nope, we were not the great heroes Americans want to think we were. We were perfectly okay with Hitler’s persecution of other people, as long as he wasn’t persecuting us. Chaplin also made films such as “Modern Times” which criticized industrialization, employees being dehumanized, treated like cogs in a wheel, by wealthy bureaucrats who only cared about their own profit margin.

For this, Chaplin was labeled a “communist” (the term used for today’s “terrorists”), was spied on heavily during the McCarthy era and finally deported. Guess you think Americans voted for that too, Mr. Colbert?  In fact, most Americans know nothing about this history or about their own history at all. Sad but true. Part of the reason for this is that it’s hard to become a genuine teacher today. One needs to be licensed or certified and, of course, that costs oodles of money, so those of us who aren’t wealthy and advocate for the rights of the poor aren’t likely to become teachers and to start teaching history. We’ll let the children of wealthy bureaucrats teach their version of “history.” They can afford to get “licensed” to teach it.

Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. Is that why you promote ignorance, Mr. Colbert, because its blissful and makes the masses laugh at what should really make them cry, if not recoil in horror?

But here’s the post I left on CNN’s web site:

I used to be a huge Colbert fan. He and Jon Stewart were the only ones who could make me laugh. But I’ve been noticing the hypocrisy and, sadly, I can’t ignore it. First, there was the interview with the woman who made a film advocating torture. Torture is an abomination–worse than slavery and isms: sexism, racism, classism, ageism, etc. Anyone who advocates torture is a sick human being and, most likely, a sociopath. Would you like to experience water-boarding, Mr. Colbert? Do you think torture is a joke? Or are you like most Americans, unconcerned about the suffering of others–as long as it’s the “other” who suffers and not “me.”

I, for one, am embarrassed to be an American and to know that the entire world is watching and fully aware that Americans are not only engaging in torture but our “liberal” political comedians promote it.

Yes, I also saw the interview with Stanley McChrystal, the general you seem to think is a hero, Mr. Colbert. Sorry, but I wasn’t laughing. I’m not an advocate of torture or of murder. I hope never to be. Even though my values are no longer American values, and so I must remain poor because I refuse to sell out, I can’t betray my own conscience.

Oh, and I admit I will watch Colbert and Stewart from time to time and possibly will laugh here and there, but not like before. I used to watch both shows frequently. Now, I view them occasionally and, yes, I can appreciate the comedic talent of both men. But I don’t appreciate the hypocrisy and your selling out on the American people. I don’t care how much money and power you have. I’ll say it directly to your face if need be. (Again, that’s why I’m poor. I haven’t been bowing to money and power. But then again, if there were more people like me, we wouldn’t be having the problems we’re having today, and then I wouldn’t be poor because my ideas would be popular. But my conscience is stronger than my ego. So be it.)

Mr. Colbert, you have a large platform and with that comes a huge responsibility. You can be brave (as was Charlie Chaplin back in the day) or you can be a greedy, foolish, coward who sells out your own people (sort of like Obama but on a smaller scale.) The choice, of course, is yours. I’m poor and struggling myself. I don’t have a platform. Few people will hear what I have to say, so no matter how articulate, well-educated or well-written I may be, I can do very little to save this country. (And no, I don’t believe my voting makes a difference either.) But you, Mr. Colbert, with your wealth and influence could do a lot. We live in an aristocracy. The ideas and opinions of the wealthy are praised and highly valued.

We’re going down (as a country), of course. And if Thom Hartmann is correct, there’ll be another economic crash around 2016.

But we don’t need to become the next Soviet Union. We can return to the days of freedom where we could at least express our grievances to this corrupt government and demand change. We don’t need to become a stasi-like police state where millions of people suffer but no one is brave enough to speak out. In that place, change cannot happen. Change doesn’t take place when people are too afraid to rise up and speak out.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/87217329″>In-Print Photobook Video #42: Top Secret: Images from the Stasi Archives by Simon Menner</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/photoeye”>photo-eye</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Or when those who do bravely speak out conveniently die shortly after (or are found guilty of some  serious crime then imprisoned for the rest of their lives so that no one will hear them speak again.)

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/tech/colbert-rsa-keynote/index.html

Note:  By the way, I had a very difficult time pasting the Chaplin footage onto this blog. When I tried to open the video, I got a response that the web site (dailymotion.com) was “unavailable” after my computer spent an incredibly long time attempting to open the site. (Yet this is a commonly used site, like youtube.) So I had to make several attempts at opening the web site. Then when I was able to access Dailymotion.com, I received a message that that Chaplin video was “unavailable” due to technical difficulties: “We are experiencing some difficulties with this video, please (sic) try again later.” After many attempts I posted that video but then searched for the Great Dictator speech, and guess what? Yep, I got another “error” message once the computer was finally able to open that page. Hmm… Could it be the NSA virus striking once again? No wonder, Stephen Colbert advocates surveillance. It makes it easier for people like himself to escape scrutiny when we the people are so heavily censored and micromanaged.

Remember this, Mr. Colbert, “Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!” Eventually, even the American people will realize this.

The tragedy of poverty is this…

–It’s knowing you’ll always be poor no matter what you do, that things will never, EVER, get better (at least not for you. Maybe for someone else, but not for you.) Knowing that poverty is forever… You’ll always be poor, no matter how hard you work, no matter how positive your attitude, no matter how well-written your resume, no matter how great your grade-point average in school, the system is set up to make sure that you will fail. And everyone around you is working hard to make sure you fail. Because that’s just how it is.

That’s the tragedy.

(And I’m going to experiment with writing a short…ehem…post here. Is it possible? Even this parenthetical explanation has become too long…)
Okay, here we go…

The tragedy is not being hungry, poor or even homeless. We’ve all had those types of experiences. Haven’t you ever been really, really hungry? Maybe it’s only 9:30 a.m. and your lunch break isn’t until 12:30 p.m. There’s no vending machine in sight, and you didn’t pack a lunch. Your boss is a stickler and won’t let you leave your desk until exactly 12:30 p.m. What to do? Well, you’ll suffer until 12:30. But maybe you’ll get absorbed in your work and forget all about it because, after all, you know you’ll get a chance to eat. You’ll just have to wait a few hours. Sure, it’s uncomfortable, perhaps even painful if you’re super hungry, but in a few short hours you’ll go out and buy a sandwich, sit down to eat and all will be well. In fact, you may even feel like you’re in heaven. The prolonged hunger may give you a better feeling once you do eat.

Being deprived for a short period of time can cause us to feel incredibly grateful for what little we have and can enhance our feelings of well being once our hunger is satisfied. Getting a chance to eat when we’re hungry feels good. But getting a chance to eat after we’ve been ravenously hungry for hours–deprived of but longing for food, our stomach growling like an uncaged grizzly and stabbing us with pangs of hunger–feels absolutely wonderful! Food might seem like a miracle. We may even be tempted to wrap our arms around the chef and give him/her a great big hug and kiss… Whew, I finally get to eat! Thank you for filling my aching stomach!

So the tragedy of poverty is not the experience in and of itself. It’s not so tragic to be hungry, thirsty or even homeless and unloved–as long as it’s temporary and solutions exist. We’ve all experienced deprivation. And sometimes the experience can make us stronger. Sometimes the experience makes us better people, causing us to develop empathy and compassion for those who are less fortunate. Even the wealthy experience poverty on occasion. (Some think they’re loved but are only loved for their money or celebrity status–so the cruel, sick joke is on them. They aren’t loved at all. Some think they’re unloved but are loved by secret admirers too timid or shy to tell them they’re loved. Or perhaps they aren’t open to accepting and valuing the love, so they can’t receive it. The love is there but they’ll never feel it. That is also tragic in its own way. Some people are wealthy financially but are spiritually and emotionally poor.)

But the tragedy of poverty is knowing it’ll never end. And that is what makes poor people crazy. Knowing that you’ll always be poor no matter what you do, that the system is set up to make sure you’ll fail, that because you weren’t born with money, connections, the “right” race or gender, etc., you’ll never succeed.

So let me ask you this.

What would YOU do if you were suffering and knew that it would never end, that it’s permanent, there’s no hope for a better life. You’ll always suffer no matter what you do?

http://dai.ly/xm5po0

Bitcoin Blues… Are they trying to kill Bitcoin?

In case you don’t know, Bitcoin is an online, open source currency. It allows anonymity and freedom from government intervention (although there’s speculation that Germany might have plans to regulate it.)  http://www.cnbc.com/id/100971898   It also provides unwelcome competition for some of our biggest banks. Needless to say, some people, particularly in some parts of the world, don’t like Bitcoin because it is currency that’s difficult for governments, and those with power in general, to control. Money is power in our society, and Bitcoin is not really money in the traditional sense of the word.  It’s a form of currency accessible to the masses and an alternative to standard currency.  One might say that Bitcoin creates a new way for powerless people to access financial power.

The concept of alternative currency is an interesting idea and some people are still only just learning about it…   More info at the web sites below…

http://www.WeUseCoins.com

http://www.BitCoin.com
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/24/138673630/what-is-bitcoin

But, as I said, some people don’t like Bitcoin. Nope, they don’t like it at all. It doesn’t serve their best interests…  Knowing this, I was a bit startled when I learned that a Bitcoin exchange CEO, Autumn Radtke, was found dead under mysterious circumstances. :

http://nypost.com/2014/03/05/bitcoin-firm-ceo-found-dead-in-suspected-suicide/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573863/Bitcoin-exchange-CEO-dead-home-suspected-suicide-age-28.html

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101468694

Uh, yes, another “suicide” on the part of someone attempting to change the world for the better while bravely going against what some wealthy, powerful, influential peeps want her to do… Not that I think Ms. Radtke was bumped off or anything. Nah, governments don’t bump off activists–especially here in the USA ’cause we’re so lucky that we have freedom of speech here in the USA. We have, after all, a government by and for the people–all the people, rich and poor. Yep, we’re a “democracy” over here in the USA.

(Hey, you in the corner, stop your snickering. I’m not joking over here. The USA is a bastion of freedom and liberty. USA! USA! USA! USSA!  Gosh, I’m so proud of being American. I’m so lucky that I’m an American. Those people in other countries, like Denmark and Sweden, for example, don’t know how bad they have it. It’s great here in the USSA. Stop laughing. I’m not joking. I’m telling you this country is GREAT! And I LOVE IT! So please, put the gun down, Mr. Homeland Security-NSA-Patriot Act Protector, sir. Look, I wrote what you asked me to write on my blog. I didn’t write that other thing, you know, that other thing. That thing you told me not to write–I didn’t write it. Put the gun down. If you shoot me now, it’ll be obvious to the…the… No, I’m not suicidal. Not any more than usual, that is… Please, put the gun down!

And so the man in black put down his gun and left with a sneer. He is in search of another blogger, one with a much bigger platform. But he’ll be back. They always come back. But she’ll be ready with a watered-down, noncontroversial blog post next time. Next time, she’ll write about pizza and how much homeless people like pizza. Yes, that’s it. Homeless people like pizza but a lot of pizza shops won’t let homeless people inside. What to do?  Well, you’ll just have to stay tuned…)

Okay, now that guy’s gone, so I can return to my original post.

Ms. Radtke was found dead on Feb. 28th, nearly a week ago, and the cause of death is very mysterious. The fact that it is only just now being reported, nearly a week later, seems a little odd to me too. But what do I know? No matter which news report you look at, it all looks pretty spooky. CNBC says she died “under mysterious circumstances.”  The report adds there have been a “rash of suicides in the financial industry…”  The NY Post puts the word “suicide” in quotes, pending the results of toxicology tests.

Around the time of Ms. Radtke’s “suicide,” some strange events have occurred.  According to the Daily Mail, Radtke was living in Singapore, having decided to base herself in South East Asia where there was a lot of government resistance to Bitcoin, particularly in China and Vietnam.

And coincidentally, Ms. Radtke’s death follows a collapse of Mt Gox and the disappearance of millions of dollars, apparently stolen from Bitcoin entities.  Was this all due to computer hacking? Who was doing the hacking?

Also coincidentally, just following Ms. Radtke’s death is the death of Flexcoin, a bitcoin bank that just closed down due to hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins that were stolen from it. Apparently, this just happened yesterday.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101463888

Even more coincidentally, Ms. Radtke’s death follows the resignation of Mark Karpeles (who was CEO of Mt. Gox in Tokyo and who did not commit suicide but has received death threats), from the board of directors of the Bitcoin Foundation of which he was a founding member.  This happened less than two weeks ago.

Additionally coincidentally, Charlie Shrem, the CEO of BitInstant, a Bitcoin exchange, was arrested and charged with money laundering. That happened less than two months ago.

http://www.businessinsider.com/report-ceo-of-major-bitcoin-exchange-arrested-2014-1

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/27/technology/security/bitcoin-arrest/

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101366511

But there are so many coincidences… All just coincidences.  It just happens that political activists and people who want to make the world a better place for everyone–rich and poor, people who want to create “a level playing field” as they say, people who want to democratize things, just happen to die young.  American history bears me out on this.

Perhaps we should rephrase the lyrics to that old country song, “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be activists.”

Now, can we get Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to accompany the Chipmunks and sing these new and improved lyrics–updated for modern times? Or will they be too afraid, like everyone else (except the ones who commit “suicide”) to challenge the status quo?

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/is-someone-trying-to-kill-bitcoin

http://markmaunder.com/2013/12/05/banks-declaring-war-on-bitcoin/

Gone are the Good Old Days of Rebellion

Gone are the days of rebellion, the days of revolt, the days of speaking out, standing up, standing out, standing for something or someone. We no longer watch each other’s backs. And none of us has the courage to stand alone, completely alone. We can only watch as things just happen. Things just pass us by… ’cause that’s the way it is.

Ya’ know, that’s just the  way it is, so ya’ll had better just accept it.

Why are you such a rebel? You’re going to have trouble in your life because you’re just too rebellious. (That’s what they told me when I was very young.) Guess what?

They were right. I thought I grew up in a conservative city. Little did I know… Now I live in a conservative country–so conservative that I don’t recognize it anymore, and…   Guess what else?

I feel like a foreigner in my own country.

Gone are the days of activism, of activity, of shocking revelations, of refreshing words of wisdom. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is not free at all. In fact, it’s scared to death. And it doesn’t even have a home anymore. It’s homeless. And those of us who belonged to that land, that erstwhile land, are homeless along with it. Where shall we go? What shall we do now?

Yes, those of us who remember the USA, the real USA long before surveillance, before outrageously expensive rent, education and health care, before chronic unemployment and jobs with tiny wages that don’t meet the cost of living, before increasing poverty and homeless, those of us who remember will soon grow old. We’ll be replaced by those who won’t remember, those who find surveillance to be the norm. Heck, they might even enjoy being groped by the TSA. But there was a time, and not so long ago, when there was crime but we didn’t believe in fighting it by violating people’s privacy, keeping each other under constant surveillance, and hiring cops so aggressive that they’re more dangerous than the criminals who used to scare us. And we still had the courage to talk to our neighbors in those days. We also had the time and money to socialize, to go out and have fun. (Do you remember this, people?) We weren’t quite as afraid of each other. And odd, unique, rather strange people were all around us. They dressed differently, walked differently, talked differently, had strange ideas and accents we couldn’t quite place. We didn’t know where they were from but we respected their right to exist. And so, even though they were different, they walked among us (without worries of being tasered or beaten up by militarized police forces who can no longer solve problems nonviolently.)

Not anymore. Today, such characters are taken away. Are they jailed? Forced into homeless shelters? Perhaps there’s another Guantanamo secret prison set up especially for people who are just different from the norm so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with them anymore.

Here now are the days of conformity, complacency, and acquiescence at its finest. Today we say nothing that hasn’t been said before. We say nothing.

We say what’s already been said, say what we’re told, do what we’re told, think what we’re told. Over and over again.

The same songs play over and over again on the radio. Slightly different lyrics but the song remains the same.

The same shows play and replay on the same TV stations–all 1000 of them.

The same movies we’ve already seen show in all the theaters all over town. The same actors, the same directors, writers, announcers. It’s always the same. Different screenplay, same story. And all the characters look the same. They’re all pretty. They’re all thin. They’re all glamorous–even after running a marathon, the leading lady isn’t sweating and her makeup isn’t smudged. No one farts or burps… Well, not usually. Sometimes in comedies, but only to keep the audience from thinking serious thoughts.

Heaven forbid we allow anything new. That might make some of us think. Might form new synapses, change our brain chemistry in ways the pharmaceutical industry never dreamed of.

And we don’t want that.

We censor our own thoughts. We cannot think for ourselves. We dare not even think of thinking for ourselves. What will the boss say if he finds out I voted for the Green Party? What will the wife/husband/crazy neighbor think if they find out I’m a socialist? What if I don’t agree with what everyone else is saying? What if I have a different view?

Americans like to talk about diversity. But “diversity” (along with “family values”) is like the weather in America. Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it. We “embrace diversity” and we’re so “politically correct” yet we see the same ideas, opinions, TV shows, films, songs, rock bands, movie stars, celebrities, experts, newscasters, etc., over and over again. We see cookie-cutter houses being built–each one the same as the other–because it’s more efficient to build them all the same way.

What if someone built a purple house?

Have you ever walked into an office and seen a diverse crew of employees hailing from different races, age groups and genders? Have you ever worked within a truly diverse work environment?

I HAVEn’t. But I have worked for people who claimed to embrace diversity. (I suppose on some level they did: somewhere inside the deep, dark recesses of what little was left of their imagination, they embraced diversity. Hugged it real tight. Real tight. Then they let it go forever.)

I wonder if I’m the only one who gets bored with it all.  In school, my teachers kept repeating the same things over and over again. I suppose some of the other students needed that repetition. Perhaps they hadn’t learned it yet. But I had. And I was bored. Very, very bored. Please, please, teach me something new. But they wouldn’t. They just wanted to repeat the same things over and over again.

Over and over.

Over.

Again.

And if I yawned I was in trouble. If I skipped a class, I was in trouble. A teacher threatened to fail me once because I wasn’t coming to class. “Seriously, why don’t you give me a reason to come to class?” I wanted to say. Sorry to say, I am not so polite anymore. But I wish I could go back to school, a real school where I could actually learn something new. But then maybe my brain would explode from the shock. And since I seem to be the only one who is bored with all this mindless repetition, this endless conformity, this nonsensical drivel that passes for “news” and “entertainment,” I suppose there’s just no point. No point at all. It’s over, folks. Over. (The USA, that is. The rest of the world might survive, but not the USA.) The USA is a goner. Over. Finito. How does one spell “sayonara?”

Over and over.

Over.

Again.

So here’s my drivel for the day. Sorry ’bout the mess. I’ll go grab some tissue and pick up as much of it as I can. Then I’ll be more careful with the next blog entry… and there will be at least one more.

Some millionaires lost their homes last month…

Warning: what you are about to read may be painful, a real tear-jerker. Please have plenty of tissue on hand. Don’t mess up the environment with your bodily fluids! Rein it all in with some tissue! This story will make you cry, as it is very, very heartbreaking. (Oh, and please make sure to place your used tissues in a recycling bin. Recycle those tissues! We Americans are going to have a lot to cry about in future months and years.)

Okay, so here I go. The heartbreaking, tear-jerking, soul bleeding, miserable tale begins here:

Some millionaires (and possibly some billionaires!) lost their homes recently. Yes, huge, beautiful mansions were damaged when a fire broke out (as it often does) in California. Beautiful mansions were hurt, seriously hurt! Possibly some art and furniture worth millions of dollars may have been destroyed too. One can only speculate.

And the servants? What of the servants?! Did they survive? There was nothing mentioned about them in the news reports, so I guess we’ll never know. (If anyone reads this blog and finds anything out, please, please let me know.)

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Brush-Fire-Glendora-Angeles-National-Forest-Wildfire-240493431.html

(Looks like I can’t embed the video of the news report, but you may view it by clicking on the link above.)

Thankfully, no one was killed by the blaze, but a few mansions were killed and several other mansions were injured. January was a very dry month for California, so the risk of fire was high. In fact, the true cause of the fire was California–it made the fateful mistake of being located atop a desert. Some millionaires made the choice to build mansions atop that same desert, knowing full well that fires in the region are common. (But we really need to find a poor or middle class person to blame so we can practice hating each other and scapegoating each other for things that go wrong in our world, right?)

The suspects, apparently, told authorities they’d started a campfire and “the wind picked up.” So can we blame the wind? Can we jail the wind? Can we sue the wind? Naw, it’s easier to just go ahead and blame some homeless people.

Now, as I said, such fires occur frequently in Southern Cali because of its arid environment. Last year (2013), a rim fire was started by a hunter who started a campfire the authorities had deemed “illegal.” However, the hunter was not arrested as he was not homeless, apparently, at the time. (But the fire fueled the war on drugs by enabling some people in the media to make the FALSE claim that the fire was started by marijuana growers!)  Way to go, corporate media, when you do report the news make sure to embed some outright lies within it to manipulate the public toward whatever cause you happen to be supporting at the time. (Looking for excuses to imprison more Americans? Do the prisons need more money? Or do we just need another war? Hmm…the war on marijuana growers. Yes, let’s blame marijuana for EVERYTHING that’s wrong with our country right now. I think that would make things very interesting indeed–especially since lots of rich people smoke marijuana, and worse drugs…) By the way, I am NOT a marijuana grower or inhaler, just curious as to why the media feels the need to attack certain segments of our population and blame them for crimes that have nothing at all to do with them.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/05/us/california-yosemite-wildfire/

What about you, erstwhile reader, are you curious? Or would you rather just accept things as they are and not ask any questions…i.e., are you a typical American? Or will you dare to be different by thinking uncensored thoughts?

I like to ask questions which is why I have journalistic tendencies. But I gave up my interest in being a journalist when I sent out resumes and never got a response… I’m not a white male, don’t hail from a wealthy family, have absolutely no connections and…most important disqualification of all…I’m not a Republican who hates poor people, women, blacks, etc.

But if I were a journalist and had oodles of money, I would like to have traveled to the French Riviera, or wherever these millionaires were at the time their “homes” were damaged by the fire (yes, the media describes their mansions as homes! Ha Ha! No wonder they wouldn’t hire me as a journalist!)  I’d also like to talk with the servants.  How did they feel when they were evacuated from the “homes.” Was it nice having some time off from work? Are they worried they’ll lose their jobs, that their employers will sell off or tear down the mansions, thus removing the need for their employment? Will their employers give them huge pay raises so that they never become homeless and go out in the woods and set fires to warm up? Will all employers all over the country make a firm commitment right here and now to raise salaries and to hire more employees and pay them well to help curb the homelessness problem? Will banks all over the country agree not to foreclose on struggling homeowners so that they don’t become homeless and start fires? Will universities lower their tuition fees to zero for unemployed or underemployed people so they can go back to school again, acquire a marketable skill, get better jobs and not become homeless and start fires? Will the government (oh yes, our wonderful, caring, just and loving government!) provide welfare for anyone who can’t find a job and can’t afford to go back to college so that they don’t end up homeless and starting fires?

Gosh, I’d love to ask these questions.

Ah, but we’ll hear none of that because, you see, I am not a journalist. They are “journalists,” and they care absolutely nothing at all for average, ordinary working people.

But back to this dreadful fire that has rendered so many millionaires and billionaires “homeless.”  Diamonds and pearls tarnished with a smoky smell that can’t be removed! Oh dear! And what of that mink coat! Was the Cadillac hurt? And what of the illustrious owners of these mansions? Where will they stay when they’re in California? Will they, heaven forbid, need to stay at a hotel? Not the Hilton, oh please God, not the Hilton. Please, don’t make me stoop so low…  sniff, sniff. (Now, before you get mad at me, remember, I warned you that you’d need tissue, that this was a heartbreaking story indeed! Why, some of them will have to remain in the French Riviera indefinitely! While others might need to stay in their alternative homes in Manhattan. Perhaps instead of firing those servants they could just transfer them off to their other mansions? It’s just a thought.)

Indeed.

So the fire was, apparently, caused by three men who’d started a campfire the authorities have decided was illegal. Why were they starting a campfire? Why were previous fires caused by “illegal” campfires not resulting in arrests? Could it be… Yes, it must be true… Were the three men, by any chance, homeless? Were they starting a fire to warm up on a chilly night? To cook up some food perhaps?

Yes, I’m asking this question. (And again, I’m frustrated that I don’t have a larger platform for this because no one else seems to be asking these kinds of questions.) Were the three men arrested homeless? Why are they being arrested when previous “fire-starters” were not? Why are they being held on $500,000 bond each? Do you think that three homeless men are capable of paying for the damages done to rich people’s homes? Was the damage done to the rich people as a result of this fire equal to the damage done to these poor men’s lives as a result of homelessness, poverty and despair? How will the millionaires who owned the damaged mansions benefit from the destruction of those three men’s lives? Haven’t they suffered enough in this world?

Apparently not.

What kind of sick, twisted injustice is this? Oh, that’s right, I live in the USSA now, I forgot. Justice is a word, a mere word. And most Americans don’t even know how to spell it anymore, much less define it.

So let’s recite America’s new motto once again: Give me your tired and poor so that I can step on them over and over again with well-heeled shoes (shoes they never could afford for themselves, ha!) and crush them. Crush their bodies, crush their spirit, crush whatever’s left of a soul. Crush ’em all! Darned homeless people!

Ha ha, I just censored my words up above because I know that someone from the FBI, DHS (or the “A-Team”–CIA, NSA, TSA & God knows whatever other A), is reading this.  In fact, Homeland inSecurity may be the only folks who are reading this blog! So, hey, thanks for reading!

Gee, I hope homeless people don’t set any more mansions on fire. I’m really strongly against such activity. And, seriously, I’m so sorry that our poverty and despair causes so much discomfort for you wealthy, privileged folks. Really, I wish I could end my own poverty so that it wouldn’t hurt you so much. Really. That brings me to the disclaimer/faux legalese that I must add at the end of this blog for the benefit of the A-team, etc. Please read the sentence below. It is very, very important.

Disclaimer:  No mansions, diamonds, pearls or million-dollar artwork were damaged in the writing of this article.

Why are you going along with it? Please stop… so we can make them stop. Please!

Ah, I wish I had a bigger platform because I have, oh, so much to say!

If I were standing at the top of a mountain and had a very loud speaker in front of a powerful microphone situated right in front of me, I would announce the following question:         If you’re unhappy with the way things are, why are you going along with it? Why? Oh, why? Just stop right now! Stop going along with it! You don’t need to have the courage to camp out with Occupy or to risk getting tasered, beaten and arrested by attending anti-war protests. I understand your fear. I’m afraid too. Believe me, I’m scared to death. Do you think that little old me, with this quiet little blog and my itty bitty videos is innocuous, harmless, small fish in a big pond? Oh no, as far as they’re concerned I’m a terrorist and probably at the top of their list of fish to fry…in the hottest oil they can find.

But then again, so are you, my fellow American. You see, we are all terrorists, to the extent that we are thinking. The moment you start thinking for yourself, you’ll start questioning things, as I am doing now, and you may also begin to ask, “Why?” Some people don’t want you to ask such questions. And the simple act of asking questions can get you into trouble in some circles.

So again, I’ll repeat the question. Yes, I understand why you’re afraid to attend the protests, but why do you continue to go along with everything that’s wrong with this country?

Here’s an example of what I mean.  There has been a HUGE protest against Youtube for its privacy violations, forcing people to use their real names when setting up an account, forcing people to join Google Plus, etc., when most Youtubers just want to make videos. Some of us have political views that offend certain people in power, so we relish our privacy that enables us to speak out without being terrorized by the wealthy and powerful who don’t take kindly to “upstarts” who don’t know their place.

By the way, the petition to stop Youtube/Google from violating people’s privacy is here:

https://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-comment-section-back-to-its-original-form

http://www.zdnet.com/forced-google-plus-integration-on-youtube-backfires-petition-hits-112000-7000023196/

http://edwardspoonhands.com/post/66425515182/ok-so-my-friend-emma-puts-this-video-of-her

Heck, even the original founder of Youtube is protesting against this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10449741/YouTube-co-founder-joins-protest-against-comment-changes.html

https://whyweprotest.net/community/threads/google-is-ruining-youtube.114860/

Don’t get me wrong here. I think it’s great that people are speaking out against Google/Youtube’s privacy violations.  (Facebook is another Internet evil altogether.)

But I still have this question in my mind that I’d like to shout loudly to the masses: Why do you continue to go along with it?

Yes, I understand that “everybody” is on Youtube but that will change if “everybody” starts posting their videos on DailyMotion, Vimeo, Livestream, Justin.tv, Ustream.tv, or another alternative site.  Because they don’t violate privacy as much as Youtube, it is very easy to set up on one of these alternative sites. One can certainly maintain their Youtube site but set up a second or even a third site on one of the alternative video hosting services and get their viewers to increasingly gravitate to their videos on the other site. It’s not hard to do…but most people aren’t doing it…

So again, I ask why?

Leave Google/Youtube and go to DailyMotion, Vimeo, or wherever and just encourage your viewers to go there. Of course, if we all do this, Youtube/Google will be forced to change their policy back to the way that we the people would like it to be.  (And maybe the original founders of Youtube could get together with some peeps to help create another alternative to Youtube… Heck, what an idea!)

But then, I’m still mystified as to why people open up accounts with Bank of America instead of a smaller bank or a credit union and why people choose to shop at Walmart knowing how corrupt that company is when there are other discount stores available.

We still have the right to shop and bank wherever we want to and Homeland Security, the NSA, or the multiple “security” agencies that spy on us won’t come after you for simply shopping where you want to…yet. Because, yes, as ObamaCare/”Affordable” Care Act has shown us, the government can force you to buy things.

But right now we have the right to choose from whom we’ll buy and whether or not we’ll buy anything from anyone at all (for the most part.)

So again: Why do you keep going along with it? Why do you keep buying their stuff? Why do you protest, complain, suffer needlessly while you continue to feed the machine that’s killing you?

I think I know why. Guess I’ll answer since you won’t. (Not much of a platform here and it’s sad, but most likely, no one would answer my question honestly anyway even if I could present it to the world.)

Here’s why you keep feeding the machine: You know that no one will support you if you protest. You don’t want to go at it alone. Americans are very disconnected from each other and, frankly, Americans don’t love each other. I’ve written about this before–unrequited love amongst the masses. Americans hate each other. We struggle but we attack our friends and neighbors who are struggling: “Oh, it’s her own fault she lost her house. She wasn’t paying her bills!”

So you go along with it. You feed the machine. It’s killing you. It hurts. You’re suffering. And everyone around you is suffering. Yet you keep feeding the machine.

What would happen if you stopped buying products manufactured by companies that outsource labor to third-world countries and hire children to work 14 hours per day for only a few dollars per day? What would happen if you thought before you purchased anything? What would happen if you stopped shopping at Walmart AND wrote them a letter telling them why? Or maybe you could write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper about why you are not shopping at Walmart.

Yes, there are small things like this that we can all do safely. The cops won’t beat us up for just not shopping or banking at places that are doing things we believe are wrong.  The NSA/DHS/TSA, etc., aren’t going to stop and frisk us (at least not as of this writing!) for switching to DailyMotion or Justin.tv from Youtube!

But you’re addicted, aren’t you? Aren’t we all? Addicted to these big corporations, to the promises they make, promises of fame and fortunes, promises that we can be like them.

Which leads me to my next question:

Why do we want to be like them?

You and I are not temporarily embarrassed millionaires

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html

http://www.polisci.ccsu.edu/trieb/InfluGov.html

“Help! Help! I’m drowning. Please, please, someone help me!”

He cried out as loudly as he could, given the circumstances. His body was rapidly getting weak, and that was his last real cry. His arms flailing high into the air, he was desperately searching for something to hold onto–a tree branch, a rock, something tangible. But…there was nothing. “Please help,” he attempted weakly. But it was only the sound of the voice in his head. His vocal cords had stopped functioning. There wasn’t enough breath to get the words out into the air.

Now, he was sinking. Soon his flailing arms and outspoken voice would be submerged beneath the water, along with the rest of him.

Who would have thought that something as harmless, as ubiquitous and gentle as water could be such a strong killer? How he had underestimated the power of this translucent, flowing stream that runs through all things? In the past he would drink it or sit beside it as it trickled lightly over the rocks. There he would meditate to the soothing sound of running water. He thought water was a healer, that demons couldn’t cross it, that beside water he would always be safe and sound. And now, it was killing him.

“Save me, someone, please. Oh, please, please help!” he thought he cried out. But actually he didn’t. At this point he’d gone delirious and the current was pulling him in.

It’s not as though he was alone, mind you. People heard his cries, watched his tears drop from his once rugged, impenetrable eyes then drop into the river that was killing him. “Oh! Another whiner!”they lamented. “Some people are so negative. All they do is complain. What did he do to get himself into that situation in the first place? I’m not stupid enough to go near the river.”

And the sounds of his crying irritated them so. And so they closed their windows, their doors, pulled down their shades, turned up the music to drown out the sound of his drowning and just tried to take their minds off of his incessant crying.

It was just so annoying to hear him complain about suffering!

But there was one man who approached this dying soul. Watching him drown, he dared not risk his own life to try to rescue him, especially since it was his own fault, after all, for approaching the water in the first place. But he wanted to show the world what a nice man he was, that he was a caring individual. He was the man who built this river, you see, and he wanted people to know that he never intended for anyone to drown in it. He resisted strongly any efforts to study the water’s current, insisting it was completely safe. It was safe. It was safe. It was safe. After all, it was his river, so of course it was perfect. No one could stop him from having his river. And if anyone dared go near his river and fell in… Well, some people just make bad choices.

Still, he didn’t want anyone to think he, the creator/owner of this river didn’t care. He gave to charity, after all. And so he offered the drowning victim a pair of shoes. “Here you are, sir. I’ll help you. A pair of shoes is all you need.”

And he dropped the pair of shoes by the side of the river not too far from the spot where the drowning man’s arms had reached out for help. But it was too late to donate shoes to a drowning man. The current was just too strong. No one could guess how fast it was moving. That would take some investigation, and, frankly, no one was up to that. People are busy these days, you see.

So needless to say, the current was very, very strong. Suddenly, it yanked at the drowning man’s feet and thrust him downward to the bottom of the river, silencing him forever. The man felt the rocks tear at his skin as he was pulled downward. He would no longer cry or struggle–even if he were able, for he no longer wanted to live. Now, he hoped for death. Would it please happen quickly? The pain was intense, swift, sudden. He would never ask for help again. But the pain has stopped.

He was dead.

Whew. What a relief to all around him. They need not hear his cries any longer. The neighbors could open their windows at last. And turn down that loud music! Now they could rest in peace. The philanthropist picked up the shoes when he saw the man disappear under the sea. He would donate them to another charity. Perhaps another victim would be more grateful. Next time he’ll focus on suffering children, as adults are a waste of time. They just don’t try hard enough to rescue themselves. And they never seem to appreciate what you do for them.

Meanwhile, the definition of “drown,” according to “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,” 4th edition, remains available (at least as of this writing) to the general public, for all to see. Thus far, no one from the US government, a.k.a. corporate America, has tried to censor, redact, or “drown” its definition. In fact, anyone may view it on display in practically all English dictionaries which may be accessed free of charge in public libraries (still available, even to poor people, and even in the USA.) Yes, the word “drown” is alive and well. It shall not be suppressed! (Perhaps because we need it so badly.)

drown — ” 1. to kill by submerging and suffocating in water or another liquid…

2. to drench thoroughly or cover with or as if with a liquid…

3. to deaden one’s awareness of…

4. to muffle or mask (a sound) by a louder sound…”

And so this poor man drowned, but it wasn’t the water that killed him…

The rich have the means to get mean and meaner… “the Rich are Getting Mean” revisited

I’d written in the past about a poor, struggling man I’d met in a city building. Both of us were there to resolve tickets we’d received by law enforcement, essentially, for being poor. What I mean is, it’s a crime in the US to be poor. Poor people seem to acquire all sorts of legal problems. In Southern California, for example, jaywalking is a serious crime. Mostly only poor people walk over there, of course. And if you can’t afford to pay the jaywalking ticket…well, you can end up in the slammer. Yep, people go to jail for crossing the street in California. I kid you not! A person’s entire life can be ruined by a single act of crossing a street when the walk signal (light flashes an image of a little androgynous human) stops flashing.

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Dec2006/criminal.htm

But I told myself this blog would be extremely short. So here goes: My little experiment in writing more frequently but shortening the size of each entry…

This poor unfortunate man I’d met had serious health problems and was collecting disability. He was suffering quite a bit and struggling to pay his medical bills. “The rich are getting mean,” he lamented as we’d gotten into a discussion about the social injustice of our needing to constantly defend ourselves legally. (It’s as though we have to defend our very existence. Do the rich want us dead? Why do they hate us so much?) There’s always some ticket to pay, some ordinance or law to be violated, when you’re poor.  My car was ticketed and I had to go to court to defend myself for driving such an old, beat up used car. So I dropped my car off to a junkyard and proceeded to watch my life fall apart, as it was nearly impossible to find a decent job without a car. When I went to court, I had to show proof that I’d given up my car. I wanted to say, “I’m sorry I’d been driving such a stinky car and that it was polluting your fine California air. But I’d drive a much nicer and less stinky car if I could afford it. Really, I would.” But instead, I showed them the proof that I was carless and then began risking getting mugged by taking Southern California’s wonderful and exciting (nearly was assaulted several times!) “public” transportation system. Once I no longer had a car, I found that opportunities diminished for me in so many ways. People looked down on me because they saw me–horror of horrors!–walking in LA.  Basically, a lot of people didn’t want to be my friend. I couldn’t socialize with them anymore as I had no way of getting to the places where they went. (Unless, of course, a friend offered to give me a ride, but that would mean giving, helping, assisting another human being. But, of course, that would involve socialism and most of my friends were against socialism, so they wouldn’t dare help me in any way. I’m very grateful for that, though, because it gave me a chance to see what kind of people they really were. You don’t always get that chance when you have a lot of money and your life is going well.) And, as I said, job opportunities were very limited for me once I had no transportation. Most available jobs these days are not on the bus line and as public transportation increasing gets cut, that problem is increasing. (Hmm… so I wonder how it benefits society to force poor people to give up their cars when their cars don’t meet the strict environmental inspection standards set up by wealthy bureaucrats? But then I’m always wondering how it benefits society to allow the government and big banks to take away people’s homes just because people can’t afford to pay their bills. Yes, people should pay their bills but…do we really want to take away people’s homes and create a new population of homeless people?)

(Okay, I’ve tried to embed the above video of Bryan Stevenson’s talk, but, for some strange reason, it won’t embed on this site. Every time I type in the code, it disappears once I save this blog. Yep, I type it in, hit “save” then open up the blog and everything I typed is gone.  This happened with my previous blog entry also. As you can see, though, the other videos embedded just fine.  Not sure what’s going on here.  A virus on my computer perhaps? A glitch on WordPress? Perhaps it’s the NSA virus? Anyhow, it’s odd. But I’ve got the URL typed up there, so if you’d like to view this wonderful video about poverty and crime, please click on that link.)

But this doesn’t affect the rich or even much of the middle class, so why do I even bring this up?  Yes, the rich are getting  mean, but so, oddly enough, are the middle class. They may not be the so-called “one percent” but they sure do think they’re better when they live in their gated communities far, far away from the riff raff, i.e., the poor.

And yet, perhaps ironically, the word “mean” as a noun refers to money, property or wealth. Yes, the rich have the means to be mean.

( Above video is from youtube.com/user/KafkaWinstonWorld )

So here it is–my first blog of the year!  And an attempt to make it a short blog entry.  Okay, I didn’t do as well on that as I’d hoped, but I’m getting there…  😉

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/149094/february-11-2008/philip-zimbardo

 

A Child of the Poor…

“Helpless and hungry, lowly he lies, wrapped in the chill of midwinter…

born into poverty’s embrace…

Who is this who lives with the lowly,                sharing their sorrows,                    knowing their hunger?

This is Christ,                       revealed to the world in the eyes of a child,                       a child of the poor…”

————————Scott Soper

I went to church last night, Christmas Eve, flipped through the hymnal and found this song. I memorized the key lyrics and the song’s composer ’cause it inspired yet another blog entry. It reminded me of what Christianity used to be, as I’d learned it anyhow, until recently. Christianity, as I understood it, was all about helping the poor and not striving for money or material things because those things are of this earth, physical, not spiritual, not eternal. As Christians, we are to strive to cultivate and enrich our spirit but certainly not our bank accounts. In fact, we should be ready to give away everything, including the shirt off of our backs, to help those in need. This, my friend, is the Christianity I grew up with.

Sayonara, peace and love. Christianity, like everything else in our society, has become mean.

(I’ve had trouble embedding the videos below,  so I’ll just include the links for your viewing pleasure…)

http://vimeo.com/81686206

http://crooksandliars.com/2013/12/stephen-colberts-homeless-holidays

http://jezebel.com/colbert-sticks-it-to-the-homeless-with-homeless-for-th-1480425413

And look, another blogger beat me to this at:

http://imincorrigible.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/fox-news-knows-how-to-keep-the-spirit-of-christmas/

What happened? Seems Christianity itself has become, in a sense, the anti-Christ, the very thing that attacks everything this Christ stood for:  turning the other cheek, i.e., nonviolence, kindness, generosity, compassion, rejecting greed and materialism, embracing humility and poverty.

This new “Christianity” says that greed is good and that money and material things are given by God to His followers… Huh? Modern times!

Huh?

Read the Bible, people. The Christian Bible does not advocate the obtaining of money and material things. It does not. Does not. Does not.

Christ is born “a child of the poor.” He is born into poverty wrapped in nothing but the “midwinter chill.”

In fact, Jesus and his family–mother Mary, father Joseph–were homeless. There was no room at the inn, so they stayed in a stable where animals were kept. Hmm… Where were the trespassing laws to arrest these occupiers? How would you have treated this homeless family of three had you been alive to witness Jesus’s birth? Would you, like Bill O’Reilly and his anti-Christ wannabe/pseudo Christian friends, give help to the child but ignore the parents, treating them with scorn? Would you accuse Mary and Joseph of being lazy, irresponsible and not wanting to work? Why did they choose to have a child when they were so low on money? Shouldn’t they have put off marriage and children until their financial situation improved?

Yes, this child of the poor, this hungry, helpless, lowly, homeless child was none-other than Jesus Himself. The Messiah Himself, revealed to the world as a poor homeless child. I guess we’ll never know what great gifts an impoverished person might be able to offer if he were allowed to live up to his greatest potential. And I think this was Jesus’s biggest message of all.  And I believe this is why he was killed.  His very existence as a man who was not born into wealth, not the son of a king (by worldly standards) but who was being treated like a king and followed by a host of admirers, posed a huge threat to the wealthy and powerful who wanted the people to follow THEM, not this Jesus upstart.

“Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth…”  Matthew 5:5

Hmm… What would Bill O’Reilly say? He’d probably say, “Get out of my stable, ya’ no-good crackheads. Get a job! You shouldn’t be havin’ kids if you can’t afford ’em!”  Then he’d call the police, have Mary and Joseph put in jail and Jesus placed in a foster home. In fact, Bill O’Reilly and his pals would be the first to demand Jesus be sentenced to death for his rebellious ways.

Do you think Jesus and his family were lazy drug addicts who lacked intelligence or practiced poor planning, etc.?   Some people ask, “What would Jesus do?” Now, I am asking you, my dear, darlin’ reader, what would you do if you encountered Jesus right here and now–long hair, sandals, poverty and all.

Because, as we all know, Jesus was poor.  Someone even wrote a song about it…