Fun With Asterisks

In case you haven't noticed, Change is afoot.

Not the "Change you can believe in" campaign promise sort of change.

Important Change.

And you can see it- right there on the TV, little snippets of it in between "Dancing With the Stars" and "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" (I am proud to say I've never watched even 30 seconds of these shows). They flash just a few minutes of it on- enough to claim that we're being informed, they've shown us what's going on, now back to our normally scheduled programming.

People, regular normal people everywhere in the world are getting pissed and exercising their human social community Right to assemble and protest injustice (that's not just here, yanno- even though we rarely use it).

And not just in places you'd expect because they're pretty much shitholes* anyhow, like Syria, Egypt and Mexico. Places that are civilized- Spain, France, ICELAND for criminy's sake.

So what's the deal?

The deal is that all these country's governments are imposing "austerity" measures to bring their economies back into line. They're saying to their people, "We have huge deficits and if WE (and by "we" we of course are referring to YOU)don't do something about it, terrible things will happen and your children will starve in the streets for want of free-fed Twinkies. THEIR children may not even know what a Twinkie IS- is that the sort of world we want to leave our children and theirs?

I didn't think so."

Makes sense. We hear it here in the USA constantly- we have to all tighten our belts and pay off the debt by eliminating all our poofy extras to leave our children a better place- things like schools and libraries and student loans and health care for the sick and the old and the young (shit- for EVERYONE! HEALTH CARE when our country is indebted to that bastard United States**??? Stop being so damn selfish!)

So all those people overseas- obviously they're marching and protesting and making a general fuss because they're all Socialists and Commies and their government has been supporting them all with luxuries like food and education and decent hours and working wages and health care and they're lazy bastards who don't care about their children and their children's children as long as they get their wine and croissants for free from the government.

They simply don't have the American Mindset.

Well, no. They don't. They're not self-righteous, deluded, isolationist morons***.

See, here's what happened in all the governments around the world.

They spent money. Lots of money. They gave it to corporations and banks that turned around and spent it unwisely and now there's a big gaping hole where there should be pocket change for trivial things like running civilized societies for their actual people.

So now they want to fill those big gaping holes from the pockets of people who had not a damn thing to do with the bad money management.

Where did it go? To hear the governments talk, the money is gone. *Poof*. Gone. Which is bullshit. Corporations and banks are posting the biggest profits in history. Banks who "shelter" money in places like the Cayman Islands don't have enough drawers for all of it.

Every single country has private citizens who could, without suffering undo stress or dismay, PAY OFF THEIR COUNTRY'S DEFICIT BY WRITING A CHECK TODAY. Seriously. The money is not gone.

This is not a "take all the money from the evil selfish Rich" rant.

This is a "HEY, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SHIT YOU'VE GOTTEN US INTO, YOU EVIL SELFISH BASTARDS" rant.

See? That's what all those people are marching for- While WE sit over here and say things like, "Why should *I* pay for health care for my neighbor? What has he ever done for ME? HE needs to take personal responsibility for his own life. If he dies, he dies- this is America and at least he'll die a free man", we are coughing up our toenails and huge clots of fiscal blood in order to provide 'relief' and ultimate fucking WELFARE for those who totally screwed the economy and are sitting on HUGE piles of OUR MONEY- not money they 'earned'- this is OUR money because it's OUR country, god damn it.

Why the hell do we nit-pick to fucking death some poor schmo who applies for disability and has the AUDACITY to own a refrigerator? Why do we feel vindicated to criticize a single working mom who gets food stamps and has the brass balls to buy a stinking BIRTHDAY CAKE for her kid with them?

Then turn around and defend all day long the institutions (they're NOT people, my friend) that willfully and knowingly put the entire world economy into a tailspin all the while thinking, "No matter- we'll just frighten and squeeze the Little People to distract them and think this is something that can only be fixed by their meager purses. They think we're Too Big to Fail. What a bunch of idiots".

What the hell is WRONG WITH US???

People all around the world are saying, "NO- WE did not do this, YOU did. YOU make it right. YOU take some goddamn personal responsibility for what YOU did to OUR planet and make it RIGHT".

Because right now there is 1% of the population that we will never convince to take personal responsibility for their own lives and choices**** without making a fuss.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. TEACH a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. Allowing a man to purchase the publicly-owned lakes and then forbid everyone else from fishing and feeding their families turns him into a monster.

We don't hate them. We're trying to help them.




*American public opinion only, not mine

**Yes. Most of our debt is owed to OURSELVES. So saying we have to pay it off or face dire consequences is like me lending myself money to build a house, then if I can't make the payment on it, evicting myself. As a further aside- the whole, "We owe so much money to China that they own us" thing? 9%. That's how much of our debt is owed to China. So, no- they're not going to 'foreclose' on the US anytime soon. 9% of anything is not in any book defined as a "big fucking deal".

***Morons, not Mormons- you've got election fever. I'll admit the adjectives did lend themselves to the misunderstanding.

****Yep. I totally Went There. Loved it, too.