Three pages in...
Making this a binary discussion is silly, pointless, and while very Aspish, just what "TPTB" want us to do. Divide and conquer. Socialism, or an unfettered free market.
If you think socialism in so hot, book yourself a cruise to Venezuela. It sucks in Venezuela right now. And yes, I think it would come to that in America very quickly. Socialism wouldn't be a change, it would just be assigning more responsibility and therefore more power to our already catastrophically corrupt government.
And that's before we start talking about The Gimmes. I realize not everyone on welfare is gaming the system. I grew up on commodities (the predecessor of Food Stamps), Food Stamps, SSDI, and Social Security Death Benefit. I didn't know what it was to eat a meal that didn't involve some form of assistance from the time I was 2 until I was 12 (and then we were still getting the death benefit, even though we didn't need it, because I was "entitled" and Saint Alan wasn't so saintly that he was going to hire a lawyer to sue the Fed to NOT give him money). I remember taking money out of the allowance my Dad paid me to buy milk and bread, because all my Mom had was Food Stamps and the cashier at the Dairy Mart would mock me unless it was Miss Janie working. I'm not OK with calling everyone on welfare bums and cheats, because I remember how much it hurt, or terminating all support, because we needed it and my mother's only fault to place us in that situation was divorcing a perfectly good Aspie husband to run off with some guy with stellar social skills and no job.
But I have known an uncomfortably significant number of people in my short 38 years who are perfectly able, and simply content to sit on their asses playing GTA3 and/or popping out babies for as long as Uncle Sam will keep kicking them enough money to eat ramen noodles and live indoorsish. And that's not OK.
I'm sure, on the other hand, there are plenty of corporate scum-suckers who would LOVE the government to take more out in taxes, ostensibly for the maintainence of the populace. Because that's an even bigger pie they can stick both thumbs in, more regulation they can use to crush competition, and more opportunities for a government-protected monopoly.
I believe in the socialism I grew up with-- We're all in this together, my excess will make up your shortfall and you'll remember me when the shoe is on the other foot, my skills will get your garden canned and your skills will get my roof fixed.
The socialism that would/will grow up under government administration in America would look a lot more like 1984. Or worse. There's a reason why being born into poverty means you almost never get out, and it's not entirely about disparate access to resources. You can get an education ANYWHERE if you set your mind to it-- I got one in one of the shittiest rural high schools in WV. We didn't get the Internet until about 2000. Our chemistry lab was a couple of Bunsen burners, two beakers, a handful of test tubes, and a big bottle of HCl. We watched the teacher do some really basic stuff, because there wasn't enough equipment for us to participate. Our current events textbooks were updated with Xeroxes from newspapers, stapled together and handed out and back, because they were printed when about half of us were still sucking our thumbs and wetting our Pampers.
The difference between my high school and PS-Ghetto was that all the drive-by shooters had a big spotlight on their pickup trucks and they were shooting at deer. That was the ONLY really significant difference.
I could still hold my own academically at university. A lot of the reason being born poor means you'll stay poor is attitude. Apathy, defeatism, and the fact that the social services system fosters despair and dependence. We used to have to scrape my cousin's wife up off the floor when she came out of the WIC office, because they would basically tell her she was now a statistic and ought to give up (they had their first baby when he was barely 19 and she was barely 17). My aunt had to arrange for home bound educating for six weeks-- too many "people who were there to help" encouraged her to drop out-- and force-March her through her senior year and vocational training (and back again to turn her CNA license into an LPN license two years later).
What my family did there-- aggressive encouragement, years of free childcare, years of free housing while they got together a down payment on a double wide-- is the kind of socialism I believe in. Not the s**t the social services system tried to do to her, that she was predisposed to accept because that's what she grew up with.
OTOH, if you think unfettered capitalism is such a wonderful think, Google "mine wars" or "textile wars" or " labor wars" or "labor history." Read the American stories. And then if you've got the stomach, read the European stories, because they make the American ones look like a church picnic.
Ask yourself if you're willing to man a barricade or commit armed robbery or make IEDs or point a gun at another living human being in an attempt to secure a place to get out of the weather and enough nutrition to not starve outright or end up with pellagra or beri-Beri or a host of other nice diseases of deficiency. And if the answer is no, stop singing the praises of completely unfettered capitalism.
I'm sick of being urged to vote for THIS dystopia, or THAT one. I want real change. Oligarchy has its claws too deep in our government to trust anything the government administers. I don't want millions of people to die in an attempt at Revolution, just to have them hook us again (like they did after the American Revolution). I want change, real change, and that's going to mean a permanent and radical change of values built by us from the ground up out of f*****g hard work.
I provide free childcare, use excess money to pay people's bills, take stuff to the food pantry frequently, on and on and on. My medically disabled friend does all the labor his body will allow for folks that need help for free. My friend the SAHM with a special-needs kid and a baby (and little enough money that often as not its her bills I'm helping out with) provides free child care, rides to places, mental-health advice, and tough love.
I don't care what your diagnosis is, or how "low-functioning" they told you you are. Everyone can do something. Social justice is going to come by the work of our hands, not by Occupying Jack s**t and electing Pat Promises. Get busy.
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
23 May 2016, 2:33 pm
