10. Old Age: This is where we’re all going, and it might be nice to have a little help when we get there. It’s the ultimate pay-forward experience, generate some good karma. Young people, get on the bandwagon now before it’s too late, or someday there’ll be a guy holding your elbow and taking you out to a snow-drift for a nice nap.
9. Losers: Not just your asshole brother-in-law, I’m talking about a huge group here. Tweekers, gamblers, skylarkers, crackheads, goldbricks, crazies, oxy-morons, the low-functioning. There are entire countries that qualify. We can’t tell them all to sink or swim. Remember, a couple of points of I.Q., move a couple of chromosomes around, that dipshit talking to himself at the bus stop could have been you.
8. Fascism: Where have I heard this one before? Patriotism; racism; nationalism; cultural-elitism; religiosity . . . put it all together, what’s that spell! Trouble.
7. Art: This new digital world has done irrevocable violence to art of many kinds, especially music, photography, and the movies. Only Neil Young and I seem to understand that this is a problem. Can we get the magic back? Someone should give a shit.
6. History: It exists, it can be studied. It’s horrors need not be repeated, not verbatim anyway. There are always new horrors to enjoy! The old stuff keeps coming back around, and doesn’t it seem like it would be so much easier to learn from the mistakes of others? You know, without all of the fires, explosions, suffering, hunger, disease, wandering, destruction, and death, death, death?
5. The Middle Class: In the perfect world of my youth (sarcasm alert!), working people drove Chevy’s, managers drove Buicks, and the rich drove Cadillac’s. They were almost the same car under the skin. The rich had bigger houses, and took better vacations, but most people’s lives were very similar. Medical care was a benefit of working, and care was about the same across the board. Now, working people and managers have Toyotas and Hondas, and the rich have a lavish choice of hugely expensive luxury cars, plus multiple airplanes and helicopters. Better houses? Now the rich have multiple houses, pied a terres, ski-lodges, and a ranch in Wyoming. Could you even spend a hundred million dollars? No, and no one should ever have to figure out how to. That’s what taxes are for.
4. The Other: There’s you, and there’s the rest of us. And we’re not going anywhere, so learn to deal with us, asshole.
3. Hunger: There’s one-point-something billion people out there that are hungry everyday. Someone’s counting, I see it on TV. So someone cares enough to make the ads, but really, very few people seem to give a shit. Remember, though, the world is full of men, women and children who are hungry everyday, and you out there, you little Mister KFC out there in Pleasantville somewhere, morbidly obese, most of your food comes out of their mouths.
2. Women: “Women are the motor of life.” Joseph Goebbels said that, which proves that even the worst people can get some good ideas. Women are our mothers, our solace, our water. What do they get to show for it? Selectively aborted; sent to orphanages; killed for a dowry; stolen as a treasure; used as a commodity in the sex trade; taken for granted in the average marriage. Women deserve more of our consideration, to say the very least.
1. Diversity: America has a large, well educated, very capable workforce; lots of good farmland and strong food-security; and a lavish treasure of natural recourses. All of that is good stuff, but America’s greatest treasure is the diversity of its population. If someone comes here from anywhere in the world, they can become 100% American within a few years. There’s no place else in the world where that can happen. There’s no template at all. Black/Asian; Christian/Muslim; Indian/European; all 100% American, and fast too. This is the greatest advantage that America has in this very competitive, modern world of ours. And yet, people have the nerve to treat it like a problem! I’ve got news for you, 1950 wasn’t as great as you remember it, and one way or the other, it ain’t coming back.
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7 comments:
The Fredman's been thinkin'!
Excellent piece. The nuns would give you a gold star on your collar for this. Then wash out your mouth with soap.
I agree!
How about over-population? It pisses me off that some guy with a minimum wage job gets to pop out 7 or 8 kids while I had to hold my loins back to just one, or none, because I know I can't afford them and they would have a mean life.
Overpopulation is more of a management issue. We have the room, the water and the energy, but we lack the organization to make it all work.
[It's all in your mind!]
10. Old Age: science shows an unused brain/body decays exponentially faster. A purpose, even if that purpose is anger, as in staying alive just to promote hate.
9. Losers: well that's just a derogatory term Mr. Freddles. But you'd be correct if you mean, "The average American doesn't give 2 shits about the mentally handicapped" no universal health care so dear ol' "Mikey-skitzo-pushes people in front of trains" can get his meds or the LEAGUES of homeless mental misfits can do something other than wander the streets like zombies.
8. Fascism: agreed. But maybe fascism is itself literally a societal douche?
7. Art: It's true. The new speeds at which information travels and the shear amount of people expressing themselves [vomitando] makes for a harrowing experience when attempting to sort through any amount of it. Many times I say to myself, "ah, how quaint! your vomit is endearing to the soul!" and then never return and even in my own vomit I find the tools and materials by far most interesting.
6. History: they skip, ". . . fires, explosions, suffering, hunger, disease, wandering, destruction, and death, death, death?" I think they skip anything that could give the slightest discomfort. "Shield the young" isn't that some sort of base reaction? Anti-evolutionary as it seems!
5. The Middle Class: Something to aspire to but most do not know the qualifications. Let THEM eat cake! no longer holds any recourse for the bastards lining their pockets at every turn.
4. The Other: I relegate 10 minutes per day to watching F0x Gnus. They are my "Other" or alternate reality theater.
3. Hunger: Food is powerful. It's true. Studies show fat cells NEED you to eat more fatty foods. Fat people don't feel satisfied CHEMICALLY! Power to those whose job it is to create fatty shit foods in laboratories!
2. Women: accorded, there's always room to improve on this one. The war in Afghanistan might be for natural resources and religious zealotry but the moral high ground should firmly root in the fact that these people are ass backwards last place in their treatment of women.
1. Diversity: the government needs to step it up here. Immigration issues have cause too much strife in good peoples lives.
0. People do care about these things, they just don't get the media coverage or the table talk that hot button issues do!
Rabbit
Ha! My comment was too large to process and has been deleted from existence! GREAT!
OC
Now that's some meaty comments! Sorry you got zotzed, Ols, give it another try if you feel like it (some famous writer lost a whole, huge novel one time; after he re-wrote the thing he said it was worth it, it came out better!)
Rabbit, thanks for your consideration. We're (somewhat) on the same page.
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