Helping People

I was contacted by an old high school acquaintance yesterday who noticed that I was involved in the Occupy Together movement, and she told me to stop with the "propaganda".

If you look up the word "propaganda", you find Websters will tell you it means, "the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person". Yeah, I guess I was trying to spread ideas to help a person and a cause. But this definition also incorporates the definition from Webster for the word "educate": "to persuade or condition to feel, believe, or act in a desired way ". Yeah, I was trying to persuade people to act in a desired way. But that's not what this acquaintance meant. She wasn't asking me to stop educating her. She was asking me to stop lying to her.

Schools teach people. Funding for schools continues to decrease every year.

I find it symptomatic of the increasing American Stupidity for some of our citizens to see people in need of support and believe that they are actively trying to hurt people. What kind of fucked up Paranoia Juice are we pouring into our water to make us believe that a dude who wants to be able to afford a flu shot is, in some way, an agent of The Evil Doers who wants nothing more than to see this country collapse? And how do you look at pictures of veterans of armed services and people who are quite obviously over the age of 50 and tell me that the protesters are college hippies who are high on spring rolls and herbal tea?

It's no secret that BP was the company in charge of a large oil spill which crippled much of the Gulf of Mexico and closed many small tourist- and seafood-driven businesses in that area, yet they still thrive and are making record profits. It's no secret that General Motors closed all of their manufacturing facilities in Michigan, putting thousands of Americans out of work and taking their business out of the United States-- all to make more profits-- then accepted money from the American taxpayers to prevent their demise. It's no secret that corporations have something called "cost analysis" which calculates how much money it will cost to do something correctly or illegally. If the cost is lower to do the illegal thing and pay whatever court fees and damages might occur, then that's what the corporation does. Simply based on these known facts, I find it difficult to support and assist these entities.

Ok, let's make it even simpler and forget everything I just said. There's a dude who can't afford a sandwich but makes too much money to qualify for government assistance of any kind. And there's another dude who has over a million dollars in the bank and routinely works with his lawyer to make sure he pays as little in taxes as possible. Now which one would you suggest carry the brunt of the financial burden of our country's current financial situation? Most of the Republican hopefuls for the presidential candidacy would have us believe that it should be equally carried, which translates to the guy without the sandwich should give up half of the sandwich he doesn't have, and the guy who has over a million dollars in the bank should, also, give up half his sandwich... of which, he has over a million. Sounds reasonable and fair. Fuck the guy without the sandwich. He's just lazy and wants a handout, doesn't he? Fuck him. And vote for me, Michelle Romney Perry Pizza Guy!

Let's make it even simpler to understand. There's a dude with a donut. There's another dude without a donut. The guy without the donut says he wants to be afforded the opportunity to earn a donut. The dude with the donut calls the dude without a donut a hippie who can't figure out how to use a port-a-potty, then hires a lobbyist to prohibit dudes without donuts from talking, then buys some ad time on television telling you how dangerous donut-less dudes are to your neighborhood and you should flee to the suburbs now and, if at all possible, buy guns so that marauding bands of Donut Crazed Zombies don't come to steal your donuts, your daughters and your Bibles. You know dudes without donuts don't believe in Jesus, don't you? They also eat the blood of their mothers. It's true.

It's as if we cannot understand what it means to help somebody. I hold open doors for people because it's polite. Yeah, sometimes they get in front of me in the line. So the fuck what?! I'm gonna get there eventually, just one person later. Sometimes, though, they actually let me go ahead of them because I opened the door for them. That's nice, too. But what I don't do is see a person coming up behind me, and instead of holding the door for them, go through as quickly as possible, pull the door closed behind me, and call to the people inside, "Look, this person wants a hand out! Bomb them!"

What's the fuckin' deal, people?