I was pretty excited when I saw that President Obama was announcing changes to the federal student loan program that would benefit those of us with outstanding student loans. And then I started examining the details before I realized that for the most part, they help practically no one who currently has any student loans. In other words, if you are currently in school and racking up student loans, you might get a bit of a nudge in the way of help, but if you’re one of those saddled with $150,000 worth of student loan debt, well, the government isn’t really interested in helping you. As a matter of fact, every action the government has taken over the last few years concerning student loans has worked completely against helping anyone discharge (or pay) their student loans. The last piece of “help” we received was when the government sided with the credit card and bank lobbyists and made it impossible to use bankruptcy to discharge your student loan debt. You can discharge your debt for killing someone, losing your business, or throwing all of your money into the ocean, but if you took out student loans, you are stuck with them for life.

Students who have been part of the OWS movement have been screaming for some kind of help from the government since the protests began. As a result the Democrats have realized that a huge segment of their voting population are now tying themselves to this movement. So, obviously, they had to do something to look like they’re on the same side. What better way than to pretend to be doing something, which is exactly what President Obama’s action the other day did? As usual, the government response to a popular protest has been to pretend to be doing something and then hope the movement goes away long enough for people in power to get reelected. In other words, let’s continue to ignore the man behind the curtain.

I don’t think our current crop of politicians seems to understand what’s going on in the country right now. People are pissed off that their chances of a good future have been squandered away by corporations, banks and government officials who kept kicking the cans down the road. Sure, you can blame students for taking out loans, but you really can’t do that until you analyze why they took out the loans in the first place. The corporations, banks and government told them that the only way they would ever have a sustainable future was to take out these loans because the corporations, banks and government weren’t going to be picking up the bills for education. Throughout most of our lives, we realized that our economic future was going to be somewhat of a disaster if we tried to go it alone without education (sure, you can argue that a few people managed to make it without college, but they’re really a statistical outlier rather than anywhere near the norm), so we really had no choice. But now we’re finding out that the promise of a future was really a lie, created by people who realized they had to sell us this lie in order to continue making insane profits.

And look at some of the companies who have profited off of our stupidity. Look at the Fortune 500, and you’ll see nothing but lists of corporations that have played the game all the way to the top. And they did it in some pretty shitty ways, too. I look at the misinformation campaigns, and I”m shocked that we continue to allow it to happen. We have fake colleges selling fake degrees to students who think they are providing a future for themselves, yet are really only getting themselves further into debt and will have absolutely no future. Sure, you can point your fingers at the profit colleges, but what no one wants you to recognize is that legitimate, innocent looking companies are also the ones behind them. While we can all point at Haliburton and the Fox Corporation and claim all sorts of evil, there are so many companies like the Washington Post, which really doesn’t want you to know that it’s practically running one of those profit colleges that the government has been “claiming” to want to curtail, but when lobbyists got involved, suddenly the government didn’t want to “hurt students”. This happens in so many different avenues of business that we don’t even pay attention to it any more. And no one reports it because the major news agencies are all part of the same problem that caused our dilemma, and who wants to report on themselves? Certainly not NBC, which is owned by General Electric. And the lists just go on and on.

But right now, there are people out there making themselves heard, and they’re probably not going to last very long. Just yesterday, Oakland Police were tear gassing protesters and then shooting projectiles at Iraqi veterans who have joined the protest. But no one pays attention long enough to really care. And like the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, we’re probably going to condemn the protesters because it’s become really easy to ridicule the protesters instead of actually give them the coverage they really need.

You see, the protesters are out there for more than just themselves. They are out there advocating for everyone who doesn’t have a voice. And for the most part, they’ll be ignored, beaten and ridiculed by everyone else, even though everyone else is part of the 99% they’re there to represent. In the end, they’ll probably give up because we didn’t care long enough to help them make a difference.

And the fault will be ours. But we’ll never know, because we didn’t even take the time to care.