Tag Archives: poverty

When the Revolution Comes Back Home

Politics, Religion, , , , , , ,

 

Revolutions can sometimes look like this

There’s been a lot of talk of revolution lately with the whole Egypt thing. I find it interesting that when we were talking about Yemen, my first thought was that Yemen would probaby be the tipping point for other revolutions because that’s usually what happens, and people didn’t seem to get what I was talking about. My point was that revolutions tend to spread revolutionary ideas to places where people aren’t expecting such ideas to take hold, and when it happens, it happens fast before anyone can see it coming, and usually faster than anyone can make it stop.

Mubarak realized that too late. He saw the waves of revolution coming at him, and instead of responding with an immediate jump into the current, he fought back against it, never seeing the wave as the tsunami that it was. And that’s what normally happens. When the US revolution happened, some French chick told a bunch of peasants to go eat cake. Next thing you knew, she was losing her head in a guillotine, and the monarchy of France was gone. Okay, for history’s sake, Marie Therese may have said the whole cake thing, and not Marie Antoinette, but most people don’t know that, and she still gets the credit for the sentiment, so I’m sticking with that. Rousseau was known for taking a bit of liberty with history, so we’ll just let it go there.

The point is: Mubarak never saw it coming and was so inebriated by his own power that he never saw the end coming. That’s generally how most revolutions play out, quite often with the masses rushing the bastille at the last minute and the monarch/dictator no longer able to hold session with the masses listening to every word, unless they are the “last” words before a beheading.

But this isn’t really a missive to communicate the aftermath of the revolution of Egypt. For all we know, there’s another that might have to take place once the army gets drunk with its new sense of power and ends up never giving it up. I can’t predict those events, so I won’t even try.

What is important is to focus on the wave itself, because revolutions don’t happen in a vacuum. They tend to overwhelm entire areas and spread one after another on the sentiments of rich, glorious freedom. Right now, Iran is shitting a brick because of the revolution that just took place in Egypt. The leaders there are condemning ANY attempt at celebrating or protesting in the name of Egypt or any other country because they’re scared to death with what might happen there. The public stance is that the revolution took place with the overthrow of the Shah in the 1970s. They don’t want to even think about the fact that there might be pissed off Iranians right now who are thinking about freedom. But if that happens, it will overwhelm them, and they’ll never see it coming.

Aren’t revolutions cool?

But what we should be focusing on is something NO ONE in the United States is paying attention to: The United States. We like to think that revolutions can’t happen here, but we’re exactly in the kind of atmosphere where one could spontaneously erupt, and no one will ever see it coming. Half of the country continues to use rhetoric indicating it hates the other half. It’s no longer gentlemen’s disagreements anymore. Half the country hates the other half. And the other half isn’t too fond of the first half. We’re either ripe for a revolution or a civil war. We’re just too sophisticated to believe that such a thing might ever happen here.

Well, I’ve got some bad news for you. More people in this country live in poverty than ever before. There is no direction out of it either. The country itself is heading towards bankruptcy and there’s no solution for that either. The rich and powerful own most of the production and money in this country. The majority of the country consists of people who have nothing and really have very little to lose. Right now, the only thing holding back an insurrection of horrible proportions is that the majority of the people who would participate are on invisible opium, a sense that there’s really nothing that can be done about anything. If these people start to tip in any one direction, you have all of the ingredients you need for an out of control movement that has the capability of becoming all sorts of things unimaginable.

The only thing separating us from that is this facade of “it can’t happen here” which is backed up by a fantasy called “the American Dream.” We’re basically surviving off of a fantasy that’s more believable in Santa Claus and slightly less believable in various variations of God. It really doesn’t take much to push us over to the other side, and all we have to rely on is, again, the idea that it can never happen here, backed up by the history of “it’s never happened here”. Well, at least not in the last hundred years, because it did happen here once. It doesn’t take much for these people to get riled up and start killing each other. For some, it’s a colored flag. For others, it’s an idea. For even more, it’s a realization that there’s nothing left to believe in.

That last one’s scariest of all because even after revolting, you generally don’t end up with a solution that satiates that one.

Either way, it’s been an interesting few weeks lately. Just remember that democratic movements come in waves, so always make sure you have a decent surfboard and lots of sunscreen. The sun can be a real bitch sometimes.

How Do You Fix the Problems of Race in America?

Economics, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m going to talk about a subject that no one wants to talk about, mainly because to do so automatically causes the person talking about it to be perceived as either a racist or clueless.

I was watching an science fiction show from the BBC (British Broadcasting Channel), and something kept striking me as odd, but I really couldn’t put my finger on it. The show was about some frumpy woman reporter who solves science fiction mysteries with a couple of neighborhood kids, which happen to be about three or four high school youths who bounce back and forth as to which ones are the main characters at any one time. One of the main characters of the kids is a young black man, who plays one of the centered character’s best friends. As I continued watching this show, it started to remind me of a previous season of Doctor Who (the new ones broadcast over the last few years), and I realized that there had been a central black male character who played an off and on love interest for the main female partner of the Doctor. It was when I thought about these two characters that I started to realize what was wrong. It took only a few American shows on television for me to realize exactly what that was.

Let me explain by first pointing out what is so significant about these two black characters on both of these shows: Not once was I ever reminded that they were actually black. The parts they were playing could have been played by anyone of pretty much any race or ethnicity. They fit in so well with the fictional dynamic that I started to think that perhaps they were creating some kind of weird fantasy in Great Britain. And then I started to understand that these characters represented something even more fascinating: They didn’t have to “act” black in order to be black. They were accepted no differently than any other character on their respective shows.

Now, if I was to watch something like Law & Order in the US, I’m immediately shown that the one main black character is a street-talking, tough guy who fits a very strong stereotype, which not so ironically was somewhat created and prepetuated by the former hip hop/rap/whatever star who plays that particular character. As I moved from one show to another, it was very rare to find an African-American actor or any ethnically-diverse actor who was not playing to an identity that was substantiated by a whole lot of stereotypes and markers that continue to separate disparate identities from the centralized, white, middle class expectation of what is often construed as mainstream. A few anomalies do come to mind, however, like Tony Stark’s buddy in Iron Man, who represents a military colonel, not played using any obvious stereotyical constraints. Or Morgan Freeman when he plays a scientist or detective. But those are rare exceptions. Instead, I find myself seeing way too many television shows and movies where whenever there’s a call for a person of race, color or ethnicity, the part is usually played to maximum effect by revealing how diverse that individual can possibly be.

It shouldn’t go without saying that such continuous uses of identity might actually be creating serious problems for any type of reconciliation or desires for integration. During the 1960s, there was a huge battle fought for desegregation in the nation’s schools, because smart people realized that separating people by differences was going to continue to make it impossible for this melting pot of ours to ever actually start melting. But something happened that we should have figured on, but we seemed to ignore it once we won our little victory in the courts and on the school steps. We forgot that previous separation might just make it very possible for continued separation once we got people into those schools together. Having been brought up during that period of desegregation, it was not unusual for me to experience large periods of time where I lived with separation in the schools themselves. Blacks sat with blacks, whites sat with whites, and Hispanics stuck with Hispanics. There were a few cross-overs, but there needed to be more, and the institutions themselves did very little effort to actually break down those barriers. Today, they’re institutionalized, and I don’t see them breaking down any time soon.

Part of the problem is that the organizations that were formed to end the separations are now part of the continued separation today. Civil rights leaders of the past, who were instrumental in getting people to rise up and be noticed, are still fighting the same battles today, but instead of pushing for desegregation and cooperation between disparate entities, the fights usually end up being more geared towards future separation and honoring identity rather than melting identity so everyone can be cooperative and as one.

What decades of this behavior have done is set up a paradigm that I don’t think is going to easily be fixed as long as we keep going on with the same MO we’ve been using since day one. Add in socioeconomic problems, and we’re at a point where I don’t think we have any recourse but to try to fix this now or end up at a point where it can never be fixed by peaceful methods. I”m starting to fear we may already be at the saturation point as it is.

A year or so ago, I was attacked and beaten by three young black men who targeted me because I was an easy target. It has been so hard to not see this as a racial thing and to keep from painting every black male I see as a potential attacker. Since that moment, I get nervous and extremely defensive whenever I see a group of young black men walking towards me on the street. It shouldn’t be that way, but it only takes one incident of such impact to cause someone to change his natural way of thinking about things. I still find myself crossing to the other side of the street when I see a group of young black men walking towards me, and that was something I never thought about doing before.

Our society has managed to create an identity marker of race and ethnicity that is continuously perpetuated by our media and entertainment entities. Part of me thinks that by doing so, we’re also telling people of diverse race and ethnicities that it’s okay because it’s expected of them to be like the stereotypes we put forth in these channels. Yet, something tells me that if I was walking along the street in Great Britain and I came across a group of young men of a different race or ethnicity, I’d probably not have the same complications as I do here. And that tells me that we’re doing something seriously wrong here. Whether it’s due to the drug culture we’ve developed that’s tied to a gang mentality, or if it’s just a side effect of the continously divergent class distinction we have in this country where wealthier people are further and further removed from the poor, I’m not sure. But something’s seriously wrong.

Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone is actually working on making things better, but hoping that continuing to do the same things we’ve been doing will somehow improve the general picture. But that’s never going to work. We have a real race problem here in the US, and part of the reason we’re never going to solve it is because no one wants to talk about it. We have this PC spin to everything these days, and the only people talking about race are the ones who are consumed by it, which means we’re going to continue trying to solve gushing chest wounds with band-aids.

So, here are a couple of thoughts.

1. The problem needs to be addressed by everyone, not just by former civil rights leaders or sociologists who think the solution is to have government create more bureaucracy. Everyone needs to be involved in both the planning and the implementation.

2. Poverty needs to be addressed and dealt with. Too many people are struggling to survive, and whenever you have that dynamic, you have people willing to do some unruly things to gain leverage over others.

3. We need serious conversation about the drug war. It has created an element of society that should never be a part of our very foundation. Whether the solution be legalization, even stronger enforcement, or whatever, we need to get everyone involved in tackling this issue. Or it will continue to destroy us.

4. Schools need complete integration. The goal should be the elimination of race, not the celebration of it. Unfortunately, there are too many people tied to the benefits of separation and identification. That one hurdle may never be achieved, which is sad because this is probably the one hurdle that might make the biggest difference.

5. Elmo needs to be involved somehow. He always gets this right.

The Advent of Cold Weather

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It’s moving towards the end of October, which means one thing for me: It’s about to get really, really cold.

I hate cold weather. I’ve always hated cold weather. Even as I say this, there’s someone reading this (well, someone imaginary reading this because no one actually reads anything I post) who is thinking: “You don’t know anything about cold weather, warm weather guy. I live in the middle of the Antarctic and let me tell you about cold weather!”

Okay, so I’m sure someone has it worse, but I’ll let you in on another little secret of mine. I hate people who compare their lives to someone else as if to somehow lessen someone else’s experience. We all know these people, too. This is the sort of person who after you’ve just talked about losing your arm in a battle with a raging grizzly bear, tells everyone: “That was nothing. Let me tell you about the time I fought a crocodile, and he took off half a’ my right arm, my right leg and ate half of my skull, forcing me to have reconstructive surgery, bionic implants, years of therapy and…” well, I’m sure you get the idea.

For me, I’ve never liked cold weather. I grew up in California, the nice part of California where the weather was beautfiul, the women even more beautiful and the crack addicts not as much. Okay, I ruined it with that last description, but I’ve always loved the feel of the hot sun on me…while I hide in the apartment and play World of Warcraft with the air conditioner on. Okay, something’s wrong with me, but I still like hot weather.

Michigan is not known for its warm weather in the Winter. As a matter of fact, it kind of sucks here. That was the first thing people warned me about when I came to Kalamazoo a few years back to do graduate work. They warned me that the Winter was going to be the worst thing I’ve ever encountered. And then we proceeded to have the mildest Winter in about half a century. I thought, wow, these Michiganders are wimps. And then the next Winter was one of the worst Winters ever, and I no longer felt like saying the same thing again.

Last year was really bad for me because I had just moved from California after being mugged, so not only was I poor, somewhat destitute, but I was also somewhat scared of interacting with other people. And I had no car. I had sold my car before leaving for Korea the year before, so when I came back, I had nothing to get around with. This meant I had to rely on public transportation, and there are some really scary people who also ride public transportation. Had this been me a year before, I would have been fine, but after getting the crap beaten out of me by total strangers, I had a very hard time that year, constantly convinced that people around me were going to jump me, even if there was no reason to think such a thing.

And I had no jacket. So the beginning of the Winter REALLY sucked. I had to walk half an hour every morning to the bus through the snow (UPHILL BOTH WAYS), and it was freaking cold. Many days there was no sidewalk, so I found myself trudging through the snow, in the middle of the darkened street (it was early morning when I had to walk to the bus), and quite a few times the cars weren’t really all that interested in swerving to miss the stupid man walking in the middle of the street, even though he was hugging what he thought  might have been the curb (as he couldn’t see it as it was covered in snow with the rest of the street and the sidewalk). Those walks really sucked. It wasn’t until December before I was able to afford a decent pair of gloves, January before I was able to afford a decent jacket, and March before I was able to finally buy a car.

This Winter, hopefully will be much simpler and less complicated. But it’s still going to be cold, and I think I mentioned how much I hate the cold.

The last few nights have been getting really cold. I refuse to turn on my heat until I have to, which has caused no fewer than three of my stuffed animals to get really pissed at me. And they have stuffed animal fur, so you know it must be cold if they’re already complaining.

It’s not even Winter yet, and I’m already looking forward to April. If I had four months of PTO saved up, I’d take it all. Unfortunately, I just did the math, and I’m short by about, um, four months, so that’s not going to be an option.

Did I mention how much I hate cold weather?

Poverty is getting worse in America, but no one seems to care

Economics, Politics, , , , , , , ,

It was reported again today that poverty is getting worse in America. The info came from the Census Bureau this time. Seems that in 2009, poverty jumped to 14.3 percent from 11.3 percent in 2000. Unemployment is also worse. Yet, you wouldn’t know this from the pundits who want to do everything to convince us that everything’s fine, or everything’s just on a downswing, just waiting to start swinging back up to prosperity.

But there’s no evidence of that. We’ve had a couple of HUGE stimulus packages and MAJOR bailouts of industries and banks. Hasn’t done anything but make a few more millionaires into mega millionaires, and the job outlook doesn’t look any better, and poverty looks like it’s becoming more of the norm.

So what are we supposed to do with this information? Riot in the streets? Jump off the nearest bridge? I’d like to know because I don’t really have an answer. There are two political parties in power that will continue to be in power NO MATTER WHO GETS ELECTED, and these two parties are acting like it’s no big deal. Oh sure, they’ll complain if it might get more of their people into office, but in reality, they don’t care. Because everyone of them have jobs. We’re paying for them. They have jobs pretty much for life because the system is designed to keep them in power and to allow them to decide how much we get to pay them. We, on the other hand, have little to no power, and we have to listen as they argue about how much they should be able to charge us for the privilege of letting them serve on the government payroll.

Oh, we can get upset, but it won’t do any good. They’ll still be in power no matter how mad we get.

And people will still continue to get poorer, and the jobs will continue to disappear from us because the corporate heads of most companies have discovered there’s profit in not paying people. There’s even profit in bankrupting your company, cheating all of your customers, and in some cases, pretending you have a real company and charging people to rip them off before they go bankrupt themselves and the criminal gets even wealthier.

No, there are no jokes in this post because there’s really nothing funny about it. Those who might actually be reading this will just file it away to never be used again and then go back to wondering about whether or not Lady Gaga will wear something bizarre during her next television appearance. Instead of paying attention to who really runs the country, they’ll think about who they want to vote for on the next American Idol, or who to vote off the island.

Meanwhile, the poverty rate will continue to rise, and unemployment will continue to dip, while someone in government (doesn’t matter which party) will spin it to make it seem like everything’s better, even though everything’s not.

Kind of sad. I’ll close with a picture of cute puppies because that’s probably more important to people anyway.