As a fifty something Democrat who writes for a living, I’m continuously amazed at the ignorance of my friends who grew up on the tail-end of the sixties. Didn’t you learn ANYTHING? How can you be so selfishly ignorant of the world around you. It’s not red white and blue apple pie and George Washington cannot tell a lie. It’s not American exceptionalism, it’s WORLD exceptionalism, human being exceptionalism, it’s Jesus and the Holy Ghost and Muhammad and Buddha, and Joseph Smith and a guy named Darwin.
The world is flat. We ALL belong. We’re all entitled. You know things like rubber and gold and bauxite and copper and fossil fuels. The world wants a TV; the world wants a new car, and the world wants YOU as a new friend on Facebook. America consumes something like 60 percent of the world’s raw materials. We’ve got it good, but dudes….DUDES….listen, we’re no more entitled to these things than a pauper in the Sudan. Aristocracies are for Royal Weddings and postcards.
Much of the world exists in poverty. That is a fact. Throw aside your religious bias for two seconds and realize YOU CAN DO BETTER. Open your bible right now, any page and it will tell you to stop coveting, stop judging, stop envy and to stop worshiping false idols. On that note what IS your idol? Is it Real Estate, Guns, a nice 401-K, a golden parachute or a bowl of purple Maui Ganja?
The sixties was a turning point, an awakening, a time to say “It’s okay to question authority, it’s okay to want free-speech and equal rights and even health care.” A Plutocracy doesn’t survive any more than Communism. Socialism and Capitalism can work together. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I can’t believe the stupidity of some people who’ll argue that social programs are the road to destruction and yet wait every month for that check in the mail, delivered on a public highway, by state educated employee, on a government maintained road. Open your eyes….and repeat after me, I’m willing to share, sharing is good, I share by paying taxes and donating things to other people. Some people are different than me. That’s okay. Some people believe different than me, that’s okay too. Some people are struggling, I’ll do my best to help them because I’ll eventually need help too. Peace is infinitely better than war, but if war is necessary, make damn sure it’s for the right reasons if you’re gonna support it.”
Remember Vietnam? Very few people now view that as a good war. Hindsight bullshit and all that. But at the time those who were protesting were viewed as anti-country, godless degenerates. Sound familiar. Something called Occupy Wall Street? Friends, if you agree with ANYTHING about Occupy Wall Street, agree with the fact that derivatives might be the single most destructive economic force our world has ever seen. They were created by men and women, Democrats and Republicans in investment banking offices across the land. Warren Buffet called them financial weapons of mass destruction. He was right.
So now that you’re a grown up with adult children, what have you learned? What are you taking away from this life. What wisdom do you impart on the next generation. Are you a Tea Partier or an Occupier…..or are you a complete cop-out, sell-out, fraud?
