Egalitarian Thug
Egalitarian Thug's JournalOne would think that someone that was an upper-middle-class housewife in 1978 and,
while doing nothing but holding a series of public offices, accumulates a personal net worth in the $100M range, would be a sufficient clue.
"Bin Laden won." He/they certainly did, and now we have the reaction one would expect of a child
when faced with the truth that destroys a cherished fantasy.
The Emperor Caligula was wildly popular in the beginning of his reign. He was replaced 5 years later with Claudius.
The irony of this piece being written by a twit that is the beneficiary of the betrayal
that is resulting in this story is not lost on some of us. I'm not quite a boomer (jones - x, I'm not sure and don't really care), but I was old enough to see and mostly understand what the line; "It was not the life he had envisioned as a young man in the 1960s and ’70s", implies.
Many of you were not alive, and some of us have forgotten, but this nation was far better and improving prior to the '80s.It was far from perfect and rife with problems in just about every aspect of society, but things were better and most importantly, on a trajectory toward enlightenment.
Racism was still rampant, but it was not acceptable in polite society. Your violently racist uncle was an embarrassment and not invited to parties.
Sexism was less prevalent than today and the "hey baby, nice rack!" asshole-on-the-street was just as likely to be confronted and ridiculed by a group of whoever was around as he was to be ignored.
Unemployment was high, but when you finally did land a job, it was far more likely to pay enough to live on.
Government was corrupt and likely as not to make things worse, but it strove to do great things, not devoted to lowering expectations.
Listen to the content of Jimmy Carter's State of the Union speeches. Any leader that tried to pass off "This sucks but it's the best we can hope for" as a strategy would not be the leader of anything the following week.
These people have lived the lives they are living, not because of some amorphous 'vision', but under the terms of a contract. That contract has not just been broken, its very existence is denied. Their future was stolen from them and simply handed to the very worst criminals around in exchange for nothing.
A black President. Wiccan symbols in Arlington. Gay marriage. Women in executive positions. Cars that get 40mpg and are able to keep you alive after a catastrophic accident. The computer or phone you are reading this on and the internet which links us all together. The list goes on and on, are all the direct results of what we were doing then.
What are we making today that we will have 30 years from now?
You're right, it doesn't eliminate capitalism (if only it were that simple), but we do it because
it is what we love to do, and make no mistake, you can make a good living doing it. It simply precludes the potential to become a billionaire by stealing other people's work claiming it as your own property and then reselling it forever.
The world has been moving to Linux for almost two decades now because of two basic factors; it doesn't lock you into becoming, what is for all intents and purposes, a permanent slave to a single corporate overlord that you must pay regardless of circumstance. And it just works.
As for my previous comment, and I don't expect that you are going to believe this, the urgent need for the so-called STEM workers is a myth. There has always been enough of us, more than enough, to fill the need. What they want is cheap and disposable and nothing says cheap and disposable like a bumper crop of new grads willing to work for as close to nothing as possible until they can be replaced by the next crop.
Reality is that technology has forever changed the world of the 21st century, but we're still supporting a 19th century social model and the beneficiaries of that old model want to keep their gravy train going as long a possible. Studying something that you really don't like simply because you believe that it will make finding a job more likely is a tragedy on several levels.
Employment is not a goal, it is a sentence.
No rage here, just accurate observation. I'm white, well educated, personable, not entirely dim,
not bad looking, possess a wide range of salable knowledge, experience, skills, and talents, I'll be just fine. In fact, all I have to do to be much better than fine is to stop seeing the world around me and succumb to the authoritarian BS you seem to have so thoroughly embraced.
I've just always wanted to help the people that always get the shitty end of the stick by giving them what they need to have a better life. Usually all they need is an understanding of how things actually are, rather than how they've been told and believe it is.
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: Sin City, NV
Member since: Wed Mar 28, 2012, 06:11 PM
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