I am the 0.9999999999ahfuckit%

[Salty]

I knew this day would come.

I knew as I watched Obama's election become a thing of certainty.
I knew while laughing my damned head off at Sarah Palin reaching for the stars and nearly getting her grubby little hands on the moon.
I knew when I saw Bush handing Wall St. a check of many many billions of dollars with our children's names stamped on it.

I fucking KNEW it. I ought to write these things down ahead of time, get them notarized, so I can shove them in people's uncaring faces and shout at the top of my lungs:
I FUCKING CALLED IT YOU ASSHOLES.

When Obama strengthened "laws" that would help companies continue to rape the 4th Amendment, every moment he's done the thousand little things that doe-eyed liberals would never, have never, and will motherfucking never allow themselves to get down about, I have watched and chuckled under my breath the way I do when terrible things happen.

And now...now you can see them, hear them, read them.

Between the enthusiastic facebook-political Occupy enthusists and the resolute "cycnics" who post shit like THIS: http://www.ihatethemedia.com/obama-in-2009-if-cant-fix-economy-fire-me as though it were some holy Apocrypha I don't know who to bark at first. I'm starting to get tired of this.

I live in a place so rich and abundant, so filled to the brim with satisfaction and wonder. And this place is supposed to, by some deeply rooted principle, concern itself with justice at large. FREEDOM and PEACE and ALL THAT HORSESHIT. Yet when children, children in the wrong country mind you, are blown into little piece in their sleep The People sleep. They sleep at their jobs (which they hate), they sleep in their cars (which they lament) they sleep amongst their friends and families, they sleep and sleep and sleep.

But touch their pocketbook OHO and you awaken the fucking KRAKEN.
The PEOPLE will RISE UP.
The PEOPLE will NOT STAND FOR IT.

And they blame blame blame. They blame the left and the right and the cynics Not Doing Anything About It.
They sit in their petty luxury and blame blame blame.

Everyone but themselves.

I don't truck much with guilt. Someone here once said that guilt is almost exclusively a tool to control, and I agree wholeheartedly. Now shame, on the other hand, there's a thing. Shame comes from inside, shame is not something someone else can MAKE you feel. Shame is something you have to own, or not. It's something you can use to rectify your own wrongs, or not.

Do I feel shame. Well, yeah. Every day. Does it cripple me? Sometimes, but not usually. Because below that shame, which is just a thin layer (ooh, there's some potential for more shame right there), lays an ocean of gland and meat driven rage.

And oh there's so many people out there that haven't seen it yet. They haven't seen mine, they haven't seen THEIRS. And I want to show them. Maybe I'm being naive again, could be.

But I used to want to heal the world, not split it open. What's more naive?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Alty, are you saying that the crushed economy and the struggle of the people is their own fault, and the primary blame for the fuckery does not primarily lie with the born-rich who profit from the destruction of the structure that once allowed a thriving middle-class?

If so, please explain.

[Salty]

Ah HELL no!

I think that the Occupy movement had brought out a lot of interesting sides to people, a lot of different perspectives. Generally I think this thing might be getting bigger than most individuals can wrap their heads around. I'm definitely one of those people. This thing confuses the fuck out me and this is (one of) my attempts to untangle the knots in my head.

If that's the impression I gave off I am heading in the wrong direction.

[Salty]

Though, I do think the bulk of people's complacency in regard to the actions of their own elected officials have contributed to this problem, but it is certainly not their fault.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ah, gotcha!

[Epimetheus]

I often find myself confused too.
It's like, I want to have an informed opinion, but it seems there's always more to learn; I never stop feeling relatively uninformed. Is this just a lack of confidence?

[Salty]

Fraud was committed, people should be angry.
The people who committed that fraud should be held accountable.

But how did it come to this? How did those people get there?
How can people believe that we live in a Democracy and sit and watch as thieves work their way up the ladder to rob us all?

Of course it's not The People's fault this happened. To think so would be asinine at best.
The blame lies with the people who did the deed.

But is it wrong to think that it's wrong that we've all let our government overrun itself with the friends and family of thieves? This is REALLY going to sound naive but: Isn't it our government? Where exactly does our responsibility lie? Do we have any? I want to know.

[Salty]

I often find myself confused too.
It's like, I want to have an informed opinion, but it seems there's always more to learn; I never stop feeling relatively uninformed. Is this just a lack of confidence?

I don't think so, 'cause I'm super confident most of the time.
Maybe it's because this issue effects so many different kinds of people, reaches in so many different directions there simply isn't one direction to take. To take the one you start from seems the surest way to go wrong because it excludes so many.

[Don Coyote]

Fraud was committed, people should be angry.
The people who committed that fraud should be held accountable.

But how did it come to this? How did those people get there?
How can people believe that we live in a Democracy and sit and watch as thieves work their way up the ladder to rob us all?

Of course it's not The People's fault this happened. To think so would be asinine at best.
The blame lies with the people who did the deed.

But is it wrong to think that it's wrong that we've all let our government overrun itself with the friends and family of thieves? This is REALLY going to sound naive but: Isn't it our government? Where exactly does our responsibility lie? Do we have any? I want to know.

I ask this, what good does it do to blame ourselves? Is it possible the people let themselves down? Sure, most likely in fact, however disregarding the apathy, how much of our system can you watch at anyone time as an individual? Our system is so large that all that information on top of the deluge of other signals pouring in causes overload, so the people placed their faith, wrongly, into the officials that they elected.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Fraud was committed, people should be angry.
The people who committed that fraud should be held accountable.

But how did it come to this? How did those people get there?
How can people believe that we live in a Democracy and sit and watch as thieves work their way up the ladder to rob us all?

Of course it's not The People's fault this happened. To think so would be asinine at best.
The blame lies with the people who did the deed.

But is it wrong to think that it's wrong that we've all let our government overrun itself with the friends and family of thieves? This is REALLY going to sound naive but: Isn't it our government? Where exactly does our responsibility lie? Do we have any? I want to know.

It is our government, and we share culpability to the extent that we've allowed ourselves to be lied to and "represented" by people who are paid by thieves. The flaw in our representative government (and I do believe in representative government as a system) is that our representatives have acted against our interests by, acting outside our interests, enabling tremendous influence on their action and power by entities which have amassed great wealth, and whose modus operandi is to continue amassing great wealth at any cost to we who make up society.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This has all happened before but, every time it does the villains seem to get better at it. Seems to me they're the only ones learning lessons from the past. So now our kings and queens are at least as corrupt as any in history and yet there is less dissent than ever. The masses are controlled, that's the lessons these fucks have learned. It's so bad a lot of us actually think protesting will accomplish something. Or voting or any other form of pouting and whining.

I've said it til I'm blue in the face - the only way these situations are ever resolved is by physically removing the dictators. Hell our rulers even teach this by example but still the majority are too gullible and hoodwinked to take it in. I aint storming the gates myself but I do think it would be fun if and when it kicked off. Problem is I aint even sure it will this time. Maybe they have accomplished total control. In which case any discussion is moot. They will just keep fucking us over harder until there's nothing left. And we, collectively, will accept it given that bitching and whining is acceptance in my book.

I protect myself to the best of my ability by opting out of the system as much as possible. I do not collect their currency. When the great financial rip-off stepped into gear I chuckled cos I have no savings. All it meant to me was that my cost of living reduced dramatically. I consume as little as possible. I give nothing back to feed the fires of commerce. I just suck enough out of it to keep me alive. When a society is this sick even the upper echelon wont survive. In the end all that'll that will be left is parasites like me, sucking on it's bloated corpse.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Actually, history and human nature indicate that the misanthropic parasites will only survive briefly before being stamped out by people forming tribal affiliations.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Alty, are you saying that the crushed economy and the struggle of the people is their own fault, and the primary blame for the fuckery does not primarily lie with the born-rich who profit from the destruction of the structure that once allowed a thriving middle-class?

If so, please explain.

I'm blaming the middle class as the root cause of the problem - which mind you, doesn't in any way excuse the fat bastards in the banking industry (among others).

Everyone wants - demands - huge returns on their investments.  They want their 401K delivering at unsustainable rates.  This was all the permission big business needed to put the rape to everyone...Offshoring jobs, etc, to drive that margin up by lowering the bottom line.

And, as can be seen by the teabaggers, people at it up.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Alty, are you saying that the crushed economy and the struggle of the people is their own fault, and the primary blame for the fuckery does not primarily lie with the born-rich who profit from the destruction of the structure that once allowed a thriving middle-class?

If so, please explain.

I'm blaming the middle class as the root cause of the problem - which mind you, doesn't in any way excuse the fat bastards in the banking industry (among others).

Everyone wants - demands - huge returns on their investments.  They want their 401K delivering at unsustainable rates.  This was all the permission big business needed to put the rape to everyone...Offshoring jobs, etc, to drive that margin up by lowering the bottom line.

And, as can be seen by the teabaggers, people at it up.

This is true. Short-sighted greed is built right into human nature.

[rong]

I would hope 401k growth at or near the rate of inflation is a reasonable expectation.

It is troubling to me that since the introduction of the internet, things (income inequality) seem to have rapidly gotten worse.  I'm not sure if it is due to easier trading or the wealthy going "oh shit, they will organize soon we must grab as much now as quickly as possible"

It just seems like it used to be so much harder to pay attention and so much easier to sculptures public opinion when all there was was newspapers and tv.