Commentary - Discuss

[mabjustmab]

My father just sent me this. He's Conservative, and talks the party line.  However, there are a ton of flaws in this. I want to formulate my commentary and send it back to my parents

I could use a bit of help with the word-smithing. my comments in red.

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"

As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything for everybody."

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on "transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:

* Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons . Is it fair? Stupid question.

- Life isn't fair, but that doesn't mean you have to be a dick. Are you the person who pulls into a spot someone is clearly waiting for in a crowded parking lot? Is there any part of you that doesn't knows that's a dick move? Why do it? How would you feel if someone did that to you?
What about the "Treat others as you would be treated" golden rule?

True, justice & economic equality are not the same thing. However, there is injustice involved where rules are put in place that keep people who work hard from ever getting anywhere, no matter how what the hand they are dealt. It is a lie to say that hard work and perseverance will get you ahead. Thousands of the stories out there illustrate just that. http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
~that~ is why they are protesting.

I work 3 jobs, just to pay my rent. Anyone who says I don't work hard, I challenge them to spend a week in my shoes.

* Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

- They don't want "free". they want their taxes to be sent on these things.

* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.

- "you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals"
this is true.

that is true. Unfortunately, 1. there are no jobs. 2. the low paying jobs do not pay enough to live on.
We are also free to not go to college, but is that going to get us any work?

while the site normally posts comedy/sarcasm. This one is kind of dead on.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-we-ruined-occupy-wall-street-generation/

Me: I just get so pissed off by the older generation.
Therapist: Why?
Me: because when I grew up, we were force fed the idea that if we didn't want to be 'flipping burgers at McDonald's' then we better go to college.
Therapist: And?
Me: And now we've gone to college, have degrees, can't get a damn job, and the same people call us entitled assholes because we refuse to flip burgers!
Therapist: Touche

also, see further down in your own article: "Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work."
You need a degree.

so, people go, get the degree that they need, and then cannot find a job, and are left with mounting debt that they cannot pay because they are working min wage (or lower) job that doesn't even cover their rent.
but you are right. that's not fair. life's not fair.
there is no winning.

* A protest is not a party. Saturday in New York , while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

- the protest is made up of all sorts of people. Soldiers, college graduates, parents, employed, unemployed, old & young. Look again. 

* There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.

- I don't have neck tattoos, gauged ears, or facial piercings. I don't have dyed hair, a mohawk, or dreads.
there are no jobs.

America is the only developed country that does not offer socialized health care. yes, I want socialized medicine. I have NO medical coverage. no, I'm not lazy, I am working myself into an early grave, just to pay rent and basic bills. none of my jobs offer medical coverage. "get a job that does" right. it's not that easy. to buy a policy on my own, it's between $300 and $400 A MONTH! I make too much to receive medicare/aid. (which is something else the conservatives want to do away with). so, I go to work when I'm sick. I eat crap food because I cannot afford decent food.

but that's right. it's all the lazy people out there who won't get jobs that are the problem. not the broken system that OWS wants to draw attention to.

a government should be the infrastructure to take care of the people. that's what taxes are for. I don't want to take care of corporations. I don't want to take care of the wealthy. And to be honest, I don't think they want me to! I don't mind paying for military, education, roads, trash disposal, etc.

Marybeth Hicks is the author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom."
Find her on the Web at www.marybethhicks.com.

the more I think about this, the angrier I get.  I have to walk away for the moment. more when I'm less steamed. 

Comments

[badmagic.livejournal.com]

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons.

Wait, because some people get jobs on Wall Street, that means I need to pay them with my tax money? Wall Street created bunch of bad mortgage bonds, duped the ratings agencies into stamping them all AAA, and then got bailed out with tax money.

The author of the article doesn't seem to be able to remember from 2000-2008. I suspect drugs.

Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots

Right. There's no such thing as publically funded college or health care. Except in every other country on Earth that's not in the Third World. If he finds that appealing, may I suggest he emigrate to Botswana? I'll help him pack.

Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others.

How much debt did Wall Street dump into the public pocket?

Saturday in New York , while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations.

Mighty clear memories of what he saw in a mad dash.

Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work.

Uh-huh. How many of those graduates got their degrees before 2008? Most of them, you say! OK, now look at how many unemployed kids there are who got their degrees since then. Doesn't look so rosy now, does it?

[serendipity9000.livejournal.com]

Give this a listen.. I wonder what your dad would say to this? http://blog.ted.com/2011/10/24/how-economic-inequality-harms-societies-richard-wilkinson-on-ted-com/

This is the best argument I have seen to show why our wide difference in income is BAD for us as a country - bad for EVERYONE.

[mankoeponymous.livejournal.com]

1. So we shouldn't try to make the world a more fair place? We shouldn't punish people who violated our laws and got rich doing it? We should reward them? We should stop trying to be a nation run for the majority, based on the majority's needs and votes? Real people (the majority of us, according to polls) with real dollars voluntarily support Occupy because we respect those who are doing the hard, difficult, dangerous work of Occupying, just like we support the Red Cross and our armed services, only in the latter case nobody gives us a choice of NOT offering financial support.


2. FREE: Any attention to the reality of Occupy (as opposed tot he Fox News gloss on it) will make it clear that "give us stuff free" isn't what the OWSers are saying, it's what the banks have said and done. They did their job badly, so badly it was illegal and wrecked our economy, then they demanded hundreds of billions of dollars, then they refused to lend it out and spent it on themselves. THEY are the freeloaders.

3. If your word is your bond, why do we let bankers get away with defrauding their customers and the government? Why do we let our government fail to enforce banking regs? The OWSers are people who step up voluntarily to take personal responsibility for fixing things our political system appears unable to fix - that deserves respect, not name-calling. Why point the finger at people who are working damn hard to get by (the majority) and ignore the institutions that take out HUGE loans and default on them?

4&5. The right-wing media spin has been really unfair, creating a stereotype of the protesters from the start while refusing to seriously examine the issues. The FACTS look kinda like this:

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/infographic-occupy-wall-street-vs-the-tea-party/politics/2011/11/14/30154

[mankoeponymous.livejournal.com]

It's the hypocrisy more than the stupidity that makes this so offensive. The right-wing media spin is about ignoring all sense of proportion and scale The Big Picture is: the people who get rich breaking laws to the tune of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS are a MORE SERIOUS PROBLEM than the people who might fail to pick up all the trash where they camped in the park (and it's not like the cops gave them time to clean up on their way out). The people who get rich taking government money with no intention of paying it back to the tune of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS are a MORE SERIOUS PROBLEM than the hard-working students who resent the fact that their student loans are making these criminals richer. The people who are getting paid HUNDREDS OF TIMES MORE THAN COPS AND TEACHERS and yet are doing their jobs so badly they need government bailouts should be held ACCOUNTABLE AND RESPONSIBLE when they breaking the law - they should not be rewarded at the expense of programs for poor children and senior citizens.

Our government is badly broken and corrupted in all the ways FDR and Eisenhower said it would be if were weren't careful. Occupy is about restoring law and order and responsibility to a system run by thieves, for thieves. The Occupiers are in the grand tradition of Americans who organize en masse at great personal expense and risk to demand that their government respond to the needs of the majority, and they've done so 99.9999% peacefully and democratically while being met with mean-spirited mockery, bullying, and violence. To oppose Occupy is unpatriotic, and do to so on these grounds while pointing a finger at the pettiest, flimsiest flaws among a tiny handful of the Occupiers is hypocritical in the extreme.

[notalj.livejournal.com]

"to oppose Occupy is unpatriotic"...I remember the conservative news channels describing the true patriots of the Tea Party...doing what our founding fathers did...but wait..now this is different?

[notalj.livejournal.com]

Best of luck with this....my folks and I just agree to not discuss this...they sound just like your Father....fortunately they are not web enabled..