Computer hackers known as the “Lizard Squad” came out today and stated that the only reason they hacked the Playstation Network and XBox Live gaming networks over the Christmas holiday was because they wanted to encourage these companies to spend more money on cyber security. This is like telling someone that the only reason you raped them was in order to encourage them to spend more money on pepper spray.
How do you mourn the loss of a loved one who is not suddenly ripped from your life but is instead subtly stolen away by a handful of memories at a time? What do you do when someone’s own misspeaks and memory lapses become something much more sinister? Dementia can be so kind in the way it slowly takes it’s time to remove someone from your life yet so cruel in the way it creates the false illusion that this person is still here.
Many of us start to ask ourselves the same questions. Why do you forget me while you remember someone else? Were they more important to you than I was or did you just keep me stored in a part of your brain that is no longer here? I know in my heart that it is not even fair to analyze and scrutinize you like that.
I am not sure how long it will take for me to become a stranger to you, but I will make you a promise. You don’t even have to try to remember this promise because I will remember it for you. Our family will continue to treat you with respect. You may act like a child from time to time but I will make sure everyone remembers that you are not one. You brought multiple wonderful children into this world and raised them into adulthood. You imparted your wisdom on all of your family members and showered multiple generations with your love. Dementia does not get to steal this from you. I will not laugh at you. I will not get angry. I will be patient.
I plan for our family to become the protectors of your dignity.
I will make you one last promise. If I am a complete stranger when we meet again next Christmas… this stranger will still love you very much.
I was paid a visit from my guardian angel last night. He told me that he was trying to earn his wings. He took me on an amazing journey through the past to discover what life would have been like if I had never existed. He showed me that everyone would still be doing just fine without me. He revealed that my friends and family seemed to actually be doing better without me around. I turned to my guardian angel and said, “Screw you and your stupid wings… that was just mean.”
Apparently, I look like a terrorist even though I come from a peace loving family of Italian immigrants. I have a thick black beard and a skin tone that gets very dark in prolonged sunlight. Because of the way that I look, I have undergone extra scrutiny ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
When my family goes through the airport together, I am often told that I have been randomly assigned to be pulled aside for extra screening. Others around me watch as I get frisked and sometimes even briefly detained. Black people, blonde people, and red heads get to walk right past me. The TSA wants to hear how I speak. I currently have one of the cleanest criminal records in the United States, but I am unfortunately still often treated like a criminal when I attempt to walk through an airport in my own country.
I have no idea what it feels like to be black in the United States, but I am very aware what it feels like to be profiled. But the sad fact is that people who look like me are much more likely to blow up an airplane than people who don’t. The painful truth is that it is not the fault of the TSA that they sometimes look at me and suspect that I might be a criminal. My problem is that too many middle aged adults with slightly dark skin and thick black beards do not know how to behave themselves in a civilized society.
With all that being said, if the TSA proceeded to choke me to death because I momentarily flailed my arms and refused to be frisked at the airport then those same officials deserve to go to prison. If I were profiled and killed undeservedly and a grand jury found everyone involved to be not guilty, other middle aged men with slightly dark skin and black beards would start questioning if they too were now expendable in our society.
Terrorists who look similar to me brought this problem to my doorstep even though I personally did nothing to deserve this. Because of this fact, I refuse to direct my anger towards law enforcement who sometimes treat me like a criminal even when I am innocent. I choose to direct my frustration and anger towards the lawless black-bearded sociopaths whose actions resulted in this unfairness and undue prejudice being directed towards me in the first place.
Unfortunately, the real reason behind a person’s own prejudice and racial fears in the United States is a conversation that far too many of us are afraid to have. Until we open up and begin to engage in a grown up conversation about the real problems going on deep within our culture, this great nation will continue to suffer. Until we all take an honest look at ourselves and how each of us individually contribute to the problem, this great nation will continue to be divided.
North Korea just lost it’s entire internet access for a second day. The message to Kim Jong Un is a simple one: Al Gore giveth and Al Gore taketh away.
Our culture inundates us with messages that the ends always justifies the means. It constantly tells us that when our own survival is threatened and our morality becomes an obstruction, then it is our morality that must be sacrificed. Our heroes have become Walter White from “Breaking Bad”, Jack Bauer from “24”, and Rick Grimes from “Walking Dead”. The message has now been cemented into our brains: Sometimes good people have to become bad in order to survive.
It is within this context that we now view the torture of terrorist suspects behind the scenes at the CIA. Many argue that if we want to survive in today’s world that we are going to have to toughen up and do things that may make us uncomfortable. We believe that we can’t be a frightened victim cowering behind the door of our enemy… but that we have to transform ourselves into the “one who knocks”.
My heroes are not the endless parade of soulless survivors who continue to be displayed on our television screens. My heroes are still the United States soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II. These brave soldiers did not believe in survival just for survival’s sake. They believed in a greater good which was our common morality. They knowingly sacrificed their own lives in an attempt to rid the world of evil.
Many people in our culture today would simply look at these soldiers as “fools” because they did not do whatever it took to survive. They would not measure up in our “last man standing” rule of moral relativism.
It is still not too late for the United States to turn things around. We have to take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror and decide who we want to be as a nation going forward. But as our television anti-heroes have already taught us, once you start “breaking bad”… it is very hard to go back.
How DARE a small group of representatives in Congress go against President Obama and engage in brinkmanship with our economy in order to push their own agenda? What a bunch of small minded petty racists! Oh wait… it’s the Democrats doing it this time? Nothing to see here. Please just move along…
Do you all realize the “crime” that Eric Garner was accused of committing? He was not accused of stealing cigarettes. He was not selling marijuana or any illegal substances. He was simply buying a legal product and then selling it for a different price in another location. This is what sports arenas do when they sell you an eight dollar can of beer. Wal-Mart engages in this practice when they acquire products wholesale and sell them for higher prices. This practice is usually not considered illegal in a free country.
New York puts a thirty cent tax on every single cigarette that it sells today. Mr. Garner was simply buying cigarettes in a cheaper location without this tax and then selling them in New York City. New York politicians did not want to have compete with Mr. Garner’s business model so they made his business model illegal. It is perfectly legal for an individual to drive to New Jersey and buy cheaper cigarettes for themselves yet somehow it is illegal for Mr. Garner to provide this exact same service for others.
The next time you start arguing that Mr. Garner should not have been resisting arrest, please try to remember this in context with the crime of which he was accused. Your government wants you to submit to authority without question. The police want you to obey. They say that it doesn’t matter if you did anything wrong… just get on your knees and put your hands over your head. Politicians and authority figures are increasingly treating your constitutional rights as a nuisance that should be ignored under certain conditions.
What if a SWAT team kicked down your door in the middle of the night because you downloaded a movie or mp3 illegally? What punishment would you deserve if you flailed your arms for a few seconds in protest? Can you imagine if this same group of five police officers had tackled and killed a small blonde fourteen year old girl running an illegal lemonade stand the same way? What about if this had happened to a seventy year old silver-haired grandmother accused of jaywalking? All of these crimes are just as bad as the one that Mr. Garner was accused of committing.
Eric Garner was as husband and a father of six. He was not a perfect person but none of us are. Not only did Mr. Garner not deserve to die that day, he did not deserve to have five police officers hold him down like a dog. New York City could not compete with Mr. Garner’s business model. The powerful people of New York City wanted their tax revenue… so they made Eric Garner into a criminal… they hunted him down… and then they killed him.
Then a grand jury tells us that there is nothing to see here.
Government officials tell us to just “move along”.
Just pause for a second and think about that.
When I think about this quietly to myself… I can’t breathe.
Captain Francesco Schettino recently testified in court that he did not abandon his ship on the day of his fateful shipwreck but instead just “fell into a lifeboat” while trying to save his passengers. The captain is on trial for wrecking a cruise ship while navigating it too closely to shore in order to impress a woman on board with whom he was having an affair. Captain Schettino also denies actually having an affair with the young lady but claims instead that he simply “fell into this woman’s vagina”.
Hello, poor people. I would like to start out by saying that I have dedicated my life to helping poor people and that I have been working very closely with you over the past twenty years. Some of the most likable people that I have ever known have been poor people. Heck, I used to be poor. In fact, at one point I was down to the last four dollars in my bank account and still had not paid my bills that month. I had accumulated over 96,000 dollars in unsecured debt. I know how much it sucks. I recall laying in my bed each night with all this bad math running through my head and wondering how I was going to pay my rent. I refused to declare bankruptcy or take government assistance back then, but I got dangerously close. Just remember, you have something to offer society regardless of how insignificant you think you are. Money is just a means to an end and not a scoreboard for how well you did in life.
However, I do have some bad news and you should probably be sitting down for this… If you continue to be poor throughout your entire life in the United States, it is probably one hundred percent your fault. I know that this is not a very politically correct thing to say, so I figure I better say it now while I still have freedom of speech.
Failure in life is painful. Whether you experience poor grades in school or a personal bankruptcy, any kind of failure in life can be very damaging to the psyche. I am convinced that the secret of personal success is how one deals with the pain of that failure. There is a very powerful self-protective mechanism called “rationalization”. As one deals with personal failure in life, it is very easy to look around and find external reasons for its existence. Most people can find something: a parent who abandoned them, physical or sexual abuse as a child, the socioeconomic class or ethnicity that they were born into. Are all of these things setbacks? They certainly can be. But look around and you will find many people who have personally overcome setbacks like this and even worse. It can be very soothing to the subconscious to attribute your personal failures to others. The problem is that although this can be very calming to the mind, it destroys an important negative feedback loop and keeps you from correcting your past mistakes, thus sending you on a permanent path to failure.
Once you are convinced that your problems are really no fault of your own, it becomes much more easy to justify using the political system to force your fellow citizens to help you with your plight. You turn to politicians who feed into the narrative that supports your own rationalization. You accept support without even questioning its origin. You somehow justify that you “deserve” the fruits of other people’s labor without having done anything to earn it for yourself. Many of you continue to vote for politicians that make you promises that they cannot possibly keep. You support a government that expands the money supply in an attempt to keep these empty promises which starts devaluing the few dollars that you actually have. The price of everything around you continues to go up. You feel like you are being financially crushed but you don’t seem to see that you are a part of the problem.
I have a few simple steps that will help set you on the right path. If you have been poor all of your life, then why not try something new? The first step: You make yourself accountable for your fate. We all have setbacks, some more than others. You have to realize that your personal obstacles can be overcome regardless of how challenging they appear. Be persistent and never give up.
Step two: Find your discernible skill. You need to find something that you are good at that gives you an advantage over others. Having an education or high IQ helps, but this is not absolutely necessary. Learn a trade skill. Become really good at something. Don’t count on a labor union to falsely inflate your value in the workplace. Don’t even necessarily wait for some other person to give you a job. Find a way to go out and make money. Be creative. There is no job that is beneath you.
Step three: Delayed gratification. Learn to truly distinguish between your wants and your needs. Downsize your life and increase your income until you can save at least ten percent of what you make. Pay yourself first and treat your savings just as importantly as you would your rent. Avoid debt like it’s gonorrhea. High income alone will not automatically protect you from poverty. I have known many people making six figure salaries that don’t even have two nickels to rub together at the end of each month. The average Ethiopian earns twenty two dollars per month and would probably have some great suggestions regarding areas in which you could cut your personal budget.
Step four: Vote wisely. Vote for the person and not the party. Be cautious of career politicians and candidates that promise to give you things. Don’t support a political party just because your parents did. Vote for what is in the best interest of your country and not just you personally. Vote for politicians that will put our economy on a level playing field with other nations that engage in slave labor practices. Learn about our country’s past and decide on your own where it should go in the future.
Step five: Change your focus. Instead of focusing inwards on your own problems, start focusing outwards toward the world. Start discovering ways to make other people’s lives better. This will make you more valuable to society. Your value to society will usually correspond closely with your income. But please remember that regardless of how much or little money you make, this will not affect your value as a person.
Step six: Quit making excuses. If your first thought after reading this starts with something like “Yeah, right. But…” or perhaps “I can’t do that because…” then you better prepare right now to be poor for the rest of your life. You are like this powerful elephant who has been captured with a tiny string tied to your leg. The only thing really holding you back is… you.
Good luck. Once you have learned how to pull yourself out of poverty, don’t forget to teach others how to do the same. And always remember just how awful it felt to be poor, so that you never let it happen again.
Sincerely,
Recovering Poor Guy