Cents-less World

If it don't make dollars, then it don't make sense

Internet Vs. Politics, Round 2

Do we really need to vote strictly Democrat or Republican anymore? I think you’re all forgetting something. It’s called the internet.

I don’t think it’s any secret; there is massive power in the movement behind the internet. Call it a coincidence that major censorship reform is happening the year of a presidential election. There are several facts which have come about, or maybe have always been present.

1. You’re vote doesn’t matter.

2. Most of the population, or at least half, doesn’t actually vote.

3. If you vote for anything besides Republican or Democrat, you’re wasting your vote.

And that’s just opinions on actual polling. When you take into account campaign finances, conspiracies of rigged elections, and the fact that you’re having the one over arching system juggling two people who bought out the position, what is voting really?

Well, I mean, if you want to stay in the 1950’s, sure, there’s only two candidates; the red and blue. Do a quick internet search, you’ll find a few more including:

1. Peta Lindsay

2. Laurence Kitlikoff

3. Roseanne Barr

4. Merlin Miller

These are all third party officials. Granted, one isn’t technically old enough to be president, and another is on the list of worst national anthems ever sang. But I wonder what would actually happen if people ignored the Democrats and Republicans and focused their attention on these candidates, people that might actually be in touch with what American life?

We’ve created the ability to supersede the government’s voice in our opinions. The effect that the PIPA/SOPA demonstrations had is not something to be played down. What if  everyone researched for their ideal candidate, forgetting entirely of the main elections, and the internet as a whole picked a candidate? Would that have enough sway to change something, to truly change?

If it doesn’t, would it have enough of an impact to change the future, maybe in future elections? Well, I guess we’ll see soon enough. 

Racism, You, and America Too!

I wish we lived in a world where everyone could see eye to eye, where equality was more than an ideal. Unfortunately, we don’t. Racism is still abounding, here in America and abroad. Unfortunately, the largest propagators of this problem don’t even recognize it.

I was at a photo lecture once by Andre Serano. He was showing a series he did in which all the subjects were dead in a mortuary. I think it was a aids victim in one picture, and their skin had begin to erode and flake back, revealing on a black body a layer of white skin. A girl in the audience questioned about this, to which Andre replied something along the lines, “Well, that just goes to show you how deep racism really is.”

America is a white man’s world. The essential problem with this is that white men who spout the ideas of “racial equality” refuse to truly live by this, or accept this belief under false pretenses. I’ve lived in and spent my time in the ghettos of a few cities. I’ve never really found them to be dangerous; the larger reason I’ve found them to be “dangerous” is because white people are scared of black people. America, a country founded entirely by immigrants, has a distinctly wary eye of anyone but white men.

It sprouts many questions in mind. When did this difference truly arise? Is it an innate process to think this way? Do tabby cats hate black cats in the same manner? Or is this all perpetuated belief stemming from governmental control?

When you look at statistics of most things involving the subject, odds are you will find the system supports the success of whites and the failure of blacks. True, the effects of the civil rights movement of the 60’s haven’t entirely settled in; we’re still living in a world where people from a different time and mindset are at large running the system. But will we truly be able to move away from the ideas of racial equality when the system is still in such subtle manners supporting a privilaged populace?

It’s hard to look at things at face value when you’re so presently affected by them. So how do we go about reformatting our system to make it equal grounds for all those involved, not taking away the privilege of white men, but giving all others the same grounds for success? Honestly, you could write hundreds of books on what is wrong today, and hundreds already have been written. I’m not writing to talk about the failures of the drug on war, prisons, a for-profit system or the many other problems. I’m writing to address a single question.

What can we do, as individuals and a society, truly do to take down the barriers we professed had been dismantled 50 years ago, barriers that still create such stark and subtle differences in our society?

A few words from the Cookie Monster

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn’t all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country’s infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system — your friends on Wall Street — and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy — knowing full well that what could and would happen — putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not “there always going to be rich people”. That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.