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Forum Post: You're a vegetable.

Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 30, 2012, 1:25 p.m. EST by travis304 (2)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

In my eyes, the American people don't sit around "occupying" something, and then expect things that are broken to be fixed. This "Occupy" movement is the 21st century definition of pouting.

"This country is !@#$ed up, I've lost what I worked for, so I'm going to stop everything I'm doing and just make loud noises and sleep on the sidewalk!"

Does that sound responsible? To me it doesn't. That sounds like a country that is failing because its own citizens are lazy. If you've lost something, or think this country is in fact failing, then do something about it!

Stop sitting there!

It is not impossible to find a job. They're out there. The unemployment rate is not as bad as it was 3 years ago, before all this complaining and protesting.

I'm 20 years young. Twenty.

I'm paying for my tuition on my own. I own a nice silver Mustang. I make my own payments on it. I pay my car, dental, and health insurance. I buy my own food. I pay my phone bill. I pay at the pump. I put 4 to 5000$ into my savings. I serve my country in the Reserve component. I work on 9.55$ an hour, PART TIME.

My demographic's unemployment rate is between 23-25%. If I can make something of myself, so can you.

Quit occupying, pouting, doing nothing, protesting, etc., and go make this country well again. I'm well on my way to doing my part.

30 Comments

30 Comments


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[-] 3 points by ARod1993 (2420) 12 years ago

Discounting the Occupy movement as a bunch of impotent idiots begging for free money is a serious error. I completely agree with the principles behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I feel that the dismissal of income inequality as a non-issue spawned of thin skins and jealousy is a grave error even though if they and I both succeed in life I'll probably wind up paying more in taxes than I would otherwise.

I grew up working poor in the Bronx and am currently at MIT thanks to a crazily determined mother and a strong, supportive working class community. Simply speaking from my experience and from what I've seen, poor choices may be a part of why people are poor, but they're hardly enough of the picture to just be able to point the finger at an entire population and brand them as lazy, stupid, and useless.

I'll be the first to admit that what I did was hardly in a vacuum. Not everybody has a mother who is a licensed teacher who was willing to quit her job to live as a poor housewife so that she could homeschool her children to keep them out of a failing school system. Not everybody has a father who could find and hold onto a union job with good benefits up until his son's sophomore year of high school, weather an eleven-month strike and a plant closure, and manage to get another union job within a few months of being laid off. Not everybody has a landlord willing to hold off a rent increase for a year longer than he had to to cut us a break. Not everyone knows an incredibly kind nun who just dropped off $500 at our doorstep one month when we couldn't fully make rent on time.

It is theoretically possible to bootstrap oneself out of poverty, but damn near nobody who truly got anywhere satisfactory in life came from absolutely nothing. There is always the one that does, and that person is so many different kinds of amazing it's not funny, but usually there are support systems there that you didn't see that your average bootstrapper was able to take advantage of. There are also whole communities in which the resources don't exist for those kinds of support systems to develop organically and therein lies the trap. When you have someone who comes from a broken home, spends his days in a school that doesn't teach him and where large chunks of the student body punish success, in a community where few people care and the ones that do truly have no support to offer, you've essentially spent his whole life teaching him that success is out of his reach and he'd be a fool to reach for it.

The whole point of discarding this ugly attitude about the economically less fortunate is because only then are you going to watch the kind of change that you're hoping for. Give the poor real economic support for things like going to college and/or vocational training so that they can ditch their minimum-wage job for something they can actually live on. Send their kids to strong, high-performing schools where success is expected and rewarded. Truly offer them opportunity and you'd be amazed at how fast they would take it. Now, if you give someone every opportunity in the book and they still blow it, then feel free to dump them on the roadside; I won't stop you. But until that's been done your attitude is simply part of the problem.

The other major thing we're going to have to look at is what exactly we plan on doing with our poor and our working class; as of right now, the latter (right along with the middle class) is and has been taking one hit after another due to factors like deunionization and outsourcing, and something has to be done about that. A nation composed entirely of BS's and BA's sounds like a great idea in theory, but there are groups of people who truly don't fit into that model and there has to be a better answer for them than "Go flip burgers" or "It's your fault you're underwater for trying to better yourself."

We need to have something more to our economy than just a small group of high-earning professionals with advanced degrees and a large unwashed (and presumably expendable) mass of Starbucks baristas and McDonalds employees trying to make ends meet on $7-$8 per hour, and that's going to mean forcing jobs back over here in the long term as well as a fair number of other measures including reconstruction of our national infrastructure (which would serve to provide stopgap employment until a new manufacturing industry got under way, and would create a fair number of additional permanent maintenance jobs over the long haul) if we want to fix things.

I stand behind OWS namely because I see them as the first movement with enough raw manpower and raw anger to be in a position to force these issues in the long term, and because their initial direction is close enough to mine that action towards their goals would most likely also serve the ends I outline above. We're fairly raucous and unorganized, and we're far from perfect, but as far as I can see Occupy Wall Street is the first real start in this direction I've seen on the national stage.

I do agree with you that the movement is becoming less and less productive over time, and I've written extensively about what needs to be done to correct that (I'll link you if you wish) but if you're going to attack their ends rather than their means then there's something seriously wrong here.

[-] 2 points by travis304 (2) 12 years ago

I make no attack towards these movements' ends. I'd like to point out the fact that you can ask random passersby what they think these movements stand for. They will most likely not have a correct answer, or any answer at all.

My point is these occupations are doing no good. There is no "resounding message." It is as simple as that.

I've not been brought up eating off a silver spoon, and nor did my parents. It is not so difficult as you say, to "bootstrap" oneself out of poverty. And I've most certainly not been given hand-outs.

In fact, you've not seen real poverty, real turmoil, until you step into an other country, say Iraq, or Mexico.

I agree with you, ARod, on the problems we face. I wholeheartedly disagree with sitting on a public lawn for one year and expecting all these problems to be fixed.

[-] 1 points by ARod1993 (2420) 12 years ago

I'm not pleased to see them sticking to that either, because as far as I'm concerned that constitutes not addressing those issues in any real way and then expecting them to go away on their own. I've put up a rough draft of a plan I'd like to see them move toward because it's practically guaranteed to work, but if they don't make some move in that direction soon I may walk away. The plan is here: http://occupywallst.org/forum/what-is-our-plan-of-action/

[-] 2 points by plutocracyofamerica (10) from Killingly, CT 12 years ago

i am someone that works an average of 60 plus hours a week. i can tell you that occupy is doing exactly what it should be doing...as a starting point.

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23769) 12 years ago

Thank god all of the younger generation is not like you.

[-] 1 points by epa1nter (4650) from Rutherford, NJ 12 years ago

Why are you here?

[-] 1 points by arturo (3169) from Shanghai, Shanghai 12 years ago

It seems to me that you just get your kicks putting other people down, while talking about how great you think you are. It appears very self righteous.

[-] 1 points by WooHoo (15) 12 years ago

Envy even of the concept of self-sufficiency.

[-] 1 points by arturo (3169) from Shanghai, Shanghai 12 years ago

Is that what you are desperate for, envy?

[-] 1 points by WooHoo (15) 12 years ago

When you were 9 did that come out, "I know you are but what am I?"

[-] 1 points by arturo (3169) from Shanghai, Shanghai 12 years ago

When you accuse someone you don't know of something, it says much more about you than of the other persons.

[-] 1 points by WooHoo (15) 12 years ago

Oh sorry. Maybe you ARE 9 years old.

[-] 1 points by arturo (3169) from Shanghai, Shanghai 12 years ago

When you accuse someone you don't know of something, it says much more about you than of the other persons.

[-] 1 points by WooHoo (15) 12 years ago

I don't know you but I accuse you of either acting like or actually being 9 years old despite how worried I am regarding 'what that says about me. than the other persons blahblah' whatever point you were pretending to make.

[-] 1 points by arturo (3169) from Shanghai, Shanghai 12 years ago

Woohoo!!

[-] 1 points by WooHoo (15) 12 years ago

Now you're catchin' on!

[-] 1 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

that make an interesting point about bullies

[-] 1 points by arturo (3169) from Shanghai, Shanghai 12 years ago

Indeed it does.

[-] 0 points by TIOUAISE (2526) 12 years ago

"Maybe you ARE 9 years old."

Forgive me, WooHoo, but what a dumb comment! Besides, it smacks of ageism... I've known a lot of 9-year olds who acted much more mature than the 49 and the 59 and the 69-years olds who rule this world and have made such a god-awful mess of it!

"Wisdom speaks through the mouth of babes". THINK about that, WooHoo!

[-] 1 points by WooHoo (15) 12 years ago

You're forgiven as I really don't care much about what it smacks of.

"...a lot of 9 year olds"???

I would also suggest you try hanging around with people more your own age.

[-] 1 points by Carlitini99 (-167) 12 years ago

Hopefully there are many more successful young adults like you out there and its was good to hear your story. The occupy movement youth do not represent what this country is about, for the young or the old.

[Removed]

[-] 0 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

damn it

I thought the internet was the the 21st century method of pouting

[+] -6 points by GirlFriday (17435) 12 years ago

It is. There are a lot of users that kick lots of rocks.

[-] -1 points by TIOUAISE (2526) 12 years ago

Trololololollololololololol

[+] -5 points by ZenDogTroll (13032) from South Burlington, VT 12 years ago

A reservist, eh?

I would point out that repelicans are always the first in Congress to cut the vets short on funding the benefits this government has contractually obligated itself to provide to them - this obligation occurs on enlistment.

I would also point out that as Congressman, [now Senator] Bernard Sanders stood up when very few would, on the issue of Gulf War Syndrome - and by 96 a Congressional report came out that laid bare the particulars of Gulf War Syndrome - I noted mainstream media continuing to spin that issue as late as 2002, as if the whole matter were still some subject of controversy -

  • which it is not

Thanks, again, in large measure, to Senator Sanders.

The Occupy Movement has been pushing for an end of corporate money in politics, the Senator, and others, have taken up that call.

.


.

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And here's one more link just for you.

[-] 1 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

Federal Election Commission rules allow super PACs to legally avoid disclosing individual donors by attributing donations to nonprofit organizations, which are not required by law to reveal their donors.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=52267&pageid=89&pagename=Features

[-] -1 points by Kirby (104) 12 years ago

Sanders would fit better in Stalins old politburo. That is if he would surive the purges of Stalin.

[+] -6 points by ZenDogTroll (13032) from South Burlington, VT 12 years ago

I vote for the man,

  • proud of it

piss off

[-] -1 points by Kirby (104) 12 years ago

You don't have to get crabby about it.

[+] -6 points by GirlFriday (17435) 12 years ago

And you are a mineral.

Yeah, lulz.

Hey, do you still live at home?