For those of you who don't know, I played football in 7th grade
for Harrison Junior High School in Harrison, AR. Our colors were blue
and gold and our mascot was the Goblin, which looked like a combination
of a 70s punk rocker, a meth addict, and a vampire. All the boys had
their reasons, but I can only speak with certainty of my own, which was to
impress a girl whose identity should be easy to guess by now. Of
course, I did not impress her, being very unathletic, and it ought to
have been unsurprising that failing at a task important to a woman
repeatedly and in front of her is pretty self-defeating. Anyway,
although it was customary to ride the bus to away games, my mother drove
me instead. Having no friends and being prone to getting bullied meant
that I was simply not safe in a school bus supervised solely by a bus
driver and coach who, between them, were all out of fucks that they
gave. One night, I showed up at a game and learned of an unfortunate
incident that had taken place mere hours earlier. If you don't know,
and I didn't before this, some school buses have exits on the top that,
if activated, blow clean off the roof of the bus with a great deal of
force, achieving significant height. Tampering with one of these doors,
my teammates managed to send it soaring very high, whereupon it landed
on the Vice Principal's windshield. Having shattered the glass,
discipline was in order for the entire team, including myself, even
though I could easily prove I wasn't even there, as I was in my mother's
presence and custody during the incident. Got that? I had a freaking
alibi. Nonetheless, all the coaches understood was that the demographic
known as the seventh grade football team had committed major wrongdoing
and must all be punished severely, regardless of concerns of justice,
evidence, or rational thought. Though I was then, and am still now,
considered to be a total wuss, I had, to that point, only vomited twice
during practice. D-Day, short for Discipline Day, was on a whole other
level. Attending our normal courses was not necessary, as this practice
was specially called for a Saturday, so the punishing PT would last all
day and on into the night. Making it several hours, I finally, out of
desperation, faked a leg injury well enough to be excused. Days like
that are part of why I never played a sport again, but it stuck with me
for another reason. Group punishment is bullshit, because punishing the
innocent along with the guilty is evil, cruel, and unjust. So I look
to those complaining about my income demographic, prepared to blame and
demand punishment for it, and I see wisdom not surpassing that of junior
high football coaches in the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is quite difficult to hurt my feelings. I repress them and don't trust or rely on them, so you've got to work pretty hard to break through the combination of autism and self-training that causes me to do that. When I moved away from Harrison, I thought I was moving away from people with that little perspective and that little interest in working and thinking a little bit harder to always take into account exceptions and to avoid quests for vengeance where it is simply so intense that whether good people people get hurt in the determined effort to harpoon the proverbial white whale doesn't matter. Some in the 1% have behaved very badly indeed. So have some in the percentage of those who wear pink shirts. If you'd look into it, I'm pretty sure some in the guys named Ted demographic have been guilty of some outrage or another. Imagine people with signs saying, "Pink stinks," or, "Down with Ted," protesting all pink shirts and all the guys named Ted. Then one of good people wearing pink shirts or one of the good people named Ted objects and is told, "Oh we mean all those other pinkos (people wearing pink shirts, not the other meaning) or Tedheads, not you Ted. You're one of the only good pink-shirt-wearing Teds though, and while I realize the action we're demanding would hurt you too, you're just gonna have to take one for the team Ted. You could just stop wearing all your favorite shirts and change your name too Ted. Why are you so attached to your shirts and your name? Besides, it's not like pink shirts REALLY means pink shirts and Ted doesn't REALLY mean Ted. Can't you sense the subtlety in saying those exact things and meaning some other completely different thing? It's not like that would involve mindreading superpowers Ted." Every person with a sign, a facebook status, a blog entry, or any form of communication presenting the 1% as people who exploit the poor, lack a conscience, and/or are guilty of a white collar crime are accusing me of that because I am a member of the 1%. Perhaps you'd like to argue that I have power because of my money and therefore is okay to accuse me and many other completely innocent people in the 1%, such as my entire family, of immorality, inhumanity, and felonies. You might be interested in tales of my grandmother giving food to most of her neighbors out in Oakland, AR. These are people who I remember well for their kindness and decency, as well as poverty that I highly doubt the vast majority of my friend list has ever experienced. We're talking about people who hunted, trapped, and fished, or they didn't eat, and who had lived that way for generations. Fluoride in the water wasn't a thing, so they were mostly missing a lot of teeth and diabetes was quite a thing as they got old, so many of them were missing legs. Memories of delivering food to all those families in tiny rural Oakland with Leone M. Bailey fill my head every time someone starts talking about the 1%. So do memories of my grandfather denying loans because they'd be bad for the bank, only to give money to the person because he also knew it was direly needed. Also my mother comes to mind for her common practice of buying art supplies for classmates in watercolor classes whose talent is stunted by their inability to afford proper art supplies. Sixty dollars came out of my father's wallet and went to a hungry-looking homeless man in Philadelphia once in my presence, and he lectured me for my fear of the man and about how helping him was the right thing to do.
THESE are the people your rhetoric about the 1% include. You are mad at criminal cocksuckers who committed unsound, unethical, and unlawful acts against their own businesses, shareholders, investors, employees, and families in collusion with a government equally as unsound, unethical, and unlawful acting against the best interests of its own electorate. Everyone who contributed to this situation in both the near and long-term has a name and we live in an age of information technology so affordable and vast that most of the greatest minds of history could've never contemplated it. If you're that concerned, find out the names of everyone who was involved and refer to them by name for the specific crimes about which you are concerned. However, if you don't care enough about the truth and justice regarding the financial collapse you're so hot about to get your facts straight and avoid collateral damage, then maybe your opinion isn't really worth a warm bucket of spit. If your chief concern about the people responsible for this financial collapse is what percentage of income they represent in the country, there is something seriously wrong with your priorities. So I'm asking you, please, for the love of every sane and decent idea of justice that there could ever be, stop lashing out so blindly. Does it really matter so little to you, the people I've helped, am helping, and will help in the future to the best of my ability. Do the hillbilly children who ate many of their meals only because of my grandmother really matter so little to you? Do the impoverished pensioners needing that money to pay their mortgage and the mercy my grandfather routinely granted them matter so little to you? Do the starving artists my mother has provided brush and canvas for matter so little to you? Does the starving man who wasn't hungry anymore for a while because of my father not matter to you? They matter to me. Everyone does. Maybe you'll get your way though, and the 1%, good, bad, and indifferent will pay, regardless of whether they were innocent or guilty, because that doesn't matter to you if you're holding one of those signs with that percentage on it does it? Well, if it does matter to you that there are people out there with wealth who use their wealth to improve the lot of anyone they can and that I am one of those people you will put down that sign with a percentage on it and put another name on there that well-researched knowledge you possess tells you deserves to be on it. So what'll it be Occupy and its sympathizers? Are you a hate group who cares only about group punishment and nothing for me or the people you hurt, or are you a group who seeks punishment only for the guilty individuals, regardless of wealth?
-Frank
It is quite difficult to hurt my feelings. I repress them and don't trust or rely on them, so you've got to work pretty hard to break through the combination of autism and self-training that causes me to do that. When I moved away from Harrison, I thought I was moving away from people with that little perspective and that little interest in working and thinking a little bit harder to always take into account exceptions and to avoid quests for vengeance where it is simply so intense that whether good people people get hurt in the determined effort to harpoon the proverbial white whale doesn't matter. Some in the 1% have behaved very badly indeed. So have some in the percentage of those who wear pink shirts. If you'd look into it, I'm pretty sure some in the guys named Ted demographic have been guilty of some outrage or another. Imagine people with signs saying, "Pink stinks," or, "Down with Ted," protesting all pink shirts and all the guys named Ted. Then one of good people wearing pink shirts or one of the good people named Ted objects and is told, "Oh we mean all those other pinkos (people wearing pink shirts, not the other meaning) or Tedheads, not you Ted. You're one of the only good pink-shirt-wearing Teds though, and while I realize the action we're demanding would hurt you too, you're just gonna have to take one for the team Ted. You could just stop wearing all your favorite shirts and change your name too Ted. Why are you so attached to your shirts and your name? Besides, it's not like pink shirts REALLY means pink shirts and Ted doesn't REALLY mean Ted. Can't you sense the subtlety in saying those exact things and meaning some other completely different thing? It's not like that would involve mindreading superpowers Ted." Every person with a sign, a facebook status, a blog entry, or any form of communication presenting the 1% as people who exploit the poor, lack a conscience, and/or are guilty of a white collar crime are accusing me of that because I am a member of the 1%. Perhaps you'd like to argue that I have power because of my money and therefore is okay to accuse me and many other completely innocent people in the 1%, such as my entire family, of immorality, inhumanity, and felonies. You might be interested in tales of my grandmother giving food to most of her neighbors out in Oakland, AR. These are people who I remember well for their kindness and decency, as well as poverty that I highly doubt the vast majority of my friend list has ever experienced. We're talking about people who hunted, trapped, and fished, or they didn't eat, and who had lived that way for generations. Fluoride in the water wasn't a thing, so they were mostly missing a lot of teeth and diabetes was quite a thing as they got old, so many of them were missing legs. Memories of delivering food to all those families in tiny rural Oakland with Leone M. Bailey fill my head every time someone starts talking about the 1%. So do memories of my grandfather denying loans because they'd be bad for the bank, only to give money to the person because he also knew it was direly needed. Also my mother comes to mind for her common practice of buying art supplies for classmates in watercolor classes whose talent is stunted by their inability to afford proper art supplies. Sixty dollars came out of my father's wallet and went to a hungry-looking homeless man in Philadelphia once in my presence, and he lectured me for my fear of the man and about how helping him was the right thing to do.
THESE are the people your rhetoric about the 1% include. You are mad at criminal cocksuckers who committed unsound, unethical, and unlawful acts against their own businesses, shareholders, investors, employees, and families in collusion with a government equally as unsound, unethical, and unlawful acting against the best interests of its own electorate. Everyone who contributed to this situation in both the near and long-term has a name and we live in an age of information technology so affordable and vast that most of the greatest minds of history could've never contemplated it. If you're that concerned, find out the names of everyone who was involved and refer to them by name for the specific crimes about which you are concerned. However, if you don't care enough about the truth and justice regarding the financial collapse you're so hot about to get your facts straight and avoid collateral damage, then maybe your opinion isn't really worth a warm bucket of spit. If your chief concern about the people responsible for this financial collapse is what percentage of income they represent in the country, there is something seriously wrong with your priorities. So I'm asking you, please, for the love of every sane and decent idea of justice that there could ever be, stop lashing out so blindly. Does it really matter so little to you, the people I've helped, am helping, and will help in the future to the best of my ability. Do the hillbilly children who ate many of their meals only because of my grandmother really matter so little to you? Do the impoverished pensioners needing that money to pay their mortgage and the mercy my grandfather routinely granted them matter so little to you? Do the starving artists my mother has provided brush and canvas for matter so little to you? Does the starving man who wasn't hungry anymore for a while because of my father not matter to you? They matter to me. Everyone does. Maybe you'll get your way though, and the 1%, good, bad, and indifferent will pay, regardless of whether they were innocent or guilty, because that doesn't matter to you if you're holding one of those signs with that percentage on it does it? Well, if it does matter to you that there are people out there with wealth who use their wealth to improve the lot of anyone they can and that I am one of those people you will put down that sign with a percentage on it and put another name on there that well-researched knowledge you possess tells you deserves to be on it. So what'll it be Occupy and its sympathizers? Are you a hate group who cares only about group punishment and nothing for me or the people you hurt, or are you a group who seeks punishment only for the guilty individuals, regardless of wealth?
-Frank
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