me, a few days ago:
Millions of Americans have shaped their lives based on the assumption that a variety of institutions existed to protect them and advocate for them: government agencies, banks, schools, corporations, religions, etc. They’ve taken student loans, mortgages, gone to war, built careers based on these assumptions. Now they’re forced to face a variety of painful truths, including:
- Most of these organizations don’t care about anyone’s individual rights or welfare at all. Many of them don’t even work to achieve their stated missions. They exist merely to sustain themselves.
- Beyond sustaining themselves, many of these organizations that exist explicitly to serve individuals are flagrantly serving OTHER organizations at the expense of individuals. In a horrifically ironic way, the violent reactions to protestors from our police forces has made this case brutally clear. Another good example of this is congress’s recent capitulation to dairy farm lobbyists at the expense of our children’s health by defining pizza as a vegetable. Wall street bailouts are another great example. The seemingly endless occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are another. This disingenuousness is insulting.
- Many of these organizations are partially or fully funded by tax dollars. These are tax dollars that are forced from individuals’ hands. If you don’t pay your taxes, you are literally separated from your family and sent to jail. You have no choice but to fund these organizations that work against you. This is where the tea party most clearly overlaps with the occupy movement. Note: the UC Davis police officer who sprayed the kids made $116,000 in 2010. I paid for part of that.
Occupy, by agitating enough organizations into showing how much they truly care for individual liberties (surprise: they don’t), is now forcing more people to ask themselves: “is this what we want?”
Do we want a militarized police force? Do we want a police state? Will I want to send my daughter to a state university, knowing that she might be sent to the hospital with chemical burns if she chooses to protest peacefully there? Do we want to be at war? Why are we paying for this? Worse, why are we going into debt to pay for this? Do we want to concede so many of our liberties to so few organizations – particularly organizations that don’t care about us?
There are a million more questions. Each with a million answers. And each pointing to a fact that more and more people are aware of: many of the institutions we depend on are completely broken. They are led by cowards. We have been asleep. We are paying for it.
Wake up.
Reblogging myself (with some slight edits) here because the original post is a little too rambly. This is the pith. Also, people seem to like it, so in case you didn’t see it.
More of my posts observing the tension between humans and organizations.
