Old Sayings Just To Keep You In Your Place

There is a new television show coming out soon that pits the filthy rich against the filthy poor in minimum wage jobs. The prize is a paltry $200,000. I say paltry because that is what this fucking show will earn in revenue from commercials for one airing. But that is besides the point. We hate the rich because they have what we don't ... and they're not letting it go. They "elect" someone like the fucking Anti-Christ (W) so that he can make sure there are plenty of permanent tax breaks for them or so that they don't get taxed on their inheritance (which by the way isn't money they've earned so taxing it isn't like you're taxing someone after they die; you're taxing the recipient .... you get taxed if you win the lottery, well .. this is the same concept. Don't believe the hype when you hear it called a "Death Tax").

Bob Marley got me thinking about this today. I was listening to "Get Up, Stand Up" where he preaches:

Most people think great God will come from the sky
Take away ev'rything, and make ev'rybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You would look for yours on earth
And now you see the light
You stand up for your right, yeah!

If only Americans could hear and understand this message. That old saying "Money can't buy you happiness" is a load of shit. I hate that saying. I think most these old sayings were created by the wealthy and the happy to sedate the unhappy masses. What kind of crap is that: money can't buy happiness? Because being broke and worried about paying your bills makes you happy? Not being able to provide is the path to true joy? If money can't buy happiness, then I can sure as hell afford my own misery ... I'm willing to give it a shot.

Another one we've all heard is that the poor shall get their reward in heaven. Yeah ... because it would be completely unfair to give the poor a little something now, right? Again, just another one of those phrases propogated by the rich as if to say "Hey, you're really the lucky one. Hell, I wish I could rummage through the couch for enough change to put gas in a 10 year old Hondo Civic. Instead, I have this unholy burden to bear of having too much money" You know ... shouldn't our rich brethren be willing to share their "burden" so that they don't have to carry so much?

What about this one: "It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all". This is the advice that the one friend we all have who is in a great relationship gives you when your beloved has driven a Mack truck through your rib cage, tied a chain to your heart, and backed over your heart say a couple hundred times. It's funny because I always associate this phrase with a movie, an unlikely movie .. but I associate this with Men In Black. There is the scene where Tommy Lee Jones is looking through some monitor at his lost love and Will Smith makes the "better to have loved" comment. Tommy Lee just shoots him this icy look and says "Try it". That just about sums it up for me.

I'm not normally this pessimistic. Yes, I do truly believe something good comes out of something bad. I know that if I hadn't gone through the heartbreaks I've had in my life, then I would've never finished college, finished law school, and been to half the places I've been.

I just hate society pushing these stupid sayings on us as if to say that we should just accept our lot in life and let the rich keep fucking over the system and everyone because they'll get theirs in the end or pity the rich because they're "miserable". Our society is becoming more stratified every day and unless we take steps to stop it, we're in for a nasty wakeup. People seem to forget that in the early part of the 20th century, those National Guard Armories were all so familiar with in big cities weren't set up in poor neighborhoods so that they could quickly have access to weapons in case of foreign invasion. They were set up in case the poor and dispossessed started to revolt. I really feel right now is a power grab by the rich to ensure they'll remain rich for as long as we're a nation since they feel they can just keep fucking over the middle class and poor because they think we have no choice. Remember this last little bit of truth that was thrown at us in law school by our Constitutional Law professor who was enraged by the Gore v. Bush decision: There is nothing .... absolutely nothing ... in the Constitution that guarantees we will always have a Democracy.