Occupy the Tea Party...

Hahahaha, I just wrote a huge comment rant over at Street Carnage. It is awaiting moderation so I don't know if they will publish, so here it is:

The way I see it, the Tea Party pretty much created the perfect Occupy storm. First we have the Tea Party, I know these people, and they are all CPAs, attorneys & doctors. They all have vintage airplanes at my airport. They all take exotic golf vacations. They are the 10%. Largely, they are older and have grown children. They are Empty Nesters.

Their children grew up privileged and pampered. Gold stars for everyone! Their every need was provided & they received a car on their 16th birthday. Their fondest wish was to escape the torrential boredom of Toledo, Omaha, Dallas, Tulsa & the best way of doing this was to find a distant University to attend. Woe is for the child destined for the State University!

College is the perfect time for the kids because they are away from the parental units, living on their own, yet all of their needs are still met. Hunger never bothers their bellies; booze is plentiful; and their bongs are never in need of weed. They have four or five years of responsibility-free bliss in exchange for going to a couple of classes & making passing grades.

Of course it is a lot easier to get passing grades when the kids are working towards a degree that doesn’t require math. Sure, they started out in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, but hated staying in & studying while all their friends were out partying. Why were their friends able to get away with never studying while they had hours and hours of equations to do? Simple, the kids get a soft degree like Art History, Political Science, & Women’s Studies. They watch a few slide shows & take a test every once in a while. Easy peasy.

After a successful College career, and sometimes a Graduate program, the pampered child moves somewhere big & exciting! NYC! LA! San Francisco! Boston! Chicago! They have a bit of trouble finding a job with their liberal arts degree, but somehow manage to scare something up; besides, the parental units are still sending a thousand here & a thousand there for emergency expenses.

The “Trust Fund” kids are a myth. There are no formal trust funds set up, & if there are, the kids don’t get access until their parents kick it. Very few of the newly transplanted Big City kids have a set amount provided regularly; their parents are just helping them out cash-wise. The parents remember how it was when they were that age & just want to make their special little snowflake’s life a little easier.

Life is not easy in the big city! Their pitiful retail job doesn’t even come close to paying for their rent, much less their entertainment bill. They didn’t move to NYC to sit in their shoebox apartment, they moved here for all of the shows & fashion. Suddenly, for the first time ever, they are thrust out into the cold cruel world with nary a safety net. Their parents think that a couple of thousand a month should sustain them pretty well, and it would if their kids were living in flyover land, but in NYC a couple thousand is merely a drop in the Big City suck bucket. That will hardly even buy a decent pair of shoes.

Here comes an extended depression/recession. Oopsie! It happens to also arrive with the end of all publishing, so millions of creative Big City jobs are POOF! Gone. Magazine, newspaper, & book opportunities are all gone. Pretty much the kids’ only hope is to start a witty website that can then be published as a book that no one will purchase because, why? There it is on that website.

Meanwhile, back at home, their parents are out protesting! What the hell! And what are they protesting? Against Government stimulus & the welfare state it supports? Wait a minute, their kid has been living on that stimulus for the past year after being laid off from that fleeting job they had managed to obtain immediately before the economy went to shit. Well, that and the couple of thou their parents send.

There needs to be more Stimulus, the kids say. How will they live if the Government doesn’t give them unemployment & food stamps for another year? There needs to be more Stimulus so that maybe the government can create more jobs. Creative jobs though, the kids don’t want to be shoveling shit or working at a soul-killing 8 to 5 job like their parents. Ugh, they are special & unique just like all the others!

Imagine the poor kid’s plight; their unemployment just ran out (thanks Mom & Dad!), they are scared & hungry, and they have only had that one three-month-long job ever in their lives & it is now gone forever, never to return. They have no skills, nothing but a bright mind & a lot of energy. The prospect of moving back to flyover land & in with their parents is looming. Meanwhile, back at home, the parental units are not doing as well as they used to. One of them lost their job, their 401K is half what is was in 2008 & now the money from home seems to be drying up. The future is not bright.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, this tremendous opportunity for them to Make A Difference appears! There is free food! There is a big, extended, free street party & they never have to leave! They can just pass out at the party when they get tired! This is awesome! This is even better than college because there aren’t even any pesky classes to attend! Take that Mom & Dad, you had your Tea Party & took away all of our benefits, & now I have my Occupy & will get those benefits back plus a portion of a billionaire’s fortune!

The parents are fighting against the exact same things that their children are demanding. The parents and their children are on different sides of the same exact coin. This is nothing more than a child’s rebellion against their parents. The parent is more conservative because they have responsibilities whereas the child is liberal because not only have they never had responsibilities, but it is really easy to be extremely liberal when someone else is footing the bill.

The kids want more pay and benefits for teachers, yet are unable to equate those expenses with the exploding cost of their own education. They want bigger & better unions yet wonder why all manufacturing has been moved overseas, out of the Unions’ way. They get all of their music, magazines, newspapers, books, movies, and television on the internet for free but don’t reconcile that with the fact that if they aren’t paying for stuff, then when they make it, nobody will be paying them for it. In order for anyone to make a living at something, someone somewhere will have to pay them to do that thing they do.

I know, I know, you know of one person that doesn’t fit this mold exactly, so the whole concept must be flawed. I get it.