Hippie Imperialists.

It's a bit off from the topic of this post, but this is the best piece of seen on the "Occupy" movement.

In Afghanistan, a young American soldier with a locked and loaded M4 assures a band of nervous Pashtun mothers that her platoon will make sure the Taliban don't come and butcher their daughters for the sin of attending school.

A FaceBook friend recently posted this as his status update:

The Pentagon should remarket our wars: I'm looking forward to supporting "Occupy Iraq".

It got me to thinking about the similarities between a military occupation and what the Occupy Wall Street hippies are doing.  By taking over the property of another entity, they are effectively saying:  "We have the right to come wherever we wish, camp out, and do whatever we wish on that property, for as long as we desire.  Because you lack the power to stop us."

There's a word for that, but it is eluding me at the moment.

Oh, yes, it's called Imperialism.

Hypocritical hippies.

I Reflect Upon My Own Reaction to OWS.

Well, clearly, the Occupy Wall Street folks have been able to get under my skin lately.  My thoughts, words, and tone regarding them has not always been up to Christian standards, for which I am sorry.  I am reflecting upon how I can do better, and upon why my reaction to this and the related protests has been so strong, so visceral.

In my defense, these people do sorely tempt me.  Take, for example, this blurb from the front of their web page:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions.

Look, you dolts, there are only 2 genders:  male and female.  Well, I guess neuter is a gender also, which may explain a lot about OWS.  Look, there I go again.

I think much of my reaction has to do with the fact that I tried to be a hippie myself.  (I failed; I was not able to overcome the Protestant Work Ethic instilled in me by my dad.)  This blog entry about my acid-drenched trip to a No Nukes rally back in 1979 will help you understand the old hippie me from which I have escaped.  I was actually on Wall St. that day, too, ironically.  I know what demonic lies I believed when I was in that state, and part of my anger at the Wall St. hippies is their seduction of many people with those same lies.

Part of my frustration stems from the fact that a leaderless, nearly directionless movement like this is impossible to critique.  Every time some hippie defecates on a police car or on an American flag, my Leftist friends on FaceBook chime in to tell me that these people are not representative of the movement.  Likewise, when any of the hippies says something incredibly stupid, I am not allowed to count this against the movement as a whole, for no one person speaks for the movement.  It is a baffling and unnerving exercise to battle against such a chaotic, fluid, inconsistent, and formless foe.

Another facet to my anger is that this sort of thing is forcing me to become political again, which is a thing I hate.  I used to like it, getting involved in Texas and Michigan Republican Party politics.  But eventually it came to bore me to tears.  I no longer like to ruffle feathers, or talk politics with anyone.  I don't think that I have ever convinced anyone of my point-of-view in any political discussion.  I know that it is possible to change minds and hearts, but it has long seemed to me that this sort of change (which is sorely needed today!) comes through the Holy Ghost, and not so much through human talking and reasoning.  My own conversion from a young man who twice voted for Jimmy Carter (oh, the shame!) to being a die-hard Republican came more as a result of reading the Bible than from any human agency.

Political upheaval is inconvenient for me at this time.  I am trying to recover from my own economic folly (scarily parallel to that of our nation as a whole), and the entire political discussion right now takes my time and energy away from that.  But it is probably a sin (selfishness) for me to feel this way.  However, thinking about politics depresses me.  I clawed and scraped my way out of depression earlier in the year, and I know I am happier just getting on with normal life, and sidelining myself from the political game.  I don't know how possible that will be for me, since we are only 13 months out from a major election.

And about my economic folly ... it is easy to see and loathe the sins of others.  It is child's play to critique OWS or We Are the 99 Percent.  Their sins are many and obvious.  But what of my own sin?  My covetousness has been ruinous.  I am greedy.  Perhaps I should rejoice that people are out there with signs protesting greed.  Perhaps they should actually be massing in front of my house, for I am the chief of sinners, worse than any Wall St. pirate.  These protests, then, force me to confront my own sin, the many places where I have failed my family, church, and community.  Where I have failed my Savior.  The entire sad parade just makes me so sad for all of humanity, in our degradation, stupidity, and sin.

Part of me tries very hard to love Occupy Wall Street.  I want it to be like my imagination of the civil rights, anti-war, and other protests of the 1960s:  colorful, self-sacrificing innocents parading without a license", as in this groovy Ultimate Spinach song:

I saw a funny freak parade, marching down the street.
They were acting very strange, kissing everbody they meet.
Bananas hanging out of their ears, daffodils in their hands.
Someone asked, "What's happening here?"

A fat policemen's getting uptight, 'cause they're pelting him with flowers.
He knows they smell very sweet, but his face is very sour. 
He wants to bust the whole company, but he really doesn't know why. 
Maybe it's because they act kind free ... who knows?

But it's not like that.  It totally mischaracterizes this sort of hippie protest.  And maybe that is at the very bottom of my dissatisfaction with these protests:  they destroy my childhood imagination of things.

These Occupy Wall Street losers really are an endless source of entertainment.  It would be even more amusing if I didn't know that half of them would murder me in my sleep, given the chance.  I have become really addicted to scouring YouTube to look for more of their drivel to listen to.

This video was fruitful for a few different reasons.  The woman at 0:58 is a nit-wit.  She advocates free college education for all.  As to who is going to fund this "free" education, her only remark is that, "then you have to look into tax dollars."  Genius.  A lot of my more intelligent FB friends that are Leftists are defending OWS by saying that they have the same gripe at root as the Tea Party.  But they do not.  They are, in fact, the opposite of the Tea Party, and this woman proves it.  The guy at 1:30 says that absolutely, the central government should take over the banks.  I've not heard many Tea Partiers espouse that notion.



My favorite buffoon, though is the arrogant guy at 2:15 who, after kicking his less-experienced fellow protester off camera, admits that, yes, he is a leader of this leaderless movement.  But that is not his master stroke.  That comes at 2:32, where he announces that he is an out-of-work Plumber's Helper.  To help the chap out, here is a photo of a plumber's helper:

 The guy who appears from 5:15 through 5:30 is the most reasonable person interviewed here.  To quote him:

"It's not gonna do shiiiiiiit."

"All these people's not gonna be here in a little while.  Let one really good bad wind come through ... it's gonna be empty, man."

The 99 Percent - Student Loans

There is a new crop of people on We Are the 99 Percent who have buried themselves in Student Loan debt.

I don't know about y'all, but is sounds like the simplest solution here is to abolish student loans.  They are simply hurting too many people!





n2a - 789 Chevy

The very existence of this car makes me so happy!  It is built on a Corvette C-6 platform, and incorporates styling elements from 1957, 1958, and 1959 Chevrolets, as you move from front to rear along the vehicle.  I'm especially pleased about the 1959 rear treatment, as the 1959 Chevy seems to get very little love, and I've thought it awesome ever since riding in my grandparents' '59 back in the day.  This was built by an outfit called n2a - No 2 Alike.



Is that sweet, or what!?

Occupy Atlanta Buffoons.

Watch both videos in their entirety, if you have the patience.  The "call and response" thing they are doing so that everyone can (usually) be heard, is very funny.  I guess they felt that if they had rented a Public Address system, the Capitalists would have won.





I cannot imagine a nation in which these buffoons are in charge of anything!  I think that they should all be required to watch Wild in the Streets, as an antidote to their stupidity.  But I think the point of that film would be lost on them.

Wall Street Hippies (Part 3) - How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Income Gap!

A friend of mine posted this chart on FaceBook recently (a real friend, not just someone I know through FaceBook).  He found it at Mother Jones.  He made the point that these "Occupy Wall Street" hippies are mostly about envy.  I'm sure that he is right.  What I'm not sure of is whether they'd be happier being wealthy enough to be in one of the red/orange/yellow squares ... or, whether it would make them much happier to have everyone in the blue.  I suspect the latter.  Socialism, after all, is not about causing everyone to have plenty; it is about spreading the misery around equally.  And the Wall Street Hippies have concluded that those in the top income brackets are not carrying their fair share of misery.

But I find at least two objections to this chart and the realities behind it.  The first is that the Mother Jones / Wall Street Hippie thinking depends upon this being a Zero Sum Game.  In that view of things, there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, and the only question is how to divide it up.  It would be like having ten of your friends over and ordering a medium pizza.  It wouldn't seem fair for one fellow to have eight pieces while the rest divide up the remaining two slices of pizza.  But the point is, there is no limit on how large the pizza can get.  In reality, you are able to order an Extra-extra-extra-extra Large pizza.  And then, even if you divide it unevenly, everyone has plenty.

The economy is not a Zero-Sum Game.  Wealth can be and is being created.  The pizza is getting bigger.  How does the total wealth of the world increase?  It increases by commerce, but mainly by genius, inspiration, perspiration (hard work), patience, faith, and by people diligently and zealously pursuing their vocations.  I would be willing to wager that 99% of the Wall Street Hippies have more expensive and more capable cell phones than my family has.  Our Century has the richest poor people in the history of the planet.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Income Gap!

And here is the other main point.  The folks at Mother Jones and the Wall Street Hippies create (or most likely, just find; creating is too hard for them) charts like this to prove one main point:  The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

But why are they surprised?  This is the expected outcome in the world.  In fact, I will be so bold as to say that it is God's intended way for the world to be.  How do I know this?  I read it in the Bible:

"For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him."

I put that in red font, because those are the word of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.  You can read the context here in St. Luke's Gospel the 19th Chapter.  Maybe it seems odd to you that it should be this way.  But it inevitably is.

Perhaps my favourite professor of all time was my Physics professor at Cooper Union, Professor Milton Stecher.  Freshman Physics was a "weed out" course, helping to identify and separate weak students form the herd, perhaps giving them time to choose another major before wasting four more years.  Professor Stecher was fond of quoting the verse above and applying it to his students.  Those of us in the "hath" category, were those with the greatest aptitude for Physics.  They were also those who did the required homework every evening.  Those in the "hath not" category were those who did not like Physics, or found it difficult, and therefore abandoned the nightly wrestling with it.  During the first week of classes, Professor Stecher asked us to cast our minds forward to the night before the Final Exam in his Physics class.  He asked us:  "Which group will you find studying hard that night?"  After giving us a moment to reflect upon this, he gave us the answer:

"You would expect those who had not done the homework to study more on the night before the Final Exam.  But you would be wrong.  It is precisely those who have been diligent all throughout the semester that you will find still toiling away, perhaps unnecessarily, the night before the Final.  For I say unto you that unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even the little he hath shall be taken away."