no war but the class war.

that jonathan lethem book really fucked me up. i won't ramble too long about it, because i'll just get all bummed out again, but crack is really fucking lame and i hate it and if it was a person, i would dedicate my life to killing it.

what the fuck can be done about the cycle of poverty and drug usage? if there's a hell, i honestly hope that whoever created crack spends eternity there. how fucked up must your life be to have crack seem appealing? i realize i am probably being totally naive about this, and perhaps making myself look like a ninny, but how could you see what crackheads lives look like and then decide that you'd like to try it? i sort of think the same thing about heroin, but i know our society glamourizes heroin addiction to a certain extent. there is no such glamourizing when it comes to crack, though, so what the fuck?

how thoroughly must we be letting down that entire segment of our society for that to seem okay? and how fucked must their lives be that dealing this disgusting, life-ruining drug that is eroding the black people's worlds, doesn't seem absolutely beyond consideration? how could any young person, who isn't already addicted to it, think that selling it to other people, is tolerable? (i guess the same rationale goes for any drug dealing. i feel like pot is pretty harmless, unless you feel like being dim and unmotivated is harmful. heroin and cocaine can be absolutely as destructive. guess i just don't see them taking such an obvious toll on so many people. maybe i'm wrong.)

maybe i am imagining a sense of group pride or loyalty that isn't there for black peops. i don't feel a whole lot of pride in what the white folks of the world have done, because it has nothing to do with me, though i do feel a heaping sense of shame at the shitty things we've done. slavery? shitty. colonialism? totally shitty. pointless and harmful "war on drugs" (which seems to just be a war on poor black people)? super shitty. i know it's hard to focus on bettering a bunch of strangers in other places when you can't afford to feed your kids.

which is why poverty seems to be the problem. yeah, black peops seem to be blessed with a disproportionate share of the poverty, but anyone who's poor is going to be so exausted from just trying to survive that they'll get into a 'kill or be killed' mentality. obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but it seems like a safe assertion to make.

you know what the fucking problem is, don't you? capitalism. capitalism, where there is little to no safety net to catch people when they fall, is the root of all evil. imagine what it would be like if there was a certain level, financially or socially, past which it was impossible to fall. if everyone had health benefits, free quality education and guaranteed retirement at a reasonable age, no one would have to have that terrible feeling of impending disaster, like they only have enough energy to take care of themselves, so fuck everyone else. i know that there are millions of people, all over the world, who have that feeling, like they are just barely keeping everything together, and at any second it could all fall apart and they'll end up destitute. there is this mystery in economics, called the low-wage puzzle, that wonders how people making so little money can possibly survive. this mystery is a daily reality for the majory of the world's population, but also for people in our own stars-and-stripes-swaddled country.

so, poverty and capitalism are the enemies. capitalism, combined with good old american rugged individualism, is where our retarded 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' mentality comes from. like poor people deserve their poverty, because theyre not trying hard enough to NOT be poor. or, like rich people are rich because they work the hardest. good old hard working paris hilton, right? sure, some people got rich by working hard, but some people are poor despite working their lives away. like...oh..say..the entire mid-west and rural south and all urban centers across the country. you know what? if i had more money to give, and could be assured that my tax money wasn't going to fund our fucking military, i'd be more than happy to pay higher taxes for better social services. i would be happy to know that my tax money was helping out people who needed the help, and was there in case i needed the help one day. and i don't care that there are people who abuse the system. that's not a good enough reason to stop. those people suck for abusing the system and proving all the nay-saying jerks right, but i don't care.

how about we stop keeping score and start trying to spread some fuckin' love?

how about we stop killing the iraqis, who i am starting to think might not really want our help/interference anyway, and start chasing down some of these tax-evading motherfuckers who are hoarding away all the money in the world? i always think to myself about how much money companies make, but how no one seems to be getting any richer except the rich people. all the wealth in the entire world is going into, like, 1000 pockets, and the rest of the world, myself and you included, are left fighting over the table scraps. let's wrestle some of the tasty cuts from those greedy bastards and live it up!

let's tell all the richest people in the world that being that rich makes you a fucking asshole when there are so many poor people, and put a cap on how much personal wealth any person can amass. let's tell movie stars that making millions PER PICTURE is totally uncalled for, that millions PER YEAR is more than sufficient. if you're making 20 million per picture and not giving a few million away to charity, you're a soulless bastard.

what can one sad, confused, possibly misinformed middle class white girl do to cure the ills of the world? sometimes all the things that are wrong with the world can really break a person's heart...

Current mood: infuriated
Currently reading : The Drawing of the Three: The Dark Tower II