Miller on OWS

Warning: political rant ahead, avert your eyes and scroll to the next posts if you would rather enjoy more gaming goodness!

I normally don't like blogging about politics, and to be honest the political state of our nation makes me ill these days (I'm strongly independent and lean towards a sort of liberal libertarianism that doesn't sync up with real libertarianism or conventional liberals). But then I ran across a blog post from Frank Miller which I figured I would share with minimal comment. I'm not sure if I'm more...surprised....at Frank Miller's actual blog (I'm not exactly a follower, but I did enjoy his comics back in the day) or at the gazillion comments both pro and con which follow. Based on what I've read, I would not have pegged Miller as a sort of old-school "why don't you damned hippies join the army" type. Surprising. But the comments that follow....and the perceived "us vs. them" attitude on both sides of the fence are staggering.

What I'm really confused about is why I keep hearing stories about these scurvy underhanded miscreants that abuse the system, take advantage of the "hard working tax payer" and are just leeches upon both government and business with their iPhones out there in OWS camps, but yet I never see any of these people as described by the right, in real life. I assume they must exist, but perhaps they're a bit hard to pick out of the crowd of the many, many people I know who are working for minimum wage while building up enormous debt from school loans, or my co-workers who haven't received a raise in four years, or the many, many people I know who have fought with unemployment and eventually settled for jobs that payed at best 50-60% of what they previously worked for (or who are still hunting). Seems kind of like a dick move to decide to penalize all those people on account of anecdotal evidence that there may or may not be some welfare-abusing boogeyman out there running around. All of the really right-wing individuals I know seem to have these stories, but none of them seem to be able to distinguish between "person who abuses the system" and "person who has paid into the ysstem specifically to have access to the safety net." Nor do they realize that the idea of "punishing everyone who needs help or who is unemployed because of the small percentage who have gamed the system" is the wrong way to go. I guess they would dispute that there's a distinction....it seems like a lot of these people assume that unemployment = automatic failure, and that equals deadbeat hippy with an iPhone. Interesting logic. I hope they get to test that theory first hand; nothing like direct experience to induce a bit of empathy and understanding in people.

I used to think that many of the problems from the older generation would recede with time and mortality. That was my grandparent's generation. Now I'm beginning to suspect that the entirety of the Baby Boomer generation is batshit insane. As a child of the baby boomers, I'm utterly shocked at their willingness to throw their children under the bus....and even more shocked as those of the same age group I am in who happily stand in front of the bus, obedient to the end. I seriously hope the younger generations (what is or was gen X, as well as whatever the current generation is called), the one my wife is part of, is smart enough to get their act together in the wake of the economic disaster we're staring down the gullet right now. I have my doubts.

Well, maybe if this guy is correct we'll all get a lot more empathetic soon when we're all in the same boat, floating down the Styx.