I'm bad at learning to play the guitar. I bought one. I have one. I can't keep up with it. I want to learn, but I want more to just be able to play. I'm realizing more and more that I think I just deserve things. I don't want to work hard to get results. I see too many examples in my life, on TV all over the place of people getting what the don't even deserve with out having put anything into it. Some people can work their entire lives, and hard too, but not come close to what some shitty kid can inherit from a parent. You get what you put in? People get what they deserve? Really, Kid Rock? I don't think so. Sure, you say "still I ain't got mine." But you believe it will. You hope. You dream. Why? What examples have you seen that support this? Anecdotal evidence, I say. The plural of anecdote is not data. Jay-Z makes it big, and people start to think that growing up poor is easy to overcome. You are supposed to overcome it. It's the American way. Look at how Previously Poor Currently Famous Name did it. Why can't you? Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What do you mean, 1 in 50 million make it? What do you mean, by far the vast majority of people born poor, die poor? Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Feel good about your opportunities. The great chances you get. You get the same schools everyone else gets. What do you mean, rich people go to schools that have many, many times the per student budget of impoverished area public schools? What do you mean, even rich-area public schools are better off than poor-area schools? Just move to a rich area. What do you mean, you can't afford the moving cost, the job change, the property tax, the cost of a home in the area? Doesn't your family have money to give you? Can't you get a loan? Don't you have a credit card? Every poor person should have a credit card. How else are you going to get a large, influential organization to personally call you and ask how you can contribute to their cause each month? Poor folks should be lucky to pay well over 20% interest on purchases they need to maintain jobs and support families. Can't pay the payments? Just get rich, stupid! I'm tired. I'm poor. But there are no huddled masses. We huddle alone. We huddle in the smallest groups. Where are the masses of poor in this country? We are afraid to come together. We have been turned against each other. We are suspicious of each other. We put down each other when we have the same goals, the same needs. We call each other ghetto. We call each other white trash. We battle amongst ourselves while the rich live more comfortably than we will ever know. One percent of the American population controls more wealth than the rest of the nation combined. There must be redistribution of wealth. Class war. Everyone who's ever lived check to check, who's ever not had a check, has thought it at least once. Revolution. It's always there. The idea that the people who do the living and dying, the working and buying, the believing and trying in the world might have what they deserve. Take it by force. Get exactly what they deserve: their share. This is what is on my mind. This is what comes out when I write. This is raw, this is unedited. This is not an academic paper, this is not a complete thought. This is the place I go when the lottery seems like an investment. This is my home when politicians are rich. Politicians are rich. No politician should ever, ever be rich. It is not a job for profit, for power, for fame. Politics at all levels should be about service to your people. Who you represent. And you should vote for those who represent you and have your interests in mind. No poor person should ever, ever vote for a rich person. But they do. They look up to them. Like a slave looks up to a master. Regrettable respect. With shame. Feeling as though this person is above me because they are better than me. I don't deserve to be in charge of anything. I don't deserve to have a voice. If I did, I'd be rich enough to afford a campaign. I'd be rich enough to not have to work, so that I could be a full-time schmoozer. I'd be rich enough to go to law school, the almost necessary step to politics. Instead, I have just enough money to afford cable. Just enough to have an opinion, fostered by the rich and powerful, thrust upon me. Surely, this opinion can only be what's best for me. I'm done. For tonight.
