Again with the anecdotes!

I saw this picture making the rounds on Facebook today, and I have to say that I'm not impressed.  Not that I'm going to tell anyone that Occupy Wallstreet is 100% right and you should have to believe in it in order to be American- that'd be UnAmer'cun.  And I certainly don't want to come across as being disrespectful to a soldier- I can only imagine how much hard work and sacrifice that dude had to make to even be a soldier, let alone the job related hazards he has to put up with.

But this picture is just a snapshot of everything that's wrong with the United States of America today.  Let me 'splain.

To me, this picture symbolizes how divided we are as a society.  Blame it on politics, religion, talk radio, or whatever, but it's painfully apparent that we are no longer 'one nation', under God or otherwise.  It's no wonder that with such an atmosphere of mistrust and division, we can't even decide on something simple like an economic protest.

Playing a significant role is the underlying values that our country was founded on.  Values are not just good deals at Wal-Mart- they define the very rules and laws (written and unspoken) our society functions by.  In America, two of the most important values are sticking our noses in other peoples business helping those who are less fortunate and working hard.  Sometimes they work together to make us better people and sometimes they are in conflict.  Unfortunately, the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought their clash to the forefront- and we are all witnesses of one great-big-giant value-cat fight. 

Right now, it looks like Hard Work has Helping the Less Fortunate in a very painful noogie-deathlock.

Never mind that there is room for both philosophies- Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has made the two seem as different as Democrat and Republican.  Which, oddly enough, seems to be the dividing line for this whole mess.  I realize that's a generalization- but think about the last time you heard one of your conservative friends talking about what a good thing OWS is- or the last time a liberal chum decried the lazy poor looking to get an unearned distribution of hard-earned tax payer dollar bills.  It doesn't happen- because we're just stupid sheep, droning along to whatever Pied-Piper tune our news source of choice tells us to drone to.

When I see the picture above (no, not the wrestling chicks- keep going up), it reminds me that the ties that bind are not nearly as strong as the ties that divide.  That picture says to me that anyone who is complaining is a lazy, good-for-nothing because there are jobs all around us- even if all you have to do is become a soldier.  It says that the 99% movement is just made up of lazy, freeloading, couch-surfing, feeding-hand-biters.  Well maybe not all of the 99%....but at least, 98% ...of the, um...99%...or is it 99% of the ...99%???  Gah I'm so confused!

Of course, ideological stances aside (because there are legitimate reasons for not wanting to join the military), it's asinine to say that 'Well, because my job is that I'm a soldier that means that no one else has a right to complain/accept government handouts because they should just all be soldiers if they can't find a job'.  That's not an option for everybody.  Some people literally cannot enlist in the Armed Forces for various reasons- and some of them aren't even moral failings! 

This picture is just another reminder that many Americans still operate under the auspices of the 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps' philosophy that blatantly ignores a couple centuries of every 'ism' you can imagine.  Problem- not everyone has bootstraps.  And even those of us with bootstraps might not be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.  But still, many operate under the idea that 'if I can do it, so can everybody else'.  That attitude is to empathy like Kim Kardashian is to 'Death do us part'.

The fact is that just because the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal doesn't mean that it is so.  And not all poor people are lazy bums sitting around trying to milk the system.  There are plenty of hard working people making sacrifices that do receive some form of government assistance (terrible, I know) because of the economic reality we live in.  And they still don't have enough to make ends meet.

That's why this picture pisses me off.  It's just another example of someone with a subjective opinion and a successful anecdote getting on the Internet and turning what could be a thoughtful discussion about how to better improve the lives of our poor people into a big-hornets-nest-poking-stick monologue about the evils of socialism.  Too bad that you don't have to walk a mile in someone elses shoes before you can criticize them for shopping at Goodwill.

PICS- Soldier- Find it on Facebook
Catfight- http://dallaspenn.com/pics/albums/backup3/catfight.jpg