I am not a bank, but If I rip you off will you give me some Bailout money?

With dollars mounting, like Trekkies as the hours wear on at a comic-con, my student debt weighs on my chest like a boulder on an alleged Salem witch.  Every single month I fore-go simple pleasures of life, to which I had previously grown accustomed, in lieu of paying my student debt ahead of time.  I do not scheme of clever ways to chop up my law school investment, a decidedly poor decision in retrospect, and re-sell the chunks to unsuspecting retirees as a 'hot' derivative investment.  Nor did I treat my education with frivolity.  I worked diligently and, when all was said and done, graduated with a 'good' GPA.  Mind you, I did not accumulate an 'excellent' GPA, but nor did I attain an 'average' GPA.  So what the hell bubba?  "Sorry son, the market just isn't good right now" and "We'd love to hire you, but there simply isn't space now," are tired and uncreative responses at best and serve, like an amuse bouche to a habitual overeater, to cause more aggravation than comfort. 

Now, you may be thinking...this little asshole has had every opportunity and is part of this 'new' generation that can't deal with criticism, shutters at red marks on his 'wittle' papers, and needs constant self-esteem boosters.  Well, I assure you, I am one of these crybabies.  Furthermore, if you have the testicular fortitude to pass judgment so quickly, YOU are probably 'the asshole' in addition to being an ignorant jerk.  I am not skulking around my parent's basement, playing whatever the newest version of HALO may be, stoned, and lamenting the lack of opportunities out there.  I was out of the house at 17, and working and paying for school at 19. 

So, to all of those bitter and aging baby boomers writing articles chock full of blanket statements misdirected at all, not just the deserving members of my generation, I have to tell you, get with the program.  These statements are particularly frustrating to those of us busting our asses, daily, to achieve a better life and repair the damages we’ve inherited.  Or worse yet, to those of you speaking derogatorily and directly to my face about how much worse you had it than we did, and how your parents had to walk to school, up hill, both ways, in the snow, do your research.  Every generation has burdens to bare, and there are those of us, yes, we still exist, that go out and work hard, and then come home and work more.  Just because we didn't have to cross the Atlantic and defeat the evil Hunnic Hordes it certainly does not mean we're a bunch of lazy dullards. 

True, we didn't have to rally as a Nation, donating our bicycles and school bells in the interest of smelting for more tanks, but keep in mind, we also didn't load our food full of carcinogenic chemicals in the interest of science (including the introduction of ‘formula’ as a sub-par source of nutrition for babies as a replacement rather than an alternative), drive super-sized, gas guzzling vehicles around for fun, and create a sub-urban sprawl that contributes to grid-lock, road-rage, global warming, the decrease of community and convivial living, and a host of other ecological, physical, and psychic degradation.  My apologies for the digression, but how the hell are we supposed to get along with the world if we can't contain the urge to bitch about successive generations, your offspring, and the problems they inherit and according to many, seem to exacerbate?

So, let's get back to the original issue at hand, shall we?  Yes, that is correct, big business and government are the two biggest perpetrators of thievery and deception.  Don't go getting all soft on me now either, because Government and Business ARE apparently, have either shit where their brains should be or think that we do, you know it, I know it, and they know it.  Of course, they know it.  How can you operate, in the wide expanse of the public eye, with impunity, after conducting your business as a thief?  Perhaps we should ask Dick Cheney, the biggest and most amoral asshole of them all.  This man was the previous CEO and Chairman of the Board at Halliburton and continues to act as shareholder in Halliburton, and the Halliburton subsidiary KBR.  What do you think his honest response would be, if asked about his active participation in war profiteering and his continued perpetration in businesses that contribute to the degradation of our ecology, military, and society?  I would suspect it would go a little something like this...

"Well bubba, I make more money from war-profiteering than I ever did from oil, and an obscene amount more than from government.  Keep in mind however, that by serving in a multitude of capacities for the U.S. Government under Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, then under his son, W., my ability to schmooze and ingratiate myself with law makers, lobbyists, energy executives, mercenaries and even fucking Saudi princes, has proved more lucrative than a real human heart could even handle, that is why I got this little machine to pump cold fucking blood through my blackened, copper veins.  Fuck yes, I am the man." 

Well, without getting into a string of citations and any greater detail as to the evil that men are capable of and, in fact, do against their own fellow humans, I suppose we should discuss the act of ‘doing business.’  Moreover, we should ask how someone as brazen as Cheney and creatures of his ilk, have been able to and will with certainty continue to pretend to dupe, a Country of millions that should be smart enough to prevent this.

First, Goldman Sachs, Chase, AIG, Bernie Maddoff and every other god damn financial institution that sanctions, and until recently, overtly encouraged the pilfering of profits from millions of unsuspecting investors are those that are ‘doing business.’  I say until recently, but little has actually changed for the better since our Country has succumbed to this Depression, despite so-called reformatory legislation and public outrage (both which seem uncoordinated and ineffective).  While many families have lost their homes (some of which should never have been mortgaged in the first place, particularly those second and third homes) it would seem that most financial institutions are simply now conducting themselves as irresponsibly as ever, yet just less conspicuously and offensively with our money. 

For an example of this irresponsible conduct, we needn’t look farther than the credit cards in your wallet or the mortgagee of your house (A mortgagee is the person that loans money, if you didn’t know, I didn’t always).  If you have a Chase card or a Chase mortgage, you bank with an entity that was provided with $25 Billion (with a ‘B’) of ‘Bailout’ money in October 2008.   What did Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase, do with all of that sweet capital?  Well, such a benevolent and kind man surely must have patriotically and dutifully loaned out government provided money in the form of personal loans and mortgages, at a decent rate, to thousands of homeowners.  Such a policy would create a fervently loyal base of future capital by way of families that would continue to bank with Chase for generations, choosing the institution because Chase came through for them in their darkest time of need.  Right?  Fuck no!  Chase took that money to recoup from their purchase of Washington Mutual merely a month prior.  Treasury Secretary Paulson in his infinite wisdom essentially gave Chase a quarter of a trillion dollars in liquidity to do just that.  Here is little timeline that will blow your mind and demonstrate how quickly the Business and Government can make something happen when they want to, not like reducing or eliminating homelessness, improving education, or curing cancer, but just making mo’ money.  Keep in mind the criminal term for this is collusion after the fact.

January 2004- Chase purchases Bank One. Then Bank One CEO Jamie Dimon agrees to play second fiddle to William Harrison, in the interim, but not forever.  I only mention this little blip on the time line to demonstrate the absurdity of the now well-established maxim ‘too big to fail.’  The Securities and Exchange Commission was founded to combat the very idea of ‘too big to fail,’ yet did nothing to prevent further consolidation of an industry whose very existence has mutated to screw any non-institutional investor, i.e., anything but the rich.  Nice!

September 25, 2008 – Chase purchases Washington Mutual (just after WaMu’s merger with Bear Sterns), well into the swing of the Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis and just five business days before Congress passes the ‘Bailout.’  If you think that Chase was unaware that this bill was about to be passed into law then you are a naïve dumb ass.  They pay lobbyists to do make ‘things’ like this happen and were ‘banking’ on it.  Wink! Wink!

October 3, 2008- Congress passes the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.  You and I know this as the Bailout and like you and I, that this was even considered as an option let alone put into practice infuriates any person who isn’t in banking, rich, non-lobotomized, and/or any combination of the three.  Pundits argue, ad-nauseum, two positions.  The Republicans argue that 800 Billion was too much, Democrats, not enough.  I argue that if we had distributed this to the middle class, we would have spent it on big ticket items and houses, that we could afford, or pay off our mortgages and kept our economy afloat.  I don’t have a whole helluva lot of support, save common sense, but neither do many of the talking heads that add their two cents on this issue.  Hell, think about Frank Mankaiewicz, McGovern’s Aide on the campaign trail in ’72, where he described Dr. Thompson’s account as “the most accurate, and least factual, account of the campaign.”  A pissed off rant from the soul of an everyman sometimes has more credence than all of the sanctioned bullshit purveyed by the alleged experts.  I guess that is my point here.

Anyway, while I agree that there is no such thing as a victimless crime, in this case, as most other circumstances, everyone is a little guilty.  Investors need to recognize that they need to educate themselves and/or hire account managers they know and trust and/or shut the fuck up when they lose their nest egg.  Yes, this is unfair, but as I have heard it over and over, from my elders, they can hear it from me now.  Life is not fair.  Jews and Catholics and Gays and Gypsies were gassed.   Nagasaki and Hiroshima incinerated.  Kerrigan got her leg whacked, ending her Olympic Dreams.  Maddoff stole your money.  I owe a shit ton for a high-end doctorate in a field that I cannot secure employment in.  They keep making Sex and The City drivel.  Shit happens!  It always has happened, and always will happen.  If you are still breathing when your dream ends, you still have to get up and go to work.   

Furthermore, in many cases, the financial peons (meaning the professional institutional investors, not small time individual investors myself and you) in this game, the everyday traders, analysts, brokers, and managers are, while complicit and guilty as hell, generally ignorant of the broader ramifications of their actions.  Or so they would have us believe.  Like a loyal soldier, these men and women do what is asked of them.  They conduct their business in a haze of self-imposed ignorance, because they get paid to.  This environment of plausible deniability is perhaps the most egregious offense against the American people. Most of these traders get paid a lot more than you or I (and conduct themselves more inappropriately as well), and in the rare chance that these people are savvy enough to catch aberrations in the data or notice that somebody, somewhere, is getting fucked by their credit-swap derivatives and mortgage swaps, they don’t say a thing because they don’t want to sell their Mercedes or have to do without that 40” Toshiba flat screen mounted in their bathroom, because taking a shit without CNN would mean they’d have to go back to monitoring tickers on their blackberry, and that simply will not do. 

This current economic disaster is the stuff of nightmares.  I find all of our behavior abhorrent and further discussion of the matter, at this point, sickens me.  Here is my suggestion, and it may not be the best, but it is what I am going to do.  I am going to get rid of all of the ‘stuff’ that I have.  ‘Stuff’ that I should have never wasted money on in the first place.  I don’t want it, I don’t need it, it reminds me of the fallibility and uselessness of the excess that got us all into this mess in the first place, and I want it gone.  What I can’t sell for money, money to save in an effort to eventually found a business and/or secure employment that I actually care about, I will leave in my alley for hoarders, the needy, or scrappers.  The knick-knacks in my house serve as constant reminders of a time when I should have saved, but spent, and that makes me embarrassed and sad, so why keep them. 

In our house, we have reduced our consumption to nearly nothing, save for food and music and camera gear, the things that we care deeply about or actually need to survive.  We fix our clothing and reuse almost everything that comes into our house.  The most important thing that we have done, and what I am most proud of, is our absolute dissolution of any non-essential debt (if you can call student loans non-essential, I am not so sure anymore).  We owe nothing on our credit cards and have only a house note, a car note, and student loans.  While the student loans are significant, we revel in the fact that we are aggressively repaying them.  Hot damn boy, now it is a game to us. 

So, while I am angered to no end, particularly at the Government (both the Republican and Democratic clowns, though the religious right puts a deeper shiver in my bones) and Big Business for taking this Bailout, I am just going to stop giving them money.  They don’t need my money and I don’t need to buy garbage on credit for no good goddamn reason.  I don’t need a bigger house or a Mercedes or Armani pants.  That is all bullshit.  What I really need are my good friends and family, a nice bottle of wine, great music, a solid community, wholesome foods, a bicycle to ride, and expanding personal, and communal, knowledge.  Most of those things are free or relatively inexpensive or eventually pay for themselves.  Furthermore, if I don’t have the cash to buy ‘stuff,’ I don’t.  I won’t extend a line of credit to buy something I want, not need. 

While I recognize that I may be better off the some, it is important that we all have the ability to cut out some waste in some aspect of our lives.  If you want to show your disgust with Government and Big Business, hit em’ where it hurts the most.  Don’t give them any money and vote for Libertarians, Greens, and Independents.  Those alternative parties might not have the first idea about what the hell they are doing, but it is abundantly clear that incumbents either don’t know what the hell they are doing, or don’t give a shit if we know they are screwing us.  Cut up all of your credit cards except the one with the lowest rate for use in only dire emergencies.  That is the real revolution and a real solution to this depression.  Be creative, not consumptive and stop wasting time and money on garbage.

The cost of mediocrity and ignorance on our culture is expanding like our deficit!

As I walk my dog down my local boulevard, what I believe to be an idyllic and verdant symbol of metropolitan peacefulness and our fictional bastion from an otherwise maddening city, I am generally able to decompress from the stresses of urban living. We, the dog and I, stroll leisurely through the tree-lined grassy knolls and even sometimes cruise down the sidewalk. Granted, the constant hum of dysfunctional mufflers and the rattle of loose car bolts further agitated by over-cranked reggae-ton, tends to snap the senses back into the City, but only if either of us is feeling particularly anxious. Nevertheless, we take our walks, our physical meditations, at least once a week. She, the dog, seems to enjoy our Zen exercises. I too, despite initial hesitation, am glad that I have made the effort, more often than not.

To provide a context for the debacle I am about to describe, I must explain how I came about the idea for this particular piece. I had just finished speaking to an old friend with whom I had not spoken in some six or seven years. He explained to me that he was skating around his home, fatter and older than all of the young skater boys with their girl hair and skinny pants. He jokingly said that he didn’t know whether to fuck em’ or fight em’. He regaled me with his tales of the years passed, drinking cheap beers, toiling at a bullshit job, and hating on everything. While he lamented that it sucked not being 16 anymore, being a curmudgeonly king of assholes and hating on everyone suited him just fine.

Immediately after hanging up the phone I picked up a copy of a local magazine and, turning randomly to a page, saw an advert for a band called "Kids These Days." Now I, still feeling the excitement and relative energy of a child, often forget that I am almost 34 years old. My friends seem to often forget this aspect of their personalities, but I haven't, and feel wiser and boyish for not having done so. I suspect retaining this youthful frivolity will serve my children well, should I have more than the one currently nearing the end of gestation. While this trait can sometimes be detrimental it is never so to the point of ever forsaking it in the interest of well-being and the avoidance of injury.

In either case, I don't fault kids these days as being any more rambunctious or disrespectful or irreverent, as a whole, than I, or my peers, were in days past. There are just more people, bombarded by more messages, and inundated with more media, full of more idiots. However, this is not to confuse the real issue. There are members of my generation who had dismal parents, or a lack of proper oversight, or just anyone who really gave a damn enough about them to smack the shit out of for the usual misbehavior. There have been humans with a similar lack of respect, absence of direction, and the inability to formulate a good model of behavior for time immemorial.

So, to state it directly, people that are assholes are likely begotten from assholes who were begotten from assholes. Either that or they are influenced by these people and don’t have a structure in place to dissuade them from associating with these types. We just tend to not notice such things until we, ourselves, graduate from that general life stage. For some of us, evolving takes a bit longer, or at least articulating that we have moved on takes more time. The benefits, however, and I can only speak for myself; typically deepen the understanding of what it means to, essentially, not be a jerk.

These traits of disrespect, animosity, and aggression will perpetuate until people begin to understand that if they conduct themselves with a sense of understanding and treat others with a modicum of respect, that the ignorant, rude, and brutish will slowly and without much fanfare, fall by the wayside for eternity. It is my hope that a rational and thorough discussion about the benefits and drawbacks about a particular course of action with my child should suffice, but I am never beyond issuing a stern ass-cracking should the situation demand it. The same principle should be used with the ogres of the world as a first option, at which time the iron fist in the velvet glove can then be employed, only resorting to projectiles and atoms when all else has been exhausted, but I digress.

With those sentiments established, the real story involves a rude, ignorant, young girl and my quelling an already diminished urge to immediate conflict. So, as I said, the dog and I were walking, approaching an intersection, and now stopping for the oncoming green-lit traffic. This is when I hear "motha-fucka." My bowed head lifted immediately, neck tensed, fist clenched, state of alertness, action-readiness. That the voice was female and young-ish was did not properly register in my initial mental procedure. I am always aware of my surroundings, always alert, always with a plan, likely a result of my youth. This constant awareness has trained my senses to be ready and flight is not often the initial response.

I realize that the voice was that of a young Latina, garbed in her white, short-sleeve, Catholic school, three-buttoned, polo-style shirt and excessively baggy navy-blue sweat pants. She looked like many young girls around the City, a young girl from a good, hard-working, immigrant family currently running with a set of degenerate, ingrate 'friends' that acted harder than they were from a sense of faux-bravado. A bravado learned from bullshit, rap music, modern rap music, with little message, promulgated by, similarly, a group of degenerate, fame hungry ingrates, themselves inflated with a faux-bravado, emulating kids from the streets that don't have shit. That was my initial stereotyping of this girl. If you say you don’t do the same thing you are lying and cannot be trusted. Everyone does this and this is partially how humans have survived for millennia.

The girl had not yet seen me, but I had seen her, sized her up, wondered what was happening, and knew how I would react if there were others around and a potential threatening issue afoot. My brow was already furrowed; muscle's of the upper corners of my mouth pulling up, instinctively, to show clenched teeth, demonstrating a readiness to throw down. As she walked through the intersection she glares at the driver directly to her right, the object of her ire. Apparently, the driver had stopped too close to the girl, ostensibly invading her personal space. The girl, on the phone and not paying attention, screamed at the driver, “motha-fucka." She then eloquently explained her outburst to the other conversant by stating, "some nigga just pissed me off."

As she finally notices me, re-directing her focus to the world around rather than the phone, she steps a little to the side. It was at this point that she became acutely aware of my obvious disdain. Unable to recall my exact mental state prior to being aggravated by this girl's toxicity, I presume that I was in a fairly relaxed mood. Now, angered, I howl down to my dog, without thinking and within ear shot of the girl, "what a piece of shit bitch she is, huh Yoshi?" Our young friend clearly disliked the comment, yet dared say nothing choosing to affect her faux-bravado selectively, and rarely with a citizen seemingly willing to dish back.

Now, I am not the hardest man in the world. I am certainly not in the business of picking fights with puerile girls. Moreover, I am not so stupid to pick fights with gangs of the ignorant and aggressive who are unable to regulate acceptable versus violent behavior. This is particularly so, given the fact that hordes of youth have taken to arming themselves and using those weapons with little, if any, regard for anything but their damaged feelings, already fragile from unstable environments, in many cases. Yes, this in our so-called civilized society. However, if presented with the opportunity to provide a life lesson to someone that may be rationally able to change their outlook, or at the very least, consider the ramifications of their actions, I'll do it, god damn right I will. We all should do such things.

This young girl made me abhor her, and I have said everything that she had before, only without her apparent apathy and aggression. My child is going to be riding public transportation, attending school, and a host of other daily activities with a range of people. These people are going to influence the way my child thinks, for good or poor. I am going to have to explain what these people say to my child.

This little girl, this ignorant jerk-off, is going to be something my child sees and hears. What shall I tell my child? I'll tell him the truth, that's what. The truth that ignorance is more pervasive that reasoned thought. I’ll tell him that, as Mark Twain stated, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” I’ll tell him that some people say "nigga" and "motha-fucka" as a matter of course. I'll have to explain those words, in every context, and every historical use. I'll have to explain the difference between "nigger" and "nigga." I'll have to explain "fuck" and "mother fucker" and what it means to tell somebody to "fuck off" and what "fucking" means. So, maybe I shouldn't be so upset by this girl, but this calm sentiment is a product of rational, clinical, multi-faceted thought, after the fact, not the instant guttural instinct or the moment. This I can assure you.

More importantly, anybody that uses these words hasn't the right to tell me that I am wrong, or insensitive, or whatever nonsense exists to retain license to a word and keep it from my lexicon. My usage of the words will be a pedagogical exercise of an informative and enlightening character, not an affront to cultural identity or a derogation of a person. To assume otherwise, in my opinion, is to suffer from the very ignorance I am trying to mitigate by identification and discussion.

What I find even more frightening, is that I will have to explain to my child, at an early age, the concept of aggression. I will have to teach my child that there are bullies, in schools, in governments, between nations, within families, and that wherever my child may wander danger may lurk. To omit such an inherent truth is a dis-service to my child and our youth.

As a child, I was bullied by scared, infantile, and lonely kids, older and bigger than myself. Their motives remain elusive to me, even some twenty years later. This conduct continued, unflaggingly, until I was unable to withstand the behavior any further at which point I lashed back in unmanageable rage. Of the four attackers, two lay on the floor, and a third pinned against the wall by my hand to his throat. The chronology of the event is still hazy. "Enough" said the fourth. They left the high school bathroom, bloodied. I left, resolving to never back down from anything. Subconsciously, I must have internalized those events and taken them with the utmost sincerity. I have experienced a number of physical conflicts since that time that have left me scarred, numb, broken in several places, and nearly arrested on one occasion. However, none of those scars are psychic, because I have learned how to deal with violence and aggression and fear and for these reasons cannot and will not abide it. This will be a lesson for my child.

Being able to defend himself must be a concern secondary to doing what is right in the face of difficult circumstances. One should not be proud of the ability to waylay drunken idiots, solely for the sake of doing so. What is paramount is that one strives to assist friends in defense of unwarranted aggression. I try to maintain, and speak up in favor of, my core principles even in the face of perceived embarrassment, injury, or of being the lone voice. Sometimes I fail in that endeavor. This may very well be my biggest regret in life. However, I am trying to do better and live up to this ideal and my wish is that my child will be even more successful than I in this respect. He will be unsuccessful in this endeavor unless I am totally honest with him, not just when it is convenient, but always. If I cannot do this, than I will have failed. We all will have.