This country has developed an ungodly obsession with zombies over the past few years. I haven't a solid idea why. Of course, in this era of 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead,Resident Evil, and Zombieland, the zombie archetype-if there is indeed such a thing-is that of a human being turned rabid, having sacrificed soul, thought-but not life-through succumbing to some kind of horrific disease (mad cow-related or pharmaceutical experiment or otherwise), not the George Romero, Night of the Living Dead type that I have always associated with the word "zombie"-that of a lifeless hulk, doing nothing but trudging along at a slow pace, attempting to sate an inexplicable urge to destroy the living.
Either way, there are actually people-mostly the nutty survivalist types who look like that couple from Tremors, but increasingly more and more "ordinary" individuals-who are actively making preparations of some kind to help them fend off the writhing masses that will be the centerpiece of this "zombie apocalypse" that is supposedly going to rain down upon us in the near future.
I hate to break it to you, but the apocalypse is not coming-it has already begun. It started in a small section of Manhattan Island on September 17th. And while some, humorously, have actually dressed the part of the zombie, they prefer not to use that name to describe themselves. They call themselves the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.
I know you've probably guessed by now that the zombies I'm discussing are neither dead or diseased. They don't have any (apparent) desire to feed on human flesh or human brains. If you know me at all, you know I think this whole "zombie" thing, in either variation, is utter nonsense. The only way in my mind for humanity to suffer anything of that sort is through an act of God (or, worse yet, an act of the Devil, who seems to have a taste in cruel jokes).
But, that still leaves our "zombies" with two things they do have in common with their fictitious counterparts: the urge to destroy, and the tendency to spread.
Like any stereotypical heartless, money-grubbing, puppy-kicking Republican, I hold a certain degree of contempt towards left-wing protesters. Not because they're protesting-I'd like to think I have the courage of conviction to not bemoan a person because they are protesting-as I recall, it was a right thought so important by our Founding Fathers that they protected it with the First Amendment to the Constitution (along with speech and religion). And I shouldn't throw stones at protesters simply because they're in a protest movement-after all, I've publicly identified myself as a member of the nation's other pre-eminent protest movement. Rather, I protest the protesters on rational grounds-the way they carry out their protest, and why they're protesting.
Firstly, the way Occupy Wall Street has "done their thing"-I dislike it because it's far too typical of left-wing protests. The left may still have the edge over the right in "organizing" sheer numbers, but I'd deign to call this protest organized. In New York City and almost every other city this disease of a movement has spread to, it's a disorganized mess of human beings, shouting incoherent slogans, dressing as robbers, zombies, and other characters from some Democrat cosplay menagerie, blocking traffic and pedestrians, and in general just being a nuisance and doing things that get their participants arrested. It's the same thing that plagued the violent protests at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago and the idiotic protest against the World Trade Organization up here in Seattle at the close of the 1990s.
More important is the protest. Occupy Wall Street brazenly claims to both represent 99% of Americans and to be inspired by the "Arab Spring" movements that deposed dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, and most recently in Libya. They are calling for a fundamental change to American economic culture. And they, in effect, are placing all of the blame for the nation's economic woes squarely on "Wall Street"-meaning big corporations-and, whether they realize it or not, all businesses.
The ignorance of it is both woeful and astounding.
I am by no means absolving Wall Street or big businesses of anything and everything-corruption in the American corporate world is well-established and well-documented. And more than a few of the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement no doubt have a legitimate beef because of this. But, to those precious few souls, I must implore you-abandon the movement, because you are focusing your anger and pressure in the wrong direction.
The Tea Party has also acknowledged corruption in big business. Perhaps the movement's most prominent spokesperson, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has said so several times in speaking engagements this year. But, unlike Occupy Wall Street (and in spite of her opponents' repeated accusations if idiocy), Mrs. Palin correctly identified the source of the problem-government intervention in the free market.
Which is why I find myself with a growing dislike of the Occupy Wall Street movement. For every ten frustrated working class joes who are venting their anger about the system, there are ten thousand various others-college-age ingrates, hipsters, punks, opportunists-who are playing the role of the useful idiot.
"Useful idiot" is a term coined by Vladimir Lenin, leader of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, to describe Westerners-Americans in particular (John Reed comes to mind) who through their vocal advocacy of the Communist revolution and its aims, assisted Lenin and his ilk by giving the Communist movement an air of legitimacy.* The majority of the protesters (and their prominent supporters-I'm talking to you, Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Roseanne Barr, Alec Baldwin, George Soros, Radiohead (note that all the previously mentioned are all rather wealthy in their own right-and I never saw what the big deal about Radiohead was, anyway)) are fulfilling this same role. What on Earth am I rambling about? I have come to the conclusion that Occupy Wall Street is less of a protest against corporate greed and really more of a shill to turn the United States into a nation with a socialist economy.
This belief is not merely political bandstanding-one of the protest's primary organizers is an group called Adbusters, which publishes a magazine of the same name. This group is, without question, one of the most prominent anti-capitalist and anti-free market organizations in the United States. A disconcerting number of protesters, when they're not obstructing traffic, are holding signs that are variously advocating either giving a Communist or Socialist government a go here in America, or, failing that, at least levying a profanely high tax on "the rich" (one such sign called for a 90% tax rate on the top one percent).
Let that last one sink in for a minute. Basically, this idea suggests that, as an American citizen, if you are making more than a certain (arbitrary) amount of money in any given year, ninety percent of everything above that will be taken away. That is not taxation. That is theft. Pure and simple. Taking something from someone without their consent is a crime; it makes no difference if the purse you're snatching was taken from someone with one dolar or one hundred million.
This is where the zombie thing comes back into the equation-well, specifically the "urge to destroy" aspect of it. I hope that if any of these people occupying the business districts of cities across the nation were to actually stop and reflect on what they're doing, they would recoil in horror. It frightens me that this many people are going to let their envy and dislike of the success of others when they themselves are experiencing hard times (if not outright failure) get the better of them. Yes, the system is broken. I'd be an idiot to dispute that with you. But your anger should not be focused on the men in Brooks Brothers suits heading to the skyscrapers. It needs to be focused on Washington, D.C. instead.
You cannot make the current situation better by taxing the wealthy into a virtual oblivion. You (and I) have absolutely no right to walk up to anybody, ask them what they make, and based on their answer, arbitrarily determine that they "have made enough money" and then proceed, by using the force of law, to take away that which is rightfully theirs. It is not in the Bible. It is not in the Ten Commandments God handed to Moses. It is not in our Constitution, and it is not in any document governing international law. Anything you can cite is probably false. The idea behind the free market is that you are free to make (or lose) as much money as you desire. That a business executive with a Fortune 500 company has a multi-million dollar salary or the entrepreneur down the street has managed to keep his standard of living at low millionaire level does not mean that they took that money from you. If you want it so bad, you have to get up off your ass and get it yourself. The way you do that, obviously, is to get a job. Obviously, they're aren't a lot at the moment. But the reason why they've dried up is not because some Gilded Age caricatures that the government and the mainstream media (not to mention Occupy Wall Street's organizers and sponsors) are trying to convince us the wealthy in America all seem to be are trying to pad their expensive lifestyles. It's because a lot of people under the Capitol Dome and other government buildings have it in their heads that they can play God with both the economy and with other aspects of American life that never were (and were never intended to be) under their jurisdiction. The government played a game they weren't allowed to play, and sent the economy into the tubes.
Where do "the rich" and the corporations come into this? When the government decides it's going to start picking who wins and who loses in the American marketplace, everyone and anyone who has the money to do so will do everything they can to ensure that they aren't on the losing side. In effect, the corporations participating in this crony capitalism aren't trying to mess with "the little man", as seems to be the common conception-they're simply exploiting an opportunity.
Getting back to that 90% tax on the rich-that's a damning thing in it's own right, because if such a confiscatory rate were actually levied on a national level, it would sow the seeds for communist upheaval. For a short time, the working class would be sated by having the powers that be appeal to their envy by taxing the bejeezus out of whoever makes enough money to be "rich" this week. Those who have enough money left over from this fiscal rape will promptly either hide it or take it and leave the country. This would lead to an economic disaster: the wealthy-who supposedly take all of our money and pay no taxes (statistics from the IRS and other auditing agencies and anyone else with the time and patience to plow through reams of mind-numbing tax data have repeatedly established that this assertion is nonsense-the top one percent pay approximately 35% of all taxes) use the majority of the money that they and their evil, greedy, and immoral corporations make to create jobs. The idea that all the money a corporation makes goes into the pockets of it's board members is asinine-almost all of it goes to pay the= salaries of somebody (directly or indirectly) or to pay dividends to stockholders. And odds are you hold stock, too. No, you say? Ever heard of a 401(k)? The way that generates money for retirement is through investing in corporations. I don't know about you, but if I gave money in any amount to someone or some company for their financial livelihood, unless I had given it as a gift, I would expect a return on my investment. You lose the money you're putting into those companies if you're trying to tax them to death because it seems like they've got cash and you don't. So-the wealthy who are generating the capital necessary to create the jobs you hunt for so you can make your living will remove what they can because the system-which, in our case, is ultimately We the People-have sent them the message that we despise their success so much that we'll take away what they're earning and justify it with a legal form of "because f*** you, that's why."
Long and short of it is, what far too many affiliated with Occupy Wall Street are suggesting will destroy the economy by bleeding the capital dry and eliminating the ability to create jobs with it. So, what about all those people who still don't have a job even though we've snatched all this windfall? No doubt all that money will be funneled into various government programs specifically designed to take care of these people and give them peace of mind. And when that money disappears shortly afterward, due to the fact that the people that have been trusted to be the custodians of this ill-gotten capital have demonstrated for 80 years that they cannot budget it to save their lives, the masses will have nobody left to turn on and blame but those politicians. When this happens in a country, this tends to be the stage where things get violent. Should it ever get to that point in America-God forbid-this is where we officially would become a communist nation. And nobody will be around to appreciate the irony that we actually went Bolshevik the moment we started levying that godforsaken tax.
So what am I going on about? You cannot fix a broken market by going socialist. I don't know why so many people participating in these protests think this is a good idea, because if anybody has studied the 20th Century with anything more than the passing interest typical of the history and civics classes in high school, we have had multiple opportunities to observe a socialist system in action-Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, and as of late Venezuela, to give examples-and the one large constant with all these examples of implementation is that it does not work. People starve, the economy stagnates, the brain drains (so to speak), and the government only grows more corrupt and powerful. So why in God's name would we want to do that here!?
Time and time again, when I've gotten on my high horse about this issue, I have cited envy as the root cause of this anger and this problem. It's human nature to dislike those who have when you have not. We are reminded-rightfully-that the more ambitious and more successful (I refuse to use "more fortunate" because it implies that independent wealth is an accident) have a moral obligation to help those who are in need. But taking from the rich simply because you are poor doesn't fix the situation. All it does is move money around and, more importantly, disincentivizes working to improve your condition. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a surefire recipe for economic stagnation.
Another thing about success is it's relationship with failure. You cannot have success without failure at some other point in the constellation. That's the nature of the game. When we see other's success, we tend to be reminded of our failures. Everyone hates that feeling. I know I do. The worst feeling in the world to me is that sensation after I have failed at an endeavor I found meaningful-it sucks. But I do not go trying to mess up an outside entity I can place the blame on. I resolve to try harder and work smarter so I succeed next time. Sometimes it comes easily. Most times it doesn't. But when it does come, the success tastes that much sweeter.
Now think about how cruel and selfish it is to deny someone that to fulfill a selfish greed born of repeated failure, and you recognize the problem with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and why I have spoken out against it.
One more thing...I also detest this stupid "99%" claim they make. I'm technically part of that "99%"-I'm a young high school graduate in the ten percent tax rate bracket. Factoring out the money both the federal government and the State of California will take from me, I will be lucky to make approximately $26,500 this year. But I have no outstanding debts. I don't spend my money on alcohol, tobacco, or recreational drugs. Most of the things I have to entertain myself I own outright. I am by no means rich. But I sure as hell don't consider myself poor by any standard. Think about that the next time you make another ignorant claim to speak for me and the rest of the 99%, OWS.
Come to think of it, America's obsession with a zombie apocalypse suddenly makes a great deal of sense. It would be a hell of a lot easier to deal with.
*(I find it interesting that Lenin chose to use the word "idiot." It implies that the Godfather of Communist insurrection himself knew that the ideology he was propagating was a false promise.)
Originally published on 8 October 2011.
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