I have frat-boy, white-hat-wearing friends who work on Wall Street. They’re laughing at us.
I went for dinner last night at a really expensive new shithole — don’t worry, I wasn’t paying.
I was having a reunion with friends from high school, none of whom were wearing white Ohio State hats because it was a Tuesday. Come Saturday night on 88th and Amsterdam, that’s sure to be rectified.
One of the guys in particular has no trouble treating his friends to expensive dinners; in 2010, his bonus was about 2X what I suspect to be Gavin’s total net worth. Doesn’t matter in terms of dinner anyway, because he can expense it.
They’re Wall Streeters. Bros. They have hella cool stories, like about how their investment banks have to stagger bonuses and obfuscate payments so that they don’t take hits in the court of public opinion. Not that anyone’s paying attention.
As outsiders, me and this other guy — a wannabe Asian Miyazaki-freak graphic designer — were the only two in this group of five who subsist on actual salaries and know exactly how much money is in our bank accounts.
I’ll tell ya: Watching Egypt and then watching these guys, it’s clear to me that American Democracy is dead.
Real America, of which I’m clearly not a part, is in a fucking depression. The guys who caused it are still living in the glory of the 1980s. Truth.
Here’s how Egyptians handled their society’s gross inequity: Every young person with legs went to the capitol and screamed until their president quit.
Us? Even if our poor were paying attention instead of watchin they stories, they couldn’t get all the way to our Capitol. It’s a big country, they can’t afford plane tickets and they can’t fit through bus doors.
In terms of power, our poor don’t exist. They’re invisible. To win elections, politicians need money and marketing, so lobbyists control government and there’s no way to stop them.
You know what — FUCK THAT. Maybe there is a way. I have my doubts that a situation this bad can be turned around, but I’m not going to tell my kids I sat by and watched their fucking country be hijacked by some overgrown date-rapist frat-boys who think they’re above the rest of humanity.
What can we do? How about:
1. ENERGIZE.
Get a fucking blog. Use Facebook. Use real life — grab someone at STARBUCKS for chrissakes — take every day to teach at least ONE person about the unprecedented inequity in our system.
2. ORGANIZE.
We have the same Social Media tools as Egypt! We invented them for fuck sakes. Build your own group of awareness, then use these same tools to connect to other groups: that’s how BIG groups of people are formed!
3. MOBILIZE.
Fucking MOVE! If we bring our asses to Washington DC — and believe me, we can rally more people than the hundred thousand that Egypt had — how can the world ignore us?
Yes: As you can tell, I’m just fucking with you.
I wouldn’t tell EVERY young person in the country this — in case there’s some minuscule chance of mass mobilization and someone actually making a difference — but I don’t mind telling 20,000 Street Carnage readers:
Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, I really and truly believe that this situation is utterly, utterly hopeless.
Here’s what I’m doing with my time, and what I’d advise you to do as well:
1. Work and try to have fun.
2. If you can’t get a job for more than a year, change careers and adjust your lifestyle.
3. Don’t have any expectations of the government: It won’t change, and will always keep our masses just healthy and safe enough not to revolt.
4. When the nuke terrorism comes in a few years, if you’re not killed by it, try to use it as the ultimate teacher of perspective: what a precious gift human life is.
After a martini last night, I had the balls to step to one of my high school friends at the table and ask him if he ever felt anything close to “guilt” based on everything that’s gone down.
“No offense, but… have you?”
He essentially told me that he didn’t have that problem, but that if I did, he was totally cool with me paying for my own dinner.
I said, Nah, I was just wondering.
Thanks for dinner, bro; cool story.
Follow Benjamin Leo on Twitter.
Ben Leo’s advice: “Get a fucking blog.”
Is this a 1996 archive edition?
“When the nuke terrorism comes in a few years, if you’re not killed by it, try to use it” to get laid, doy! [<--- I fixed it for you, ed.]
Watch out, Ben. If you keep veering toward sincerity and truth, Gavin’s gonna have to fire you.
so, that frat boy totally burned the shit out of your ass- hahaha!
hey for once a decent article.
good job
Thanks for the story bro. Cool dinner.
#1 he was being sarcastic. read it again
Fucking scared me.
sarcasm works great over the internet
@Droolius Pee. Seizure AKA “Let Me Make My Idiocy Perfectly Clear”: we know you’re anxious to comment and display your awesome wit, but maybe you should make some slight effort to first comprehend what you’re commenting on as in: dude, the “get a blog” suggestion was sarcasm. in fact Ben says it out loud that he’s “just fucking with you” about the blog bit. in fact, his unseriousness about the efficacy of blogging is central to an understanding of the entire post. but no, you were too anxious to blurt your crap, and we had to read it. to preserve your dignity, and to spare the future readers of this comment thread, Arv should delete both your comment and this one too.
Relax guys, it’s just Ty. He’s giving Ben a hard time because they’re butt-buddies.
Yeah, Ty kinda wishes.
i was with you up til you said you were being sarcastic. every time i’m around one of those boehner-type repukes and they dare start flapping about the unemployed, those with chronic health issues, etc…i make damn sure to go off on them. in the end, they can never intelligently defend their claims. they KNOW they’re wrong but get by one the silence of others. i might not be able to change things on a large scale but i sure as hell will not let them get away with their imbecilic narrative in my presence anymore.
p.s. you should’ve paid your tab and those with a price can never command respect.
Ben Leo’s advice: “Fucking MOVE! If we bring our asses to Washington DC…”
Don’t fucking move here, I gotta fucking LIVE here. All social activism has been relocated to the Twitter now, hence: @MLK_Jr.
————
[FYI: "Droolius Pee. Seizure" and "butt-buddies" made me laugh aloud at the coffee shop. It feels like springtime in the comments]
well all right then, but Ty coulda still troubled himself to try to say something funny. oh sorry I forgot that Ty & funny is an oxymoronic pairing
i think i wrote this in 5th grade, but i was serious
the picture of the frat boy at the Egyptian riot is freaking hilarious.
ty sux…arv sux…
Go pollinate yourself, flower child.
Hang on just crunching the numbers…carry the 4…multiply the Vice…gavin’s worth $5000!!!
Trolls trolling trolls across the SC bridge.
Hrmm, that was good.
one thing you can do is update who you respect / look up to / admire etc. i need some new heroes ive kind of got woody allen and ian mckaye but woodys banging his step daughter and ians still awesome but i feel like i need to move on in terms of role models.
i would say you should put / get yourself in a position of some kind of power, whether it be in pop culture, film, publishing, website, whatever it is, and then just sort of hang in there and wait for your opportunity to do something awesome who knows in five years post-event we may have the group of agitators in here stupid enough to launch some kind of braindead movement that with 4chan kicks off some blah blah blah activism etc
also social networking for political action / change would work much better for westerners like us if it less susceptible to sarcasm and restricted to activity-based membership groups, rather than say, posting a link to some activist page on your facebook wall in the vain hope that you’re spreading the knowledge to your family and friends can we reconvene this conversation im having with myself to another time i really need to go and do some work
Eh. There is a real damn good reason Americans aren’t going to rise up and revolt and have a revolution or what have you and I’m going to continue to sit in my office on Park getting bonuses for jerking off to hipster girls all day and THAT REASON is the fact that there are no stakes in the game for the “poor.” There’s nothing for the “poor” to win; their lives are actually fine. Yeah there’s gross income inequality in this country but it has nothing in common with Egypt. Being “poor” in this country doesn’t mean you’re hungry, it means your food is less healthy, but still really delicious. Being “poor” in this country doesn’t mean you walk 15 miles to work, it means your car is kinda shitty. And shitty means not that new and no one is going to have sex with you because you drive it. Being “poor” doesn’t mean not having a place to sleep, it means your house is sorta lame and kinda far away from work and God I just hate the commute. Ignoring the actual numbers on the bank statements, the difference in lifestyle between rich and poor in America is usually a difference of the brand of sandwich one eats and the cost of the alcohol one drinks. Boo hoo. The one facet of life where the rich really do have am unjust advantage over the poor is access to quality health care, and from what I read in the paper, they might actually be trying to change that around here. Until the American “poor” are actually starving in the streets, no one is going to give a shit about the rich and their power structure.
@Banker
it’s evident that you don’t actually know any truly poor, not to mention homeless, people.
wisconsin is just the beginning.
@ Banker
You kid yourself that the radius of your fucked-upness doesn’t extend around the entire globe. Your dead soul is starting to reek. The gasses of your decomposing conscience are starting to leak through your clenched sphinter: sqee–eeeak—k–k gahhh… very sexy! to a vulture, that is
Well, I do find his decomposition to be sexy. But then again I am a trashionable vulture. Don’t hate, I can’t help it.
Pretty PRETAY pretty good benny.
Also, Banker’s comments = pretty legit. Good day on SC, thanks.
Prettty pret-ayyyy
“Wisconsin is only the beginning.” Wisconsin is full of it. They have a riot on State St. every Hallowe’en, and a riot on Mifflin Street every Memorial Day for the kids. Try having a riot in Milwaukee.
The bro story was a lure.
wisconsin isn’t the beiging of anyhting. It’s the continuation of parasites thinking they deserve more and better than the riff raff who pay their salaries.
Sorry builders of americas future, we don’t get benefits you don’t get them. Don’t like it? quit
“Sorry builders of americas future, we don’t get benefits you don’t get them. Don’t like it? quit”
hey coward, why don’t you say that to the wall street bankers. you know, the ones who’ve got about 10,000x the (undeserved) benefits that you will never receive. people like you are fucking priceless. open your eyes, you stupid asshole, they’re playing people like you like a bunch dumb chimps and you continue to let them.
they are and so is the government. fuck both of them. Poeple are out of work and they are portesting their BENEFITS. it’s laughable. The Grey Poupon riots.
so are you proposing we trade the dwindling number of well-paid union workers our country now has for more ceos with bloated salaries, corrupt bankers driven by extreme levels of greed, and underpaid workers in the private sector?
you are fine with dragging working class wages further into the dirt while the cost of living continues to rise?
welcome to third world america.
working class? with those benefits? hardly. Let them learn what its like for the rest of us.
http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/terminal01/2010/8/24/13/cool-starry-bra-3480-1282670970-15.jpg
“working class? with those benefits? hardly. Let them learn what its like for the rest of us.”
that thing called the bigger picture? you’re missing it.
Kill the poor & eat the rich.
frat boys for life
dragler’s ‘thinking’ consists of applying a closed logic-loop to every circumstance. In that regard he’s like a doctrinaire Marxist or religious fundamentalist. There’s no use engaging him and trying to open his loop. Eventually the vicissitudes of living will abrade holes in his defensive thought-membrane and chaotic human reality will intrude and sweep him out of his current doctrinaire self-embarrassments, but in the meantime don’t waste your energy on the guy. He’s a mere thought-automaton for now.
what’s wrong with doctrineaire marxists and religious fundamentalists? Everyone has to be a moderate of some kind? You’re the one who needs to expand their loop or whatever.
The problem with rigid automatic thinking is that, in order to retain its ‘orderliness’ it excludes large swathes of actual reality. For example, you, dragler, were educated at a public school, yet you doctrinally oppose all publicly funded education and you assert a priori that it’s no good. In this way you’re akin to unca Clarence Thomas, who, having obtained his much of his educational opportunities via affirmative action, wishes to feel that he progressed soley upon his own merit, and is therefore affirmative action’s most ardent opponent. Or, if like doctrinaire marxists, how about like Stalin murdering the noble proletariat in the name of the noble proletariat.
Now, since “coherence is the great preservative of rationalistic sanity”, then we must remain vigilant not to find ourselves engaging in the “brilliant feats of explaining away” which rigid doctrinal thought demands.
Silly me, tho, againsty my own good advice, I’ve let myself be lured into talking to a robot. You’ll get no more response from me. Good Day.
When did I say all public schools were bad? There are plenty of public schools and other government run programs that are good. I am for doing away with the good ones AND the bad ones in favor of a voluntary/ non coercive system.
and How do you know Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have gotten into whatever college he got into without Affirmative Action? If he did he shouldn’t have. How can anyone justify discrimination on the basis of race? That’s what Affirmative action is.
I hope the Grey Poupon Riots are a success and these public employees can get their rolls royce health plans and raises while the rest of us starve and die. THat will be justice accroding to a guy who is finished talking to me.
Dragler are this other guy are the same person or the two most boring people on the planet. Here’s a joke in case you’re still reading:
Guy walks into a dark basement,
“and How do you know Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have gotten into whatever college he got into without Affirmative Action?”
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19950626&slug=2128294
At least I don’t worship Henry Kissinger like that goiter faced dummy Taeil.
ay yo ima get to bloggin right now
imagine an american riot.
it would last less then 10 minutes. fat out of shape video game playing, football watching slugs would need a nap.
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