There used to be an old joke when I was growing up that went like this – “What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.” Sometimes the number varied from a few hundred to a 10,000. Either way, the joke was we have too many lawyers in this country and they’re not helping us.
In the movie Liar Liar, the secretary to the character played by Jim Carrey says her friend got sued by a burglar who broke through a skylight and cut himself on a kitchen knife that had been left on a counter. Attorneys were obsessed with the all-mighty dollar many had gone into politics, either becoming legislators themselves or through lobbying, to make things better for themselves. It had gotten so bad that a precursor to the Make My Day/Stand Your Ground laws was to keep people safe from wrongful death and dismemberment lawsuits in the event they harm or kill someone in the event of a home invasion or burglary.
Lawyers have been replaced in the 20th Century by billionaires, a notion that seemed impossibler 30-40 years ago. Mainly, it was because we were told they were captains of industry and they had toiled overtime making risky deals. But that wasn’t true. In the 1980s, corporate raiders like T. Boone Pickens and to a lesser extent Donald J. Trump functioned more like leeches, sucking dry what the could and leaving the rest of us to try to recover.
The workplace became more of a toxic, volatile environment. Many Gen Xers who had watched their parents enjoy the benefits of being raised in the post-WWII environment hit the brick wall of reality. The Reagan Administration and years of deregulation had made it harder for them that many weren’t enjoying the weekends at the lake or the ski trips their parents had. (Some of us were left with our grandparents or relatives while our parents enjoyed these getaways, too.)
By the end of the 20th Century, Gen Xers found themselves struggling a lot to make ends meet with our Boomer elders telling us we have a bad attitude and need to give a little more effort. We watched as Princess Diana was killed in a car wreck in Paris and felt sorry for Prince William and Harry. We watched domestic terrorism unfold in the 1990s with the World Trade Center bombins, the Olympics Centennial Park bombing in Atlanta (where some of my fellow classmates were) and abortion clinics were bombed and school shootings became more common.
Then, 9/11 happened and the country went into two wars. School shootings got worse. The Great Recession happened and the whole world felt it. Millennials who had grown up in the 1980s and 1990s, now looking to enter the real world were hit with an even bigger reality – they may have to stay living with their parents well into their 20s. Student loan debt increased. Many 20-somethings found themselves with degrees that weren’t the paper they were printed on. Worse, they had to suffer the embarrassment of living with their parents after the freedom of college.
Following Hurricane Katrina, we saw the worst of the worst. People were forced to abandoned their loved ones, who had died, and there homes to go to the Superdome which made Thunderdome seem like Club Med. Spike Lee did a documentary on HBO years ago and a man recalls having to place a sheet on his dead mother and leave her outside like she’s garbage. At the same time, people wanted to wag their finger at us and tell us it wasn’t President Bush’s fault. But “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie!” backfired and for once, Kanye West was right when he said Bush doesn’t care about black people.
And then, we all discovered how really racist the people who we grew up around were when Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. It seemed like we were finally moving forward in the world. But we were told how disrespectful it was to John McCain, a Vietnam war veteran, to vote for a man who was as someone told me, an “Islamo-Fascist.” People called him a Communist. But they really wanted to call him some other words. An older woman I met at a LGBTQIA organization said the eastern section of Oklahoma where I live used to vote mostly Democrat until Obama was elected President.
The ugliness got worse under the Obama Administration as more and more Boomers and Greatest Generation people along with fellow Gen Xers voiced their displeasure at an administration that saved America from the brink of collapse. Even Bill Maher, who has turned more conservative in his later years, said we’d be on the barter system under McCain. But we all knew what people really meant about Obama. A black man had been elected President and there was a lot of people in America who didn’t feel this was right.
Violence and civil unrest grew from racist groups. For the first time since the 1991 incident in which Rodney King was beaten by LAPD officers, Americans were seeing how racists (and brutal) law enforcement is. Treyvon Martin was gunned down. He shouldn’t have been wearing a hoodie, they said. Tamir Rice was gunned down by police. He should’ve have been playing with a toy gun, they said. Eric Garner was choked to death for illegally selling cigarettes. He broke the law, they said.
Six-year-olds are gunned down at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. The response from the right was to criticize how Obama said “Newton” instead of “Newtown,” even though I can’t find the video. Right-wing media told us that is wasn’t true. They used the massacre to push an agenda that it was all staged. Then, Dylann Roof kills nine black people in 2015 at a church in Charleston, S.C. He gets Burger King and people saying he had an aversion to Christianity. Then, 49 people are killed at The Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, with an additional 53 injured. No sympathies but a lot of high-fives and smiles in private.
Why? Because it appeared that this country was going to elect Trump. Yes, Trump told them all it was safe to be a bigot and prejudice now. Black lives don’t matter. All lives don’t matter. White lives only matter. More importantly, white rich lives matter. So, Americans for the most part elected this asshole on a technicality that was supposed to keep people like him out of office. The economy got worse under Trump as he used it to change the tax laws on the books to make him and others richer.
We paid for his expensive trips to his own resorts and while he played golf and his family made a fortune. It was far worse than Reagan, because at least Reagan attempted to show they he gave a fuck for the media. Trump didn’t. He’s a narcissisist and this was feeding his ego. You don’t serve an alcoholic a drink. This wasn’t just spreading gasoline on a fire. This was napalming a forest fire.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit in the winter of 2020. People lost their jobs. Some people lost their lives. The country became even more divided. Conservatives and Trumpsters laughed in the faces of those who lost their friends and loved ones. More and more people became wealthy because of it. The police went out of control pushing elderly men down that they suffered severe injuries. Kyle Rittenhouse traveled across state lines and killed people and he was allowed to walk free. A black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was shot while jogging by three white men and the D.A. initially refused to prosecute. George Floyd was killed for using a counterfeit bill with some speculation he didn’t know it was even a counterfeit. Breonna Taylor was killed while sleeping from a raid.
America was falling apart and after we got rid of Trump at the election, his followers couldn’t have it. For the first time in America history, there was an insurrection coup attempt at the national level. Again, we were told this wasn’t true and we should care more about poor Ashli Babbitt who was killed by police. Now, they care about people being killed by police, when it’s a white person. Of course, everything Babbitt did would’ve gotten her shot a dozen times over if she was black. And people like Babbitt would’ve been okay with it because she shouldn’t have been there.
Corporate greed got worse over the last couple years as gas prices rose, food prices rose and medication prices are still out of control. McDonalds and Burger King, as well as other fast food restaurants, which used to be the go-to places when you didn’t have much money, are no more expensive than ever. But let’s criticize the people who work at these places for making more money than say a local firefighter. I tried to explain this to some people that it’s not McDonald’s but the system and their response was as expected. “Maybe you should call Burger King next time there is a fire,” they said.
So many people in the food services, retail services and public service area in general were treated so badly during the pandemic they walked off their jobs. Remember that Subway worker in Texas who was violently sick and vomiting. She was told if she left work she would be fired. Thankfully, other people came to her defense and told those on-line to not eat there. This is the reality most Gen Xers, Millennials and now Gen Zers face as they are adults.
It’s not all the Boomers’ fault. They were fed the same line of bullshit too. They just ate it up because it tasted better. And maybe the bullshit was mixed in with the better foods so it didn’t taste bad. But they still ate it. Sadly, it created the awful world we’re in now.
Moms for Liberty are destroying school districts. Republican leaders are passing outrageous legislation, in some part because they want the more conservative U.S. Supreme Court to hear it, so they can officially make it law. They’re trying to limit voting, birth control, womens rights, LGBTQIA rights, just about everything they can that doesn’t affect white heterosexual men.
Therefore, when news broke earlier this week, that a bunch of rich people had been lost in a submersible called the OceanGate Titan on a trip to view the RMS Titanic located about 12,500 feet (or two and a half miles) below the surface leverl of the North Atlantic Ocean, a lot of people really didn’t care. I mean, accidents happen. When John F. Kennedy Jr. and his spouse, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy died in 1999 in a plane crash, it was sad. When Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, and their friends were killed in a helicopter crash in January of 2020, it was sad. (And let’s not forget the sheriff deputies responding took pictures and shared them, if you want to really talk about disrespect and lack of compassion.)
We can be sympathetic and compassionate to celebrities who die from accidents. Mainly, it’s because people die a lot from car crashes, plane and helicopter crashes and even boating accidents. So, the law of probability that a celebrity will die in one of them is likely. However, no one and I mean no one, but rich people are lining up to travel to extreme depths to view a watery graveyard. People aren’t taking voyages underwater at Pearl Harbor to view the USS Arizona.
Also, word got out that the submersible wasn’t safe. No shit, Sherlock. It look like someone had used a huge propane tank. Also, they were using a Logitech controller to pilot it. And the Titan had to be bolted from the outside. This doesn’t sound like a safe piece of machinery. It reminds me of the old stories you’d hear about people going over Niagara Falls in water barrels.
And people on the Internet felt about the same way, making memes and cracking jokes. But to be honest for a generation or two that was raised from parents who got mad at us if we were seriously injured and told us to “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” what do you expect? On behalf of everyone who didn’t feel as bad as we were “expected,” excuse the fuck out of me.
They paid $250,000 to go on this trip. That’s more money (before taxes) than I made combined working eight years at the Wagoner Tribune. It’s because we as a society have been told to lick the boots of those who make a lot of money. The rich get richer and the poor don’t get a fucking thing but taking it up the ass. And with a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck, you expect us to be sympathetic? Someone online said $250,000 is the equivalent of $10 to a billionaire. And for some of us, $10 means a lot especially from shitty bank practices that lead to overdraft fees.
So, yes, a lot of people really didn’t care. And knowing what we now that the Titan probably imploded and it was instant death, all this outpouring of people saying, “Imagine how hard it could be for me trapped,” was all for naught. I hate whataboutisms but people dying alone in a hospital bed surrounding by people in hazmat suits because someone had to get their nails done in May of 2020 is a sadder fate.
Needless to say while all this was going on, Tulsa and surrounding communities were without power during the first week of summer. Thankfully, it wasn’t as hot as it could be at this time of year but it can get pretty hot in a house were there’s no central air conditioning in June. People had to throw out their frozen and cold foods and they may not have the money to restock. There was at least one death reported because someone was on a ventilator and didn’t have power. Three people were reported to have died as of this posting and three people died from a storm in the Texas Panhandle. I know it’s not a contest, but you’re not hearing much about the six people who died from storms.
To make matters worse, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Sen. Markwayne Mullin were both in Paris attending the Paris Air Show. And Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell was at a conference in Georgia. And neither Stitt nor Pinnell bothered to tell Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat, the next in charge, they were out of state. So, he didn’t know for almost 24 hours he was in charge. Needless to say, Oklahomans are pissed. So, why should we care if a handful of billionaires died? Stitt and Pinnell only came back days after the storms that hit the area on the late night/early morning hours of June 17-18 to appear in photo ops and give canned speeches to the media.
At the same time, little has been spoken of the overcrowded fishng boat that sunk off the coast of Greece a week ago. Hundreds are believed to have died, including many Pakistani people. Yes, they probably shouldn’t have overcrowded the boat, but we can’t show compassion for billionaires while showing scorn for people tring to seek a new life. We’ve been hearing so much of the five who died on the Titan and nothing of the 500 believed to have died in the Mediterranean.
I’m not even 45. I have severe health problems. The pandemic has delayed my disability case by years. That’s years I can’t get back. In that time, my relationship with someone who I was wih 18 years ended. And this was someone who so many times I felt like she was going to die. That weighs heavily on you over time. The pandemic also caused my late girlfriend, Kerry, some problems. She died in February of 2022. And when someone that close to you dies you get very, very angry when you see others still alive or too much compassion and condolences shown to someone else.
They had Kerry’s funeral livestreaming on Facebook because she donated her body to science. She had over 1,000 friends on FB and probably so many more. People loved her. She got along with just about anyone. And I would trade 500 billionaires for one more year of her in my life. And 2022 almost ended darker. My ex suffered a huge complication following a surgery and nearly died. Another person close to me had severe health problems, first Covid and then heart complications. She’s got long covid now. And I’m so worried about her.
I’m tired of having my friends die at a younger age and see that no one really cares. I guess I expected more outpouring from people following the death of Kerry, but it didn’t happen. So, I don’t really care if people think a joke about rich people fucking around and finding out. If these were people drag-racing and an accident happened, you wouldn’t be as sympathyic. The reality is people born in the last 40-45 years are tired of being told they should offer praise and worship to the richest people alive.
And a lot of people know that and it terrifies them. We can make a change if possible. Step one is admitting there is a problem. Telling people we should care more about rich people taking a big risk, as they sign paperwork informing them there was a big risk, than someone who didn’t have access to a ventilator is a huge problem. It’s the typical suck it up, buttercup mentality.
It’s time for a change. And this is one way to say that the times are changing.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 