Abolishing the Class System: Occupy Ty's Blog

I know it's damn near old news, but I think I want to write about the Occupy movement. I'm not going to get into much news or background, because that's what Google is for.

I honestly haven't been watching the Occupy movement very closely, but I have been doing some thinking on the topic. I thought the whole Occupy Wall Street thing was completely ridiculous and stupid, and that they were going about solving their problems the wrong way, and that got me thinking about what these protesters should have done...

Which was exactly the goal of the protest, so I guess it wasn't that stupid after all. Hopefully someone comes up with a solution, because I don't have one. I can only identify the problem and hope that someone smarter than me can fix it.

The main complaint is that 1% of the people control 99% of the wealth. I'm not sure where those statistics come from, but whatever. It is the perception that counts.

Fact is, as reported by Forbes Magazine (I just looked this up), Bill Gates is worth $56 Billion. That's just one example. There's all kinds of people worth stupid amounts of money like that. Those of us that make $30,000/yr and have a net worth of $4.75 have started really taking exception to that. The question I think the Occupy protesters have on their minds is "What the fuck do you need all that money for?"

Good question. I don't have that kind of money, so I can't answer it.

What do the protesters want done? I've heard the phrase "abolish the class system". Officially, the western world doesn't really have a class system, but realistically, it certainly does. Ever since we figured out how to use our thumbs to grip sticks to hit each other with, there has been an aristocracy. I don't see this ever changing.

The history of aristocracy in our society started with the guys that could fight best being in charge of the people who sewed leathers together. It evolved into nobility. Democracy made nobility obsolete. The aristocracy is now the major shareholders of large corporations.

The problem isn't the existence of an aristocracy, but the excessive power they seem to have over the common folk. Democratic governments cater to these large corporations to get their hands on some of the tax revenue to effectively run their respective countries. They have to, otherwise these corporations will take their business elsewhere and another government well get all the money (and power). The problem is the rich/poor gap. It's gotten so damned huge. Bill Gates's net worth: $56,000,000,000.00. Tyrel McLelland's net worth: ? (I'm not wearing pants right now, so I can't count the change in my pocket)

We cannot abolish the class system. Simply can't be done. It's been tried. There have been so many revolutions over the ages. The guys with sticks got beat down by the nerds who had enough of being hit with sticks and figured out how to tie rocks onto the ends of their sticks. The French got upset with their rich/poor gap and cut the heads off their nobility with a really neat invention called the Guillotine. Now, the common folk are at a similar point again, and the warning signs are all there. When Marie Antoinette had mobs camped outside her walls starving, she didn't recognize that there was actually a problem that needed fixing. She allegedly said "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche." or "let them eat cake". This ended up making her a lot shorter. I really hope the currently aristocracy sees the warning signs and comes up with a solution, or they may meet a similar fate, figuratively or literally. I have no idea. I hope it doesn't come to that, but I do think that the onus is likely on the corporations to come up with a solution before there is a major issue. Maybe spend some of that R&D money on solving this problem?


Now, I want to talk about the protesters for a minute. Search "occupy wall street - police" on YouTube. You will see the police trying to clear public and commercial areas of protesters who are passively (and sometimes actively) resisting. When the people don't cooperate, the police use varying levels of force to move them. Keep an open mind while watching this. Now read the comments below the video. Wow, eh? Police sure are evil bastards. In order to join the police, you must have a real hate on for your fellow man, right? 


The Mayor of New York ordered the police to distribute orders to the Occupy protesters in the park saying that for public safety and general cleanliness, everyone had to leave the park. After everything was cleaned up, they would be allowed to return. Seems fair to me, no?


Everyone has taken the stand of the government is trying to control what we do in our spare time on public land. Bullshit. The hygiene and attitude of the place was downright scary. It needed doing.


I'm not going to dwell on that part of the point. The main point is this park had been taken over by the protesters. It was not available for the enjoyment of the public anymore. If you weren't a protester, it was an unpleasant place to be. 


I watched other videos of people sitting in front of commercial buildings. I don't mean Wall Street Stock Exchange buildings, I mean little ma & pa shops downtown. With all the protesters camped out on the street in front of these businesses, these poor people had to close their stores and run like hell. There were no customers travelling the area, and who knows when protesters might turn violent and start looting and hurting people?


Thank God that the protesters didn't get violent. At least they haven't, yet. The police aren't the problem in this case! The police are still trying to do their jobs and maintain general law and order. Yes, the protesters have the right to be protesting. In fact, I encourage it. Everyone else's rights need to be remembered, too.


That's the Occupy movement in Ty's view. Feel free to comment.

Polygamy

I was kinda reaching for a topic to write about, and I think I've found one, with some help. I'm going to develop an opinion on polygamy.

I've often been heard saying that if you could remove the emotional element, it would be beneficial to a household to have two or three wives. I still believe this to be somewhat true. Of course, the obvious problem is that you cannot remove the emotional element. The wives will inevitably become jealous of each other, or all become angry with the husband and things will get ugly. The husband would also either develop some kind of superiority complex and start treating his wives like shit, or would become so overloaded trying to provide for his wives that he becomes depressed and takes his own life. I don't see how to make it work.

The Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints church figured it out. Keeping in mind that I only have a very basic knowledge of this group based on news reports and Wikipedia, I have developed a loose opinion on this group. They appear to be the ugly retarded stepchild of the benevolent Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that grew up to be a serial rapist. The LDS church used to believe that in order to reach higher levels of salvation, a man had to have three or more wives. When the leaders of the Church saw that polygamy wasn't really working out, and women were getting mistreated, it became obvious to them that they were mistaken. This couldn't possibly be God's plan, otherwise so much evil wouldn't come of it. the LDS church banned polygamy and started excommunicating anyone still practicing it.

The FLDS group (I'm not even going to call them a church) didn't like this. They branched off and continued the practice of polygamy. The way they make it work is to have a very much patriarchal society, which means that women are second class citizens. I'd even take it so far to say they're more like property. From what I've researched, they don't even really believe in courting the opposite sex. The women are simply assigned to the men by the leadership of the group. The leaders are reputed to have several dozen wives each, with over sixty children in some cases.

Now, in these communities, several problems have taken route. Of course, in such a patriarchal society, the men have no respect for women (the women don't even respect themselves), and dominate them. Domination of this type often leads to rape, beatings, emotional abuse, etcetera. In fact, one of the main leaders of this group is currently serving a life sentence plus twenty years for aggravated sexual assault.

Another problem I can see developing is that there simply isn't enough women for the men to have so many wives. This will lead to adultery, hard feelings between the men, blame falling on the women, and eventually major feuds between families or even murder of the offending women and less often, their lovers.

This way of life seems very backward and downright evil to me. I like to think that western society has moved past the concept of slavery, treating women as second-class citizens, and arranged marriage. This bullshit needs to stop.

How do we stop it? There's a few options, but I'm not sure how to enact it. The government has stepped in a couple times (in most states and Canada, polygamy is unlawful) and raided polygamist communities, but what are you doing to do? Arrest an entire town? Where the hell do you put them? What do you do with the children? Putting hundreds of children into the foster system like that would be a major overload and do more harm than good.

I think the best option is education. I think if the men and women of these groups could see the evil taking place in their communities, they would likely do something about it. However, a system like this is based almost entirely on power. The men are powerful because they own women. The most powerful of the group own more women. Feeling powerful like that is a terrible seductress, so many of the men would likely just scoff at changing and continue living the way they are because they like it. Getting the information to the women would be very difficult, because they likely can't access much information without the permission of their men. Men won't allow it. The men have brainwashed the women and broken their spirit so they can't function properly as individuals.

What's the solution? I don't know. If it was easy, someone would have done it already. You can't help someone who doesn't want your help. If anyone out there has a solution, please make it public knowledge so we can help the people caught in this lifestyle but are actually good people. While helping these people is the priority, it wouldn't hurt my feelings to see the evil bastards involved in perpetuating this lifestyle punished.

And for me: instead of finding a second wife, I think I'll settle for a nanny that works for free and occasionally rubs my back.