Re: katherine, "out of the workforce"

a.k.a Bruha wrote:

> Dear Judges, Lawyers, Policemen, Guards, Counselors, Taxpayers, et. al.,
> 
> We are here.

Where is 'here?"

>  Like it or not, for good or bad, we are here.  Who are we?  We are the
> downtrodden and dispossesed, the self-torturing, the disenfranchised convicts,
> drug and alcohol addicts, the unemployed and unemployable.  We are the children of
> poverty, financial and spiritual.  We have and will have children of our own,
> grandchildren too.  We are ex-cons, uninsured, homeless, of many colors and speaking
> many tongues. 

So what you gives you the right and/or the desire to write for this
ancient "we" about which the Christ said:  "The poor are always with
us?"

> We are the enemy in what has become a domestic war against ourselves.

Frankly, I doubt it.
> 
> And who are you?

Shucks, dude, I'm just your lil ole friendly neighborhood Jyotishi,
reading them stars for the pipples.  

> You who like the tough talk of Tough on Crime?  You who watch as
> budgets are cut in education and health care while you militarize a police force?
> Bullet-proof vests, automatic weapons, helicopters, tanks, robots ... the
> testosterone is oozing through the streets, more prisons, longer sentences, tighten
> the belt, spartan conditions, task forces, gang units, gun courts.

I like the testosterone line.  That's poetry.  That has potential.  In
fact, that's even TRUE.  

Yeah, I agree, the world as we know it has become a TRULY UGLY
phenomenon.  No doubt.  The human beings have just become incredibly
stupid.  They elect the wrong people to government, and then they spend
their time scattering their minds as if it never happened.    

> And what is there
> to show for it?  Unemployent stays low because half the population oversees those
> "out of the workforce", the dregs, the rabble, the enemy?  

I don't know where you're writing from, but this doesn't seem like a
Western social dynamic. 

> Please tell me there is a
> deeper reason.  

Nope.  Sorry, no can do, Joe.  There is nothing deep about what you're
writing about here.  It's just pure damned habitual mindless feckless
clueless STUPIDITY.  That's all it is.  The attempt to get some deep
message out of it is a major block to your way out of it.

> Do you feel safer?  More humane?  More like a cohesive society with a
> shared sense of purpose, who can identify Us and Them?  

Safer than what?  More humane than what?  The identification of "us" and
"them" - that thought right there - is, in real fact, the entire basis
of the WHOLE stupidity.  There is no "them".  There's only us.  Some of
us get addicted to this us_and_them way of seeing things, and then we're
confused.  But we're not "them".  We're just confused cases of us.  

> Do you live in a gated
> community or gentrified neighborhood?

No.

> By the way, have you read the Declaration of
> Independence and US Constitution - or do you only know the first phrases?

I've read it.  
> 
> It's about time we got together.  Please know that I have yet to meet a convict who
> wants their child to be a thief, an addict, a dealer, a prostitute, or a violent
> individual.  Most of us still have hope for ourselves even when stuck in the darkest
> dilemmas, ruts and catch-22s.  Most of us believe in crafting laws and instilling
> order.  Many of us have burrowed beneath the surface to find a spiritual sense of
> being, an understanding force at least as powerful as those we succumbed to, and many
> of use wouldn't escape if you opened the front door.  Did you know that approximately
> 10 million Americans are either incarcerated, on probation, on parole or once were in
> those categories?  Each of those 10 million have families, friends, neighbors ... and
> so closer and closer does the We interface with the You.  Don't you think it's time 
> we
> talked?
> 
> Are you ready?

For what?

> Can you accept that the road we are travelling points toward a grim
> and painful future?  

No human being, having accepted that, ever betters their condition, or
overcomes the idea of us and them.  The future is what we make it,
individually and collectively.  If what you SEE is a grim and painful
future, then that, quite inevitably is what you will, perhaps
unconsciously, create.  

> Do you have the heart to face monumental failures while bravely
> struggling beyond where we are now?  

I do have that heart, but I do not believe in brave struggle.  I believe
in brave and glorious success, against all odds, and in the face of the
entire weight of the beginningless ignorance of the human mass mind.

> I know that some of you are, and that some of us
> are, and this is what gives me hope.  You need our insights just as we need your
> structure.  

I see no evidence of this.  Convicts can be absolutely stupid, and THE
most disorganized people I've known have also been the most established.
 Consider W., just for a minor example.

> It is never over, especially when a real solution, a real treatment for
> our sickness, is yet to begin.
> 

What is signified here by "it"?