Friday, January 16, 2009

Just How Much Can We Let Reality Destroy Our Ideals Before We Beocme What WE Despise?

Sadly this is not a philosophical question, well it is but not in the abstract or hypothetical, I am face with a moral dilemma.

My employer has just lost a massive amount of funding thanks to Gov. Patterson blindly hacking his way through the NY State budget. He not only cut the COPS program, which is Community Option Preventive Services or something like that which basically means that money was given by the state to the counties to use for preventive services as they saw fit. What Patterson didn't realize was that this isn't just fluff, for many counties it's essential services. It's also 3/5ths'of my job. But to really be a dick about it he didn't just cut funding, he retroactively cut funding. The State wants its money back since October, asphinctersayswhat? The county at least realizes that non-profits can't give money back so the county is fucked. So as of the first of the month I'm only working two days a week. So where's the moral dilemma?

The problem is theres no work in this town, with one very notable exception. Actually my county is apparently the only county in the state that brought in more money in sales tax in last year, because of one new business. Sikorsky. I know they are hiring, I even have a friend who's father is a big shot there and is probably going to go work there himself soon. But can I really go and build military weapons for a living and not hate myself? To me this is the final kick in the nuts from Bush and the neocons. Their last act was to empty the treasury ensuring that the few would be kept safe from the turmoil of the little people. We heard about it an gasped then went on with our lives because it didn't hit us instantly. But unlike wealth which never trickles down, debt absolutely trickles down, trickles like an avalanche. Or as they say in the plumbing world, shit runs down hill.

This is Bush and the neocons final kick in the face to a people gasping for air as we struggle to keep our heads above the water. They emptied the treasury and no one seems to know what happened to the 850 billion that went to the banks, oh well they know where the 150 billion in pork went. We complain about the auto industry asking for a hand-job after getting anally raped by the banking industry. So now the rest of us are left to fight like dogs in the streets for the leftover scraps. Sure they lost the election their ideology will never hold sway again, and yet they won. They took a strong and proud people and turned them into whimpering bitches, terrified of imaginary threats while ignoring the foxes in the hen house. In this city, like many others, the options are an endless string of McJobs, become a prison guard, sell drugs and end up in said prison, or the previously mentioned jobs building weapons for terrorists, er the army. Although not necessarily our army. Wage slave or whore. That is the legacy bush has left for americans, along with the contempt of the world.

I need a drink.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post. You express this perfectly.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm. Let's see. On one hand you can continue working to make people's lives better, but only two days a week.

On the other hand, you could probably get a pretty good job with a company that makes stuff to kill people.

It IS ironic that this is what it comes down to. We now have an adminstration that is concerned about the little people, but when it comes to paying for it, nobody knows what the answer is.

Cuts in social services will only come back to haunt us in the long run, but as a culture we've never been great at thinking about the long run.

Will this give you more time for school?

Kilgore Trout said...

It would have given me more time for school if it had happened BEFORE classes started up again instead of immediately after... oh well.

I'll find a job, and I'm not going to look at building weapons until I'm desperate, which I'm not.... yet. I might look into the Wind companies, wouldn't have to sell myself out to help build clean power plants. Theres still options I was just a bit down when I wrote this for obvious reasons.