A Slave to Hyperbole

Astonishingly, many people in the tea party and other murmurers of discontent are tossing about the word "slavery" in regards to things like paying their taxes. Apparently the trouble comes from the government paying for any need that they feel does not apply to them.

Make no mistake... those tea partiers are just as entitled as those they disdain, those they verbally crucify with the word "socialist", which is equally hyperbolic and aimed right at those who are not educated enough to know the difference.

Having entitlement programs does not a socialist government make, as long as the means of production an industry are privately owned and operated for profit... which, even with that evil social security, has always been the case.

Here's how it works.

You live in a country that provides you certain inalienable rights* (provided you're the right gender, color, sexual orientation, religion, and class). These rights protect you and keep you safe. Branches of the government were created to ensure we carry out the promises of the noble preamble of the Constitution, which state a more "perfect" Union would:

1. Insure domestic Tranquility
2. Provide for the common "defence"
3. Promote the general Welfare
4. Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

Hate to break it to ya, but that stuff ain't free.

And so... with our rights come certain responsibilities. In fact, the best way to be a patriot is to shut your trap and pitch in to make the government work for the best of everyone. This is not socialism, and it's not slavery, it's your *duty*.

Yeah, I said it. And I say that as a tax-payer. My husband and I make enough income that we don't get a refund each year, we have to pay. And we pay that because we know that is the very *least* we can do to participate in our government.

And I personally don't have a problem paying my share so that someone else who is less fortunate can benefit from it in some small way. If a few dollars more on my end means a kid doesn't go hungry, I'm for that. If it means the kids in my district have better schools... sign me up. If it means that the elderly and infirm can have medical treatment... then hurray.

I'd much rather pay for that than a bomb that was exploded as a "test" over over a thousand times to show our military muscle and intimidate the rest of the world.

Entitlement spending (the majority of which is spent on Medicare and Social Security) amounts for a large part of government spending, but it isn't as in trouble as people might want you to believe. (That's just more hyperbole... because apparently this is an argument technique that works so well.)

Theodore Roosevelt felt, and I must agree, that to whom much is given much is expected. (ChristiansTM might take note the Bible states this also). The more blessed you are, the more of a responsibility you carry to ensure the collective rights of the nation that so blessed you.

In fact, all the new Republicans who are bitching about tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans completely missed Teddy's opinion that, "Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits."

(Here's also where I might point out that those states that predominantly vote Democratic - which are the tax and spend types - are the states that have the highest incomes and pay the highest taxes. By comparison, the reddest states in the Union are the ones who have the highest poverty rates AND subsequently pay the least taxes. There's a Biblical principal at work there for my ChristianTM friends as far as money goes but... another blog. Another blog.)

Instead of making duty patriotic, we've become a nation of greed, which says that so long as you get yours, everyone else can just suck it. No one can see past the tips of their own noses. And they don't see past today. They don't ever consider life can happen at the blink of an eye and one day they might be in a position where they'll need a hand up - and they are fortunate to live in a country that won't trample them underfoot should they falter.

But that's compassion. That's empathy. And it has no real place in today's politics. (It's also another blog.)

Instead we hone in on emotionally charged soundbites that strike as much fear as possible into our fellow man so they will do what we want them to do.



White man... black president... and that's the wording on the sign he uses. It honestly leaves me dumbfounded. And we're not even going to talk about Glenn Beck, that doesn't even warrant a blog.

That any white person in the 21st century can even say this with a straight face blows my ever-loving mind.

We will never - thankfully - know what it was like to be a slave.

To be owned by another human being so that all our choices were made for us. To be treated like cattle or a work mule, and no more respected. To give birth to children or make families that never had any security whatsoever, that the people we loved most could be sold or traded at the whim of our master.

We do not know what it is like to go and work in the field until our backs ached and our fingers bled, but have nothing to show but a shack and slop... just enough to ensure survival... but certainly nothing to call our own.

We do not know what it is like to not have the right to come and go as we please, say what is on our mind, have our destiny and our wealth in our own hands.

We will never know what it was like to be beat and terrorized through unspeakable crimes with no legal recourse because the body we have is not our own.

*That* is the inhumanity of slavery.

And that is why it was abolished.

To equate that with paying more than what you consider your fair share of taxes to help the community as a whole is the highest form of hyperbole, and a slap in the face of every person of color who can trace their lineage back to anyone who was brought to this country on a slave ship.

And let's think about this. Slavery existed because rich, white men made laws. Rich white men in the south needed slaves to stay rich. They made their wealth off of the backs of these people whom they didn't have to pay a working wage, or any wage whatsoever. Imagine you own a company and you can produce ten, twenty, fifty times more product without substantially increasing your overhead... you're not going to want to give up that little advantage.

That slaves did this without revolt for two hundred years meant somewhere along the line, the rich person convinced the poor person that it was their best interest... or they simply didn't merit a choice.

That choice was stolen when indentured servitude, which was temporary and ultimately resulted in freedom, was replaced with the more heinous chattel slavery, which meant that people were owned outright, as well as their descendants.

And this happened because rich, white men made laws that leveraged everything in their favor.

By no small coincidence that's also how they stole land from Mexicans and Native Americans who were here first, who had established communities and even wealth, but had it stolen right out from under them with no recourse by a government that favored only the rich and the white.

Seriously. Read about the Cherokee "Trail of Tears" and then try to sell me how bad off you think you'll have it with health care reform.

As long as you have freedom to choose anything - what you say, where you live, where you go, what you do, who you do it with - you lose any right whatsoever to use the term "slavery". This is especially true if you're able to walk away with 65-85% of your income... because that's 100% more than any REAL slave made.

So how's about we stop using that word altogether, eh? It's nothing more than weak hyperbole and it really kinda makes you look like an idiot.