Category Archives: politics

“It’s Just Money”

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(From Margin Call.  Again.)

JOHN TULD

When did you start feeling so sorry for yourself?  It’s unbearable.  What, so you think we might’ve put a few people out of business today?  That it’s all for nought?  You’ve been doing that everyday for almost 40 years, Sam.  And if this is all for nought, so is everything out there.

It’s just money.  It’s made up.  Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t have to kill each other just to get something to eat.  It’s not wrong.  And its certainly no different today than its every been.  1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987, Jesus didn’t that fuck, fucked me up good, 92, 97, 2000, and whatever we want to call this.  It’s all just the same thing over and over, we can’t help ourselves.  And you and I can’t control it or stop it or even slow it or even so slightly alter it.  We just react.

We make a lot of money if we get it right and we get left on the side of the road if we get it wrong.  And there’ve always been and always will be the same percentage of winners and loosers, happy farts and sad sacks, fat cats and starving dogs in this world.  Yeah there may be more of us today than there’s ever been but the percentages, they stay exactly the same.

“Fuck Normal People”

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(From Margin Call.  See it.)

SETH BREGMAN

Alright, Will, am I getting fired?

WILL EMERSON

I don’t know.  Yeah, almost definitely, yes.

SETH BREGMAN

Are you?

WILL EMERSON

No. Seth, it’s nothing you did.  You’re just on the wrong farm at the wrong time.  You young guys are always the first to get culled.  Listen, nothing I’m going to say is going to make you feel any better, its just gonna suck for a while and then you’ll be fine.  You alright?

SETH BREGMAN

Yeah, yeah.  I’m fine.

WILL EMERSON

For what its worth, I‘m sorry this is happening to you.

SETH BREGMAN

Don’t be, you didn’t do it to me.

WILL EMERSON

Still, at least you’re gonna have some nice cash to walk away with.

SETH BREGMAN

I guess.  Shit, this is really gonna affect people.

WILL EMERSON

Yeah, its gonna affect people like me.

SETH BREGMAN

No no, real, real people.

WILL EMERSON

Jesus, Seth.  Listen, if you really wanna do this with your life you have to believe you’re necessary and you are.  People wanna live like this in their cars and big fucking houses they can’t even pay for, then you’re necessary.  The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is cause we got our fingers on the scales in their favor.  I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really fuckin fair really fuckin quickly and nobody actually wants that.  They say they do but they don’t. They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have know idea where it came from.  Well, thats more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow, so fuck em.  Fuck normal people.  You know, the funny thing is, tomorrow if all of this goes tits up they’re gonna crucify us for being too reckless but if we’re wrong, and everything gets back on track?  Well then, the same people are gonna laugh till they piss their pants cause we’re gonna all look like the biggest pussies god ever let through the door.

SETH BREGMAN

You think we’re gonna be wrong?

WILL EMERSON

Nah. They’re all fucked.

The Brother’s Wisdom

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“Driving past a crowd holding vigil in front of the apple store I am struck by the idea of Steve Jobs not as a visionary or great mind; but as the false prophet of disposable consumerism. That the collective has decided to bestow him the memoriam of a hero is sad and most accurately details why the 99% will fail in their occupations.”

What Is Your Take Now?

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A friend was asking me what my take on Occupy Wall Street is now.  I don’t know, I am having difficulty.  At my neighborhood bar the other day, an employee of Pfzier was sitting next to me having just come from the protests – the message is out there, people are discussing it, people are trying to move forward.  That’s exciting, right?

But there is a problem with it.  Something doesn’t sit right with me.  Anonymous’ recent communication about slitting the belly of Wall Street is embarrassing.  The videos annoy me.  The rhetoric is missing something.  And so, when pressed to say what I really feel, I guess this would be it:

I believe Occupy Wall Street has proven to be lacking compassion and intelligence, despite the fact that the overall ideals are admirable.

I believe that if a single person who professes to be a member of the 99% fails to vote or votes for a democrat they will have obviated their efforts and energy.

I believe the discussion they have created is enviable.

I believe they are the liberal answer to the Tea Party.  And surely when the only avenue left to both sides is hatred, blood shall not be far behind.

maybe it doesn’t matter

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I personally don’t quite know what to make of the 10 year anniversary, the media hype and the circus of it all.  It feels very distant from a remembrance to me, as if we all went back to normal except for 1 day a year when we all act like it changed our lives irrevocably.   And certainly it did, for some.  But for most, it really didn’t.  Even for those who were covered in ash or who remember walking across the bridge or who maybe were on one of the floors and got out in time, maybe even for some of those people, nothing changed…

Our response, as a nation, has been so poor.  The costs have been borne by so few, the wars hidden and invisible, and all the subsequent violence of the day and the ensuing 10 years has not solved anything.  Nothing is built, nothing is better.  Nothing has been changed.  We do not live our lives any different, we work the same jobs, buy the same hamburgers, watch the same TV, marching about with our daily and pedestrian concerns.

But perhaps that is the lesson of this upcoming day of remembrance.  It’s simple.  The whole thing just doesn’t matter.  People died.  Some buildings got knocked down.  We had a war and some funerals and everything continued along.  Everything went back to normal.  The entire trauma of the event was simply absorbed by the giant inertia of our whole world and we are all still who we were.  Our culture, our economy, it is still the same.  It might as well have not happened…