A friend of mine asked me why the 53% seem to be proud of working “shitty jobs” with hard hours while “not pursuing their dreams.” I thought the question was unfair. Certainly, I have philosophical disagreements with any group that claims or believes it is different from any other group (to quote Ferris Bueller, “isms, in my opinion, are not good.”). But we have to hand it to these hard working people. They have been responsible. They have lived within their means and have not asked for handouts. They may have little, but it belongs entirely to them. They are proud of what they have accomplished on their own mettle and they believe that America is the only place on earth where that is possible. They do not believe in life being easy or fair.
They are mad that they pay taxes to benefit the self-proclaimed “99%” who expect handouts from the government, which really means the taxpayers, aka them. They are mad that people are surprised to be $200,000 in debt after college, and expect free money for it. They are mad that people think that the American Dream has anything to do with having a perfect life, when really it is about self-fulfillment through hard work and owning your accomplishments. They are mad that people like them are ridiculed and slandered by the media for being passionate about maintaining their individualism.
They are scared that the people on Wall Street want to take their freedom away from them through government control and radical redistribution. They are bemused that people don’t understand the difference between a government job taking money from society, and a real job based on providing value to society. They are bemused that college graduates don’t understand the financial system in their own country, and don’t have a smidgeon of understanding of world history. They are aware of the hundreds of millions of people who died in the twentieth century because people believed what many people in OWS believe about the “injustice” of wealth inequality.
They are part of a silent majority of Americans who work hard, deserve what they get, for better or for worse, and don’t believe they should have to live in a society where their hard work is taken away from them to benefit someone else. They are more important than the 99%, because they provide the bedrock of the American economy and are the reason America is still the best place in the world to live, even though we aren’t perfect and have a long way to go.
