Occupy not being an asshole

I know it's a futile endeavor in northern Kentucky, but I scour the want ads daily for employment opportunities to supplement my book royalties. I've even begun collecting cans, and pretty soon, I'm going to start growing edible houseplants. (That's the stuff our schools didn't teach.)

But here's a story that's a perfect reason for anyone to just quit looking for work. When America's economic gatekeepers act like absolute dicks, who the hell wants to work for them?

A few months after the unstoppable Occupy Wall Street campaign began, a New York businessman hosted what he called a job fair located right in the heart of Occupy's flagship protest. A job fair wouldn't be a bad thing, except that this endeavor was nothing but a slick personal attack against the Occupy coalition. This came after he held a counterprotest against Occupy that drew only a handful of participants.

He called his phony job fair Occupy a Desk. He said, "We're hoping to end the Occupation by left-wing vagabonds with a fragmented message and bring professional people who are trying to engage in a positive endeavor."

So he's assailing not only your industriousness but also your politics. Why would Jo and Joe Sixpack want to work for anybody who attacks them for their political views? When I worked at the library, I wouldn't have put up with the head librarian playing an endless loop of Rush Limbaugh's audiobook and aiming the speaker at my desk. So why should anybody else have to tolerate being called "left-wing vagabonds" when they go to work?

Several companies sent representatives to Occupy a Desk - making these firms just as guilty as the privileged fussbudget who started the program, as they clearly weren't serious about employing anybody from Occupy.

People take it as a personal attack when you insult their desire to work. It's like how when I attended Bishop Brossart High School, I had a teacher who told a classroom full of students they were "too damn lazy." At that school, attacking one's productivity played on class-based and region-based canards.

The takeover of the American economy by right-wing authoritarians is by design. For decades, our public officials have created policies that have allowed the business world to be largely monopolized by a few people who possess a deep hostility to laborers. Why work for somebody else when they only pay a pittance and call you a "left-wing vagabond"? But if you want to be self-employed, prepare to be confronted by a gauntlet of legal and economic barriers that make self-employment almost impossible if you weren't born into wealth. That's all part of the seemingly bottomless right-wing conspiracy to keep you poor. The economic system of modern America is nothing short of slavery. There's simply no other word for it. If you want to argue with me about it, I've had enough experiences to prove it. (Remember when my radio station got shut down?)

The 99% has determination. The 1% has excuses and whines.