Could You Take a Knee?

Lets say you are on a company outing to a Cubs game. Everyone is there along with your boss and the company has bought the tickets and the beer and hot dogs and the peanuts. It is now time for the National Anthem. Everyone stands up and some people put their hands over their hearts. You are a middle class person with a house, kids, mortgage, dog, cat. You are solidly in the  middle of the middle and now everyone is standing and you decide you do not agree with some of the policies of the country or maybe you just don't go for the whole patriotic thing. So you take a knee. Your boss stares at you. His boss stares at you. You explain you disapprove of some things going on in America and so you took a knee. Your career is over.

You may not get fired that day. But essentially you better start looking for something else because from then on you are marked. Most middle class people can not take a knee. They have to feed their kids and pay their mortgage. They have to tow the line. Professional football players who make millions of dollars and get to be on television and live a life most people would kill for, they can take a knee. It is part of being at the top of the pyramid. Now you should be able to take a knee. No one is saying you should not be able to express how you feel. It is part of our basic rights as Americans.

But for most of us we can not take a knee. We do not have a million dollars in the bank. Only  the lucky few can do that. Is this fair? No. But we are used to that. So it is the NFL players right to take a knee. It is their right to bring up issues that need to be discussed. It is their right to make a million dollars from playing football. But I will say this; to whom much is given much is expected. Interpret that as you will.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Why does the Tea Party hate the Unions?

If you are populist party why pick on working people? I mean what did they do to you but work and try to get a little ahead and raise their families and own a home and maybe a couple of cars. What is wrong with people who want just a sliver of the pie that the rich gobble up like a feral cats? If the Bush tax cuts expired and the rich kicked in then half of the deficit would disappear tomorrow. Poof. So why does the Tea Party want to bust the unions and get rid of middle class entitlements if they are really the party of the people?

Or are they a shill for corporations that exploit the dark crevasses of the American psyche. Our secret xenophobia of the other that creates a birther movement because we have an African American President, then starts in on middle class entitlements like they are a Socialist plot. Could there be any bigger power play in America than dressing up a woman in Patriotism and folksy idiotic Alaska ditties, outfitting her with a great body and looks that can kill and then having her say every heinous thing about working people that gets fed to her by a network designed to break the backs of the working class?

So why does the Tea Party hate Unions? Are they an extension of the heinous government that offers Medicaid to the poor, Medicare to the elderly, tax deductions and Social Security for the middle class? Its like the woman from Wisconsin I talked too who said she hated the teacher unions, but whose husband was in a union. But that's different. They aren't radicals she said. Teachers are radicals? Oh I get it now. Those people in puffy jackets with a hats and scarves in Madison Wisconsin are radicals. My daughters first grade teacher a radical. Right.

But really. Mr. Hoffa calls the Tea Party a bunch of sonsofbitches and can you blame him? They are trying to eviscerate working class people. Wouldn't you call them a bunch of sonsofbitches. I'm not in union. I don't have a pension or retirement. I will will work (write) until the day I die. Should I bust the union because they are covered and I'm not? Thinking of it that way it does seem like class envy.

So that must be it. I think I will trade off my two degrees and years of doing what the hell I wanted to be in a Union and work my ass off. This must be the reason the Tea Party people hate them because they envy the unions for their jobs and their benefits. Wow. I guess things are pretty bad when we are envying a bunch of people working on assembly lines and in factories,warehouses and mills.  Or those rogue teachers in their cinder block luxury offices grading papers in schools without air conditioning.

 Sonsofbitches. All of them.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man First Chapter--The American Dream Gone Wrong