How's about some good ol' fashioned bitching?

I find it very irritating that in order to post to my blog, I have to leave my blog's screen and go to the main blogger.com screen to sign on, only to kind/sort of go back to my blog to write a new post. What's the point of that? I know, I know... this thing is free. I don't pay a lick for it, so why am I complaining? I'm not complaining, too much, really. I just think it'd be easier for all involved (the site owners as well as their ... customers? ...clients? Whatever; you know what I mean.) I think there'd be fewer different webpages for them to maintain. Just a thought.

I am not sure what it is that's had my mind on the homeless so much lately. The subject came up again when talking to a quasi-coworker of mine who recently transferred to a position in baltimore. She brought up the interesting point of how little human contact they have. I think, for the most part, I've lead a life of ignorance in regards to how hard it must be to be homeless. I've always had a sort of subconscious understanding of the fact that finding food on a daily basis and finding shelter as needed must be difficult. But I've only recently begun to delve deeper into what it must be like. Imagine having no human contact. I can't fathom that; I mean, it's not like I'm in some deeply-vested relationship or anything, but I get hugs from my parents and female friends. I shake hands with my guy friends. There's still touch involved in my life. Homeless people, I suspect, don't get any of that. Hell, most people don't even want to walk near them, let alone touch them. Anyway, this coworker was telling me how she'd given this one homeless guy a hug, and he said it'd made his year. I think that was better than any change she could have given him, you know?

What's worse, I think once you're homeless, unless a miracle happens, you pretty much stay homeless. You're homeless 'cause you can't pay your bills, right? Well, you can't pay any new bills (like rent or a mortgage) until you get a job. (I'm pretty sure most, if not all homeless people are unemployed. I think it goes with the nature of the thing.) Well, how are you going to get a job if you haven't been able to shower for a long time? People eventually start to smell if they go without bathing; there are no exceptions to that rule. What employer is going to hire someone who, because of the circumstances of their life, has no personal hygene? And even if a manager or something could look past that for a day or two, they'd need to work for at least a few weeks before they could get enough money to pay for a hotel room or an apartment, or even to just get paid. A customer's bound to complain before that point. I don't know; the more I think about this topic, the sadder I get. I used to be bitter that we had policemen and firefighters and teachers who were so drastically underpaid compared to the stupid athletes that get multi-million dollar contracts, but even that comparision seems to pale when homeless people are thrown into the mix. How many people could get off the streets if the average professional athlete only accepted a meager $50,000 a year and gave the rest to other people as a sort of annual salary? If a guy makes a million dollars, he could afford to give twenty people (including himself (or herself)) a salary of $50Gs a year. Now, I can't say for certain, 'cause I still live at home, but I'm fairly positive I could live pretty comfortably off of fifty thou a year.

I'm going to briefly go on another somewhat political rant for a second. For starters, let me say that I am happy to live here, in the United States of America. I feel it's a pretty good country, better than at least some of the alternatives, and I feel relatively safe here. HOWEVER. This country is not the fantastic, perfect, solution to the world's problems that a lot of people think it is. Here's an interesting factoid: We are, and have been since the very days of our inception, the world leader in crime. Nice, huh? We destroy and pollute the planet, giving little if any thought to the future consequences of our actions. We act like we're better than anyone else, and we seem to seize up at the idea that we could change something, anything, to be better. If anyone even begins to criticize the country, the almost-bottled response is "then go live somewhere else." (Usually Iraq or Afghanistan or someplace like that is substituted for the "somewhere else," as though that were the only other alternative rather than simply the polar opposite of here.) America was founded because we were told to go somewhere else. We were created with the concept that people rationally discussing varying points of view could come to a single, better point of view. That's not the case anymore. We don't discuss; we argue. Our fearless leaders (and their blindly loyal followers) spend more time assaulting each others' characters than they do debating any kind of issue. America needs to wake up, realize we are not the only culture in the world, realize that we have our own fair share of problems that we could improve, and realize that we are not always right.

That being said, I'm also bothered by those who act like we have no business elsewhere in the world. I don't know if we should be over in Iraq or not; I don't pretend to know. I don't pretend that I will ever have enough untainted, self-earned, self-experienced knowledge to make that decision. However, in light of this past election, I have had it thrown in my face that I've "never had anyone I know over there. I've never lost friends or family because of war." Well guess what. I do have friends in the military, a few of which are over in the middle east, and I'm sure that somewhere along the family line there are kin over there as well. That does not give me the right, though, to say that we don't belong there. My own personal feelings should hold no sway whatsoever about whether we should be in Iraq. I'm not happy that american soldiers are dying. Who would be? It's a sad, sad thing. But american soldiers died in WWI, WWII, and lord knows how many other wars throughout the ages. Does that mean we shouldn't have been involved in those wars? What if we pulled out of WWII because too many american soldiers were dying? How many more would have died if Hitler had succeeded in his conquest?

I think my biggest problem is that americans are a bad combination of spoiled and complacent. Spoiled because we only stand behind our country when it suits us. When we're talking about a topic we're proud of, then we're the most patriotic bunch of bastards that ever was. "YEAH! We're America! We're the best! USA! USA!" However, when there's something that's inconvenient to us, something that personally rubs us the wrong way, any idea of patriotism is thrown out the window, we pay no regard whatsoever to what might be best for the country, and we start bitching about our leaders and undermining their authority and decisions. I didn't vote this past election, and there's an entire blog posting as to why. (Incidentally, although I personally did not feel the need to vote, that doesn't mean I don't recoginize the importance of the freedom to do so. To paraphrase a famous quote, "I may not want to vote, but I will defend to the death your right to do so.") However, if I somehow felt like I had to vote, it would have been for Bush. Because it seems like nobody, american or otherwise, feels we should be over there. But he stuck by his guns. For whatever reason, whatever knowledge he may have the we as the public aren't privy to, he feels like we need to be there. And america should respect that. It's hard to distinguish between being supportive and being a sheep. I don't think we should blindly accept what he does just because he's the president. But I also don't think we should decry it because there's some personal risk for us and it's making us unpopular with the rest of the world. We don't know all the facts, and we never will. I've not met a single person who thinks that our government (or any of them) is completely honest with their public. I haven't met anyone who thinks that saddam wasn't a threat. But going over there and ousting him? "No, that's not our job. Save it for someone else. Let's wait 'til all the other countries are willing to risk their soldiers lives with ours." It'll be more convenient then, right?

I was accused today of (that sounds more inflamatory than it's meant to. Let's say that "someone said that I thought this way") thinking that my voice doesn't count, that my vote doesn't count, that nothing will ever change. That is not entirely the case. I believe change is possible, but I don't think anything I could vote for will bring it around. I have to start on the individual level. I have to convince people to think for themselves, to think logically, and to follow their intuition before anything will change. And they'll have to convince others. And those others will have to convince still more. Will their logic always arive at the same conclusion? Probably not. Will their inner natures always match up? Of course not. But no good will come until we are willing to think for ourselves instead of simply believing one news anchor over the other, or deciding that one political party has a handle on what's best and completely ignoring the other one. I think the notion that we have countries at all is absurd. That we draw arbitrary borders around ourselves and mark our territory like common animals is a pathetic testament to humankind. But it comes from being self-involved and self-important. It comes from "wanting the best for me, and if you get it too, good for you, but it's not my problem." And that is a sad, sad thing. Until Americans, until all people for that matter, can think for themselves, place the needs of others above their own, and be willing to accept that they are not always in the right, then I will continue to lose faith in our species. And it will only be a matter of time before my unfaith is justified by our self-inflicted-genocide.