People Like Me & You

I got an apartment today. An amazing one. For a rate I can afford, thanks to legislation that supports people who work hard every day for the things they want. NO, their credit is not perfect. Nor is their past without its complications, but they deserve the right to the American Dream the same as everyone else. To have their own place in the world, with soft-cheeked infants with eyes like theirs.

The sad truth is this reality is threatened every day. It’s not the napalm-hailing open fire that Modern Warfare 3 or Call of Duty would have you believe, but a way of life is being attacked. Mine. Maybe yours. All the second seed spawn of baby boomers. Students with more loans than education. Parents with more mortgages than real estate. Kids with more nightmares than dreams, and they are desperately trying to get a good night’s rest. They toss and turn and writers like us correlate the war on Capitol Hill to Amir-jan’s Pashtun-Hazara conflict.

People have called us many things. The moochers. The welfare zombies. Crackbabies. The Food Stamp Dependees. Generation X and Y. The Middle Class in some lifetimes. The poor in this one. While there is truth to each of the assigned titles, none are quite dead on. We are the majority. The proletariat. I am the 99% and today I just want you to consider your place in the infrastructure. And vow that whatever it is you believe in, you’ll go and support it come November. We can no longer afford the luxury of complacency.