A Little Bit of Arithmetic

As the ground swell of protests continues to build in favor of increased taxes on the millionaires and billionaires, some (most notably on the Right of the political spectrum) continue to blame the poor for so many of our problems in this country. The Right continues to argue that the poor game the system, take advantage of lax oversight laws and are the thieves taking so much of the hard-earned money from the middle class. In light of the Great Recession, one should be inclined to think such an argument ridiculous, but still some continue to shout angrily that it's all the fault of the poor, or even, the not so poor, but the folks in the middle class who bought houses with the encouragement of the deceitful lies of the mortgage companies. But how much farther can this argument go? How much wealth need be concentrated so heavily in the blood-soaked hands of the richest people and corporations of this country before it becomes unarguably their wrong-doing which has lead to such a disastrous state for this nation. Right now, 400 people in this country, four-zero-zero, hold the same amount of wealth as 50% of the rest of the population. This trend has spiraled beyond control over the last decade, made worse with the recession. How exactly can it be that with so much wealth concentrated at so few points that the poor of this country are the ones leeching the very blood of the middle class? There certainly are those welfare scum who do nothing, and have done nothing, to earn the government paycheck that comes to their subsidized home each month, but I'm not inclined to think that these few are the root of our economic woes when so much wealth is concentrated in the upper echelons of the rich. The numbers just are not there to support the claims that the few poor who actually cheat the system can control so much of the wealth being stripped from the middle class. To suppose otherwise is ridiculous beyond measure, and math.

Parasites

"We are all parisites[sic]..." read part of a post to Facebook in the aftermath of Japan's March 11, 2011's devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami. My friend went on to say, "God help us all." I was quite struck by the phrase. I attempted to discern what exactly my friend believed in based on this post (probably unwise to base an entire theological viewpoint on one post, but I'm just speculating here). Should God actually exist, wouldn't it be precisely Him who caused such devastation? The all-knowing, all-powerful being spurred such disaster, so why on earth would He be called on for assistance? And furthermore, to the former part of the post, humans are "parisites"? But we are made in God's image. If we are draining this world of all its resources then God must be equally complicit in draining the vast cosmos of its own.

What I find so disturbing is the bleak world view highlighted by such a statement. If God actually existed and caused such needless destruction, I would hope it would be to illustrate the point that we, humans, are all alike, coexist here together in this world and that when harm befalls a group of our people, we don't look to God for miracles, but create our own by helping one another, by helping the most needy of our people. Alan Moore's Watchmen culminated in this idea. Wars in all corners of the world, impending doom knocking on the door; it would take a disaster of worldly significance for humans to set aside their differences and come together.

But I don't believe that God exists and therefore do not attribute any particular meaning to the earthquake and the tsunami outside of the natural occurrences of the earth, the ever-changing planet that we inhabit. We are not malicious parasites attaching ourselves to the innards of the planet, but are the white blood cells flowing through the bloodstream to heal, to heighten our immunity to the very dangers that cut our skin and infect our wounds, i.e. the earthquakes and tsunamis. We are the only cure for what ails a planet in peril.