A Christmas Note From Snarlton.

I go through these phases. Most of the time I have a seething rage towards America. But occasionally I watch a documentary on some hell-hole like Liberia, and I think, "Hey. I can't afford health insurance or rent, but at least there aren't roving bands of rapey, heroin-addled teenage cannibals wandering around. I should be grateful."

We have good things. Our roads are fantastic. Clean water. Decent air travel. Wondrous natural parks. We have a food supply chain that works like clockwork. I have a rental house with heat and a toilet. Some would argue that we are drowning in consumer goods, and that is a plus to them. We have freedom of speech. Excellent music, art, and satire. Freedom of sexuality. We are working towards a society without racial boundaries. These are all good things.

Then why am I so fucking miserable?

I think the rest of the world may have been confused at the Occupy explosion this fall. How could the most prosperous country be so damn, fucking angry?

I have a theory; One cannot possibly understand how hellishly terrible America is unless you've lived here your whole life. The discontent here is a slow burn, a lifelong collection of harsh lessons. The bullshit is buried so deep in legalese and fine print that foreigners just can't grasp it.

The discontent comes after dealing with the boss who wants you to fire your staff, then fires you. It comes with the $30,000 bill for a 5 hour wait in a shit-stained emergency room full of junkies. It's the knowledge that there's a hospital within a mile from wherever you stand- and if you ever need to use it, the visit will bankrupt you. It's watching a homeless co-worker belittled and fired... for leaving to get their vomiting child from daycare.

My America is a constant string of bullying bosses, bullying landlords, bullying police. It's a never-ending loop of credit collection, garnished wages, broken cars, broken teeth. It's the feeling that, despite your current comfort, it could all come crashing down with one illness, one job loss, one racist traffic cop with a jumpy trigger finger.

On top of this is a steaming pile of advertising. There is never a point in the day when you aren't goaded into purchasing or shamed for not wanting. They shove vapid, stupid, drugged celebrity 'role models' in your face, and then tell you you're human garbage for not buying their mascara.

The news is fake. We are swimming in biased journalism that requires a post-graduate level of education to fully comprehend. They even run the same stories years later! Half of the news consists of idiots spouting racist opinions about geographical areas they can't even spell; the rest is videos of dancing kittens.

If you are smart, you have the knowledge that everything you see was made by some poor bastard in a poor country. It is the knowledge that almost everything you use was made by near-slaves. The system compels you to participate - to sell the cheap clothes, to pump the cheap gas. The poor bully the poorer. Become the slave owner or fail.

This Occupy thing has been stewing. My whole working adult life has been spent with people on the brink of bankruptcy, a powder keg of relative poverty. Every screaming collections agent shoved us towards our breaking point, inch by inch. Enough. The sane amongst us are challenging the inertia of a massive wheel of bullshit. The brake has been applied. The charade is up, the emperor of capitalism has no clothes, the system is failing. A stripped cog has no use for its machine.

America picks at you. It beats you down, day by day. There needs to be a unique word for that feeling you get in a Las Vegas mall after a few hours. It's a distinctly American spiritual exhaustion, an aching headache from knowing that everything shiny is just polished turds, and you were pick-pocketed looking at it.

Make no mistake; we are not the victims. We are the generation refusing to become turd salesmen and pickpockets.