It's often made clear that I married exactly the right guy for me, and totally the wrong guy for me. This morning is a prime example. I woke up with a rant fully formed in my subconscious. I was ready to leap onto a soapbox and preach. I had examples, evidence, analogies, and volume in the hopper. One sentence in I get, "You're preaching to the choir."
Dammit! No argument stopper is more effective than not having an argument. I was hot to discuss the evils of Black Friday. How yes, everyone wants to give their child that magical Christmas morning with piles of packages and overflowing stockings. How we all want to demonstrate to our families that we love them by lavishing them with gifts. But really, I would rather gift my child with an independence from consumerism. I wish for her an economy that isn't split between benefiting the wealthiest top earners at the expense of the entire rest of the country. I want more than anything for her not to live in a nation where capitalist corporations dictate legislation.
I woke up thinking about the Occupy protesters. They have been camping outside, being randomly arrested and pepper sprayed, to make the point that 1% of our national population have acquired an insane majority of the wealth of our country and are abusing the power it has accrued for them. Then, come the day after Thanksgiving, a flood of shoppers rushes into that very system and fortifies it, reinforces it, proves the power that those corporations hold and that they do indeed, have us exactly where they want us. We will grumble about it, but they can do anything the hell they want and we will take it. There are the 1% reaping all the benefit of our system, the 1% trying to change it, and the 98% keeping it running exactly as it always has.
Before I can rage about any of this he pipes in with, "You're preaching to the choir." Really? Yeah, I'm glad we hold this foundational belief in common, but really? You can't let me screech for a while? You know how happy hyperbole makes me.
