My mom sent me a link today about the riots in London with a little blurb from my dad about the global financial crisis and how its really starting to affect the bigger western nations. We've known for many years about the political unrest in the middle east, in places like Libya, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia; the wars in Iraq and Afganistan. The big shocker when Greece declared "bankruptcy" and the riots it caused. But not its hit London. Wow. London, city of the royals. Looking through those pictures was like looking at scenes from WWII, it was so sad. Reading about a family business that had been in the same building for 5 generations, since the 1860's! 150 years of hard work and sweat completely destroyed. And I asked myself why? This is apparently a global financial crisis and they just caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. If you were so upset about your pension being cut before where do you think they're getting the money to pay for this? I say why? But what else is there? You work 30, 40, 50 years and you pay all these taxes and what do you get? You get nothing. My parents paid CPP their whole life but now they tell us, oh by the time you retire there won't be any CPP because there's no money left. But nothing good can come from destroying a city. There has to be other solutions.
The problem is people get so angry and they become blinded by it and their instinct is to react with violence when the opposite should be happening. But with all the corrupt governments you can't trust them to do anything right; they are just looking out for themselves. So maybe this is needed to open the eyes of those in political power but its still sad that it has to be done this way. In a perfect world people would have a voice and they would be able to talk freely with their leaders to combat the economic crisis. Instead they just sit in their high towers on their mountain of money. Coming from a common middle class worker it is really unfortunate that when I look at our political leaders I feel disgust and betrayal. And people get so angry when there are budget cuts and job losses and government subsidized programs shut down and what can you do? Instead of the government sitting down and saying "Look, here's this, this and this, we need to come up with possible solutions etc etc" and have some kind of community wide inclusion of people, they just start cutting healthcare, childcare, senior's benefits and it makes them look like criminals because people think "Well those ugly bastards keep taking all our money in taxes and then they go and cut this and cut that and leave us with nothing while they live in their million dollar mansions"
Just because people have jobs doesn't mean they are living properly. With minimum wage JUST recently rising to $9.25/hr that's still impossible to live off of. No one can keep a roof over their head, feed their 2 children, have electricity, gas. Having a vehicle, being able to afford car insurance, and gas, these have all become luxury's in my day. With the way inflation is its hard for anyone to keep their head above water. Don't be looking at the unemployment rates, look at how many people are living below the poverty level!! You always see those tv shows about people who are sick and dying in Africa but what about in our own country?! We can't even sustain ourselves, how can we even think about helping a whole other continent? I have friends who can't find work, I have friends who are working but barely making it, who can't afford food all the time, who have children and are struggling to get by. We need to wake up as a nation, but the government also needs to take a long look in the mirror and think what they can do to make it better. Rioting and violence isn't the solution, but whether people can figure that out I dont know. It would take a lot. Its easy for the rich and wealthy, but all of us middle class workers are left with the disaster. My generation, Adam's generation we are stuck picking up the mess. We call this nation a democracy, but what is that anymore? Just because I get to tick a box on a ballot and say I want "so and so" in office? That's not democracy... It just gives me the illusion of democracy. We have no say in how our country is run. We put it in the hands of other people and hope that they make good decisions, but how are we even supposed to react when time and time again those people we put in to run our country lie to us, go behind our back on us. Jesus said "The theif comes only to steal, kill and destroy" and honestly what else do we see from our government? How does that give our generation any hope? Its all just really sad.
Why does this generation have no respect for authority? Well its not like they've done a lot to deserve any respect from me. Why would I respect someone who lies to me? You teach your kids morals, how to be honest, and sincere, generous and show kindness to people. Please tell me the last time someone in power showed any of that? I know this post is a bit all over the place but the riots in London hits close to home. With the insurmountable debt in the USA, its bound to hit here sooner rather than later. There aren't many people left who remember the great depression, but if things don't change our children will be telling stories of their great depression.
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