Throwing the b.s. flag

I get a little annoyed lately at this bitch about taxes and corporations. Mostly because I don't understand how any person that lives on this planet thinks that it is okay to use other people's resources and not compensate them for it in some manner. I mean, it seems like proponents of giving tax breaks to big corporations all use the excuse that they are the job creators, so we can't tax them and make it so that they have less money to create jobs with. Lets just throw in the bullshit flag right there. First off, where are the jobs? If they are job creators, where are the jobs? Most companies are posting profits, so where are the jobs? If they are profiting then why can't they pay for the resources that they use? The people, they deserve to be healthy. The community, deserves to have clean air and water. Promises they obviously made to get there. Deals with tax abatements and contracts for jobs and support in the community. Then they get a break, they don't have to pay. Now they have killed the community they swore to embellish and promote. Tax them, let the communities create the jobs. The neighborhoods and districts, they are the job creators. It used to be that a neighborhood grew to fulfill it's needs. Now a neighborhood grows around housing developments that follow Wallmarts and mini-malls filled with the food chain trifecta; tacos, burgers, and pizza. The check cashing places come next, and the cash for gold vultures circle, land, eat the carnage and fly off. All these businesses don't create jobs, they leech money out of the neighborhood. Then when it's all gone, they take off and the next leech comes in to fill the empty spot. 
In response, communities vie for more government subsidies, turn around and tax their own citizens for being overweight, and craving sugar. They tax the landowners, the ones that cared enough to stay, or had no other choice, now have to bare a heavier burden. They remove services to the people who are stuck there, jobless, homeless, penniless and indebted up to their eyeballs, leaving them now hopeless. 
The community leaders are charged with being "innovative" while having no base to start from. How do you innovate poverty and homelessness? They are instructed to be revenue streams, that creating money for the town is what they are there for, and they numbly agree and follow on. They have no idea what they are doing or how they are going to accomplish it. Truth is they were lost before they started. 
There is an answer to this. There are ways to fix it. We could start by looking at where it started, begin recognizing trends that brought us to where we are, recognize our participation in it. We could stop punishing all the people who can't fix it and blaming it on their greediness. We can recognize that we have been marketed into this, and that understanding human vulnerability has enabled marketing psychologists to abuse, harass and violate our bodies, homes and stability long enough. We can expose the manipulative tactics being used against us for what they are; greed, hypocrisy and an inflated sense of entitlement. We can stop this madness, we only need to recognize how far it goes and acknowledge the affect it has on us personally. 
For me I acknowledge that I like inspiration and hope and ideals. It appeals to my heart and opens up my chest, makes me feel like I can breath for a moment. Then when the reality sets in, and I realize that none of the things I believed about something ended up being the actual thing that happened, I am embarrassed and accuse my mind of making a bad choice. But that isn't true. What happened is that the presenter of the things that appealed to me, knew that I would be attracted to those things, and they used that to get the targeted response for me, and when it fell down, they expected me to blame myself and not them. This is the same mentality that people who abuse others have. Give the victim just enough of what they need so that they will be able to be controlled. It shouldn't surprise us that those people often end up in power. It's not that we can't rule ourselves, it's that we don't know yet that we can. We can get there. We can make these people-corporations stop abusing us if we call them on their bullshit.

My kids are growing up

I have had kids since I was a kid myself. Started having them at 15 and raising them at 18. Two grew up in families that love them dearly and would move the earth for them, and the other four grew up with me. I always liked that, growing up with my kids, but now, I am forced to recognize that we are all grown up. They aren't as dependent on me as I have come realize I am, on them.
The other day, my daughter who is about to be 18 let me know she wanted to leave school. I listened to her tell me all her reasons why, silently playing my own memory pictures to the words in her description. I was really identifying with her, when I was snapped out of my mind-movie, by "Mom you are 39, you'll be 40 this year, you aren't thinking like an 18 year old, you don't know what I am going through."
At first I was shocked, my brain clicked, I'm 39? Then I felt like I was kicked in the gut, "I don't know?" Why the hell did I carry all that angst around so that I could identify with you then?! At that moment I realized it was me who was wanting to be identified with. She never asked for all of that. Dammit, why does she have to just break down my barriers? I wasn't ready!
I told her she was silly, and she said the conversation was over. Fine, I needed time to regroup from that anyway.
Luckily I have a partner that is more mature than I feel (or act) most times. I relayed that conversation to him, up to the "you aren't thinking like an 18 year old" comment and he laughed. "Thank goodness" he told me, "we've grown past thinking and that way!" "And we survived!" I laughed.
I didn't think growing up would feel this way. Suddenly I needed to call my parents and apologize for being a teenager. Especially theirs. I heard the same things she was pleading come out of my mouth all those years ago, and I thought they just couldn't understand. Maybe that is wrong. Maybe they felt out of place, overwhelmed and pushed toward things that didn't jive with them too. Maybe they just put on a better show. They told me I would understand when I grew up. I think this means I should tell them that I just did. 

What does labeling get us?

I've noticed that people like labels. If there is a label for it, somebody will shout it out. As if saying the label explains everything you could possibly need to know about the thing being named. But is that true?
What if the use of the label only serves to limit the scope of possibility of the thing? How many times do people shout out labels in a positive manner? With that jubilant tone of recognition and familiarity, instead of the sharp report of fear and accusation? How many times when a label resounds in the conversation does it bring harmony and agreement?
My opinion on the matter is this; Labels are lazy. Words are normally used to communicate, but labels are used to decrease and cut off communication. Labels announce judgement and finality, as if uttering the word was magically covering everything about the subject into a neat little line, that is now fit to be discarded. Labels are used to decrease the value of the subject. By limiting the description, a label effectively limits the furtherance of idea. Kills it right there, before the idea could convince anybody, that it wasn't as scary as it's label. 

What happens when we outgrow our governments?

Growing up sucks in a lot of ways. The biggest one for me is the realization that the beliefs I held getting to this point are largely inaccurate. I thought that governments were meant to run countries. I thought that countries were the whole of businesses, military, national security, etc. More and more lately I see that governments are busy attacking their people. 
In this country the government is waging a class war and draining the economy of all usable currency. They are tracking our every move through digital markers. They are continually in-fighting and refusing to address the concerns of our public. They are waging a war of fear and bullying. If you don't like it or fight against them, they'll find a way to marginalize you or put you in jail, just like all the others.
In the country north of us the exact same thing. 
In the country south of us, they are letting their populace be killed, and point at drugs when they are confronted by the 100's of thousands who are standing in the family rooms in the neighborhoods those people are killed in.
I can think of the same human atrocities taking place in country after country, and it begs me to ask, "What happens when we outgrow our governments?"
How is it, that we can as a people, one race of humans, simply ignore what a very few people are doing to us? Why don't we make them stop? Why do we keep paying them? Harboring them? Fostering them? We are more than they, but they are beating us. Soundly. 
There has to be a better way, one that doesn't require violence, and death. These wars aren't ever aimed at the homes of the people who create them. 
The bombs and gunfire erupt in neighborhoods that people had moved into previously, had their children, built schools and businesses. It isn't other neighborhoods shooting at them either, it's government funded, professionally trained killers, shooting at families. How does the human race allow this?
 Is it a fight for survival? No, there are 7 billion of us, and no stopping point in sight. 
Is it a fight for rights? No, they are shooting into villages with families who live there.
It is simply about money. 
A made up piece of something that people allow to have a value. Something that if it didn't exist at all, would not impact our ability to live or create. It is because of our consent for it's importance that all the indignities and violations toward other, non-aggressive humans continues. 
Our governments are tied to our currency. All the currencies in the world are tied together. All governments are tied together. Whether they are trading, or warring, or sanctioning, all governments remain tied to each other in some manner. 
This puts us at an advantage. If we begin to view governments as only one government, and we figure that there are way more of us than there are of them, then the problem becomes much smaller. The perspective of it begins to change and the solutions begin to become apparent. 
I don't think as much separates us humans as a few people who have access to large audiences would have us believe. 
By being kept in separate areas, and not venturing forward to cross cultural and social boundaries, we rely on single perceptions based on the currency being exchanged. Nothing they speak has anything to do with the truth. 
Humans are pretty much biologically the same. There isn't a whole lot complicated about us, and there isn't a lot of mystery. The same molecular processes take place in all of us, rendering a limited amount of responses.
 If we begin to recognize those things in each other then we can't help but begin to recognize our own ability to empathize. 
Which leads us back to the people that are supposed to be our leaders. If we possess the ability to recognize the needs of ourselves and others, then what excuses the people that are only in government because of us, the right to refuse to recognize our needs?
 How do they represent anything other than their own interests based on currency? Currency doesn't represent us. It doesn't define us. We are a capable, very large number of humans all living on the same planet, with no where else to go, and we are being held at bay by a figment of our belief system. 
It's time to grow up, be the adults, and correct the imbalance in the government/currency system, develop real solutions together, and stop looking to people who don't represent us.