Declaration of Grievances

            When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one student to adhere to the constraints of their course and write something beyond reckoning, a decent respect to the academic institution that facilitates such untenable opinions requires that they should declare the cause which impels them to such conclusions.

Now, let's refrain from moving any farther. This much distance, at least, is strongly recommended. I have some things to say, some of which you have no doubt heard, though shaded by undetectable layers of distortion. I will not be announcing which distortions I have removed and which I have doubled-down on— that is for others to mettle through. I also will not divulge the choreography of the contortions I have gone through to reach this vantage point. The elegance of my confidence would rip apart like wet tissue paper if you were privy to my philosophical playbook. That said, here is the play.

            We killed the planet. It's over. The arrangements we make now, if we make any at all, will end up being kitschy little touches at the Earth's wake. A bouquet of rotten fruit. Desiccated petals stuck to the window. A piano in shambles, playing the same slow, low note, over and over. You see what I mean. It would be rude to walk away, though, considering our implication in the murder. Turning our back at this point would be the least effective hit n' run in history. We made our maggot-infested bed. Now we get to die in it.

            The wealthy won— we lost. Though in certain ways, it's never been more fun to be losing. Look, there's nothing I hate more than mopping floors and wrapping silverware and running the dishwasher for hours, powerless to walk out the stupidly heavy door I watch customers struggle to get through all day, defenseless against the onslaught of power-trip marching orders from my green-bean-brain manager. All for money that belongs to me in name only. What little cash I deem appropriate for leisure I feel guilty spending. The rest is swept through the irredeemable machine.

            When we let the masters regulate the regulators, we were finished. This is not an indictment of those who tried. We have to sleep sometime. They never sleep. Or, at least, the air is so tight up there at the top that they must rest very carefully, in shifts, else they slip into a sleep so heavy they cease breathing. When the people rise and smash together in a valiant attempt to say enough, the masters need only wait until the dancing and yelling and unifying is spent, and the bulk of the protest limps home to plummet into their beds. Then the shadowy hand descends to disperse the remaining opposition, just in time for brunch.

            Now I shift to directly address the masters, the elite, the much-grumbled about 1%: despite my accrued knowledge of your supremacist agenda, and my personal experience with the aftershocks of your carelessness, and hearing the stories of others suffering far worse than I ever could— I'm still on your side, idiots. Do you know how much I despise defending banks? I don't sound cool or empathetic when I feel obligated to point out that bailing out the banks was better than the alternative— letting them suffer their mistakes and damaging the rest of us with them. I don't feel hip when I feel the need to say that the banks paid back the monstrous loan within a year. How did I get stuck holding this bag?

            It is my penchant for pleasing everyone that puts me at this moral disadvantage. Somehow, even though the Supreme Court decided decades ago that money is speech, the silence from the wealthiest sliver of society is deafening. Defend yourselves, fuckheads. I won't occupy this middle ground forever. At some point I'm going to have to pick a side, and considering my practice, I have a good idea which side of the divide that'll be. You destroy the earth, abuse the legislative body, shore up your excess, cover for your atrocities, hire the slickest accountants, prey upon the despairing poor, turn them against their neighbors, and the whole way got help from folks like me who were foolish enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now the rest of us bear the brunt of the fallout.

            We doing okay. They say that world-wide— by some opaque metric of life, liberty and happiness— it's never been a better time to be alive. I want to believe. I also believe that though you may have played a role in industrializing pockets of extreme poverty that lag the whole globe over, you are barred from earning any credit. We know that “improving lives” was a minor bonus, at best. In the worst light, you saved some souls from fortunately-quick deaths and dragged their existences out into a full three acts of sweat, salt and blood. You get no credit for lifting the poverty line a couple inches while your statement stacks zeroes like pancakes. Cordoning yourself off from the rest of us has probably eased your conscience, but it has cemented your legacy as the Loki of American mythology. You burned us, you tricked us, you spun a massive, flimsy web for the whole world to wriggle in. The world continues to get warmer, and our futures look dimmer all the time.

            Seems I cut out the surplus, the middle layer, the establishment that has been much lambasted this election cycle, and gone straight to the top to address the masters of society who I'm sure will receive the message. IF, and this is a big if, you want the world to improve— not just for yourselves, because I know that in your lives, too, there is room for improvement— ya gotta stop acting like you're not there. 'Cause the people see you, and are starting to catch on to all that you've done to keep "the world like it is"— to use the words of Amiri Baraka. The only reason I even put myself through the embarrassment of defending your theoretical humanity is because you lack the courtesy to speak for yourself. And I have a ghastly defect that beckons me to speak on behalf of those who remain silent. Even for souls who have succumbed to the disease of greed— because if lack of money has made me generous, I can see that having it would make me vile. Tell me. When our Founders seceded from the tyrannical King, and pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their honor, do you think of that as the prelude to your reign? 
Should we animate the blood of our rebel ancestors, and stop at nothing to kill you?