You know that I’m a political junkie. I’m intellectually curious about several other topics as well. Technology is a big interest of mine. Among the topics that I don’t give two shits about, is sports. I don’t get the obsession with it. Sports seem as trivial as reality shows to me.
Yet, I spent this weekend enraged over a story that, on its face, appears to be a sports story. I’m referring to the Penn State, raping of (probably) dozens of little boys story. This story is so fucking vile, that no political maneuvering by any slimy and corrupt politician, has ever made me more ill.
Here are the broad strokes for anyone not following it. Nine years ago, Mike McQueary, an assistant football coach at Penn State, walked into the locker room at Penn State and witnessed another assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky RAPING a 10 year old boy. Not fondling, not groping, but RAPING. Upon making this discovery, did he pry Sandusky off of the poor boy? NO! Did he call the police? NO! He left, allowing the rape to continue, even though both Sandusky and the victim had seen him. Before I continue with the events as they occurred, I want you to think about something. I want you to think about the horror that 10 year old boy was suffering at that moment. I want you to think about the hopefulness that he must have felt when he saw another adult enter the room. The hope that this person was going to stop the brutal anal rape that he was enduring. And then think about how he must have felt when that “hope” evaporated and he realized that no one was going to help him. So fucking tragic. Okay, back to the events that ensued. This gutless piece of shit calls not the police, but his father, to tell him what he had seen. Does the father instruct McQueary to call the police? NO! This family obviously suffers from moral bankruptcy issues. The father tells the son to report what he saw to the head coach of the Penn State football team, Joe Paterno. WTF? The head coach? Does Joe Paterno call the police after hearing of the horrific RAPE of a child? NO! This vile, piece of shit, asshat, who has four kids and a litter of grandchildren, doesn’t do a goddamned thing. How feckless and self serving does a parent of four children have to be to allow the RAPE of a child to go unreported? He decided to keep the incident “in house” at Penn.
Why am I writing about this? Because it’s a perfect representation of what Occupy Wall Street is shining a light on. This isn’t just a story about a pedophile and the soulless peices of shit that did nothing to stop him. This is a story about how people of privilege shit all over the poor (and therefore the powerless) in order to preserve their wealth and power.
This fucking monster Sandusky, made sure that he preyed on poor kids from broken homes. In fact, he started a foundation for children in need. Their mission statement reads, “The Second Mile is a nonprofit organization serving the youth of Pennsylvania. At The Second Mile, we are committed to helping young people achieve their potential as individuals and as community members and providing education and support for their parents and youth service professionals.” Apparently, Sandusky wanted to make sure that some of these kids achieved their potential by locating his penis, and forcing it on them.
He wasn’t preying on privileged kids. He never raped the child of a Penn State administrator. No, he carefully chose his victims among a class that he deemed to be powerless. And he correctly assumed that his position of power would shield him from paying for his crimes. The Jerry Sandusky is a pedophile allegations didn’t start in 2002. They date back to at least 1995, which is why he abruptly retired from the Penn State coaching team in 1999. People at Penn State have been covering up for a RAPIST for nearly two decades. Why?
It’s about the money, Lebowski. Nobody wanted to tarnish the very lucrative Penn State football machine. And no one gave a shit if a few dozen poor kids got raped in order to keep the money machine flowing. They were just collateral damage, completely disposable in the pursuit of all of that beloved cash. I can’t tell you how fucking disgusted I am with this whole thing.
This situation is emblematic of the problems in America. We have a growing class of people that have to deal with a shrinking field of opportunities. 43% of working Americans earn so little, that their tax liability is completely wiped out by the standard deductions that we all take. There is something fundamentally wrong here. Our wages are shrinking and our poor population is growing. With less means, comes less power. And over and over again, we’re being told to just shut up and take it. New unjustifiable bank fees? Suck it up and pay! Health insurance premiums doubling and tripling on you? Suck it up and pay! Can’t find a job after months of looking? You’re obviously just lazy. Wanna go to college to better yourself? Suck on this;
It’s getting harder and harder to stay in the middle class every year, and it doesn’t matter how hard you try. The opportunities are being systematically taken away from us at the hands of an obnoxious 1% that believe we’re powerless, and that we’re just going to suck it up and take it.
And the entitlement that the elite feel is growing exponentially, relative to our shrinking opportunities. Whether it’s about RAPING poor children, or using tax payer dollars to pay out exorbitant bonuses, the ruling class feel entitled to take anything they want. And up until now, their sense of entitlement has been bolstered by the fact that we’ve been sitting back and taking their shit. We pay more, we work more, and we accept that having less is just the way it is.
No more. It’s time for this to end. It’s not okay to RAPE children, and it’s not okay to rape the middle class. That’s why I fully support Occupy Wall Street.
I learned early-on in life that there are certain unwritten rules that you dare not break if you want to be socially accepted. One of those rules is to not “rat out” a friend or fellow student. In the movie “Scent of a Woman” you can see the possible perversity of that rule in that a perfectly innocent poor student is willing to sacrifice his hard-earned scholarship rather than rat-out on a guilty rich student. What is next to amazing to me is that there are many people who believe that the poor student was doing the “right” thing. They believe it is a matter of honor, and following the honor code. That’s what is wrong with society in general. It seems that a majority of people really don’t make a decision based purely on objectivity and basic ethics. Instead they have a “team-mentality” that requires that they always support the team, right or wrong. It’s all about loyalty. In fact, after awhile the question of right or wrong doesn’t even come into play. That’s when they put on the blinders and become ditto-heads. I have no idea what the cure to that mental disorder might be. And if there is a cure, those who are in power will never approve it. I hate to sound pesimistic, but I think mankind is doomed to repeat the same old problems, all due to “loyalty” and the “honor code.”
Yeah, but do you think it would have gone on for nearly 2 decades is Sandusky had been raping children of privileged families?