The protestors are out there, but nothing is going to change. Photo from Tom Clark's Beyond the Pale.

I’ve got news for those folks – the people protesting on Wall Street, united or not, will always be defeated. Why? Simple. If your rank and file members are anti-Semitic or anti-any group of people, you will never win over the masses. Oh, sure – you might draw in a few thousand people in New York City and maybe even a million or so from coast-to-coast. But even if you drew in 1 million people to support your cause, you’d be a minor fraction of a percent of the American public. Here’s the simple math: 1,000,000 people who are protesting (and, apparently, don’t mind the anti-Semites in their ranks) divided by 320,000,000 Americans = 0.003125 percent of the American public.

That’s not even enough support to warrant one millisecond of any Wall Street banker’s day.

But that’s not my message – that’s just some discussion on what I saw in that hateful, disgusting video. Here’s my message to the OWS protestors:

You are mainly the cause of your own pain.

I’m in the rare position to be able to feel the pain that these protestors are complaining about. These are the kids who went to college, majored in the humanities, and now can’t find a job with their art, English, sociology, political science, gender studies, etc. degree. I feel their pain because I graduated from my college with a bachelors degree in English. The difference between where the protestors are in life and where I am in life is that I didn’t view that humanities degree as a means to an end. In other words, I never thought that getting that degree 1) guaranteed me a job after graduating, 2) guaranteed me any respect after graduating, and/or 3) meant anything other than that I read a lot of literature and cranked out a bunch of academic-style research papers.

The larger difference between the protestors and a guy like me, though, is that I don’t believe my own bullshit. Here’s a brief explanation of what I’m talking about… Thanks to my work with volunteering to my local fraternity, I’ve watched a generation of young kids grow into an unrealistic adulthood. Their adulthood is unrealistic because they actually believe the bullshit that they spew. For example, it’s not uncommon for me to encounter an undergraduate who tells me that his Father/uncle/cousin/Grandfather is a major executive at XYZ Corporation and that once he graduates he’s going to get a good job there (or some variant of that story). And, almost invariably, when it comes time for that undergraduate to move on from college they either don’t graduate at all or wind up working at a completely different company than the one that their familial relationship was supposed to just hand them. Regardless of that reality playing out time and time again, I see more and more young people coming into the academic environment with that entitled mindset. As one of my old professors tells me whenever we have lunch together, there are kids entering college today with the attitude of, “I have arrived!”

And no one gives a shit that they’ve arrived.

So if you are one of the many, many protestors on Wall Street who are complaining that you can’t find a job because of the evil corporations, what you should really be complaining about is a university atmosphere that served you a tall glass of bullshit-flavored Kool-Aid. That’s right – the very same ivory tower where you fell in love with Chaucer, literary reviews of British literature during the Industrial Revolution, or the gender equality struggle in the Middle East (which is something that I’m passionate about, too), is the same ivory tower that duped you into believing that your passion for these causes and issues would be enough to support your life post-graduation.

They lied to you. The professor that you fell in love with because you really believed and felt that they had a passion for their work – they are part of a much larger, much greedier institution than Wall Street. They push an ideal that has proven throughout the ages to never be sustainable – namely, that you can be a 100% humanistic, artistic society and thrive. It’s not possible. Someone has to actually do the work that moves a person, family, community, and country forward. Someone has to get up in the morning and make the donuts. Someone has to pump the gas. Someone has to mow the lawn. Those are the jobs that a civilized society needs filled.

We don’t need someone to sit around and debate the pros and cons of Shakespearean iambic pentameter in adequately representing the struggle for equality during Elizabethan times. Do people get to sit around and have this argument? Of course they do! Are those people ever going to be YOU? Not likely. The people who get to sit around and sip tea while having these high-minded discussions are the same ones who have been doing that for the last fifty years – and they’re not going anywhere any time soon.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend that the OWS protestors take that rage, take that anger, take that hatred towards a bleak future and direct it towards a societal system that nearly forces us all to go to college. The protestors are also complaining about mountains of student loan debt and no serious jobs to help them pay down the debt. Take it from a guy who graduated with a humanities degree (two, actually, when you count the master’s degree) and $121,000 in student loan debt – I feel your pain. You’ve been lied to all of your lives. However, don’t lash out like spoiled children are wont to do. Instead, now is the time to break free from the intellectual shackles that have been harnessing your free thought and true understanding of reality.

Rip off those shackles. Let loose your mind. Begin to think, seriously, about why the world is as it is today. Why are students graduating in a future where they see no hope? Why are corporations always going to put the concerns of their shareholders (i.e. profit) first? Why is it that your protests won’t mean a thing to anyone who actually matters?

Think about those questions as they exist in reality and work towards a reasonable solution. Strip your mind of the prejudices that an over-liberal education have harnessed them with and come to understand what the real world is like today, tomorrow, and into the future. Protesting the job creators is not the answer, folks. The problem is the perpetuation of a national standard that damn near forces its young people to enroll in a collegiate system that is hyper-focused on making a profit while largely shackling creativity by allowing students to graduate while still believing their own bullshit.

Fix that problem and everything else will eventually fall in line.

From time to time I read through the editorials and opinion pages online. The reason why I normally don’t read through that portion of the newspaper is because the bulk of the writers’ views are slanted so far to the left that to call their opinions those of the Democrats or even the far left would be an insult to both groups. However, hate-monger Maureen Dowd wrote such a hate-filled, racist piece of garbage yesterday that I felt compelled to post about it in this space.

The idea of Dowd’s hate-filled column is that she thinks Representative Joe Wilson yelled, “You lie!” to President Barack Obama during his speech the other night due to being a racist. She even pulls up some old information on the Representative that she believes proves her point. Frankly, reading her piece made me physically ill. Here are some of her hate-filled, racist rants:

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

In this quote, Dowd admits that she hears and sees the world through the ears and eyes of racist. How someone can insert “boy” into what they hear is beyond me. It’s reprehensible and gives us a window into Dowd’s true hatred of white men. Why didn’t she hear, “You lie, honey!” and claim that Wilson was gay instead of racist? Oh, because she’s a racist and hate-monger.

Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

No, you racist, sexist asshole. Wilson heard a man who has – by the President’s own words – been unclear about his position on healthcare and he reacted. Did Wilson react correctly? Not at all. He reacted like a child and he ought to be ashamed of himself. But what type of hate-mongering moron could have listened to that childish outburst and interpreted it as racist? How pathetic?

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

What a complete scumbag Dowd is! She says that the protests over the summer were efforts to paint Obama as a socialist, fascist, etc? And that it is based in racial politics? What type of crack is this idiot on? Did some people at those rallies have inappropriate signs? Yes. Did MANY more people at the anti-Bush rallies have worse signs? Yes. Did this filthy hate-mongering fool Dowd chastise them? No…she joined them. Talk about being a racist and a sexist pig.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

Here we have a two-fer! First, Dowd shows that she’s a liar by claiming that no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at President Bush. What a crock of shit. They may not have done it in the Capitol building, but anyone who has 1/4 of a brain knows that the Democrats had a field day calling President Bush a liar over Iraq! Need we forget the false, “Bush lied, people died,” crap? How does the New York Times employ this idiot?

And then she goes on that some people just can’t believe that a black man is the President. Are you fucking serious? How about the fact that some people can’t believe that President Bush was President? Or that a guy with the lack of morals like Bill Clinton was President? Or that a guy who was an actor like Ronald Reagan was President? Talk about making a mindless point…Dowd’s hate-filled column is flush with them!

You can read the rest of her racist, sexist tirade here, if you want. But the real kicker in all of this stuff is that the White House – President Obama’s White House! – completely disagrees with Dowd.

Now, what will it take for Maureen Dowd to be fired? She spouted off on a racist rant against Joe Wilson. Both Republican Joe Wilson and the Democratic White House have indicated that she was wrong. Her rants are clearly those of a demented person who views the world through a racist and sexist lens. And the New York Times is going to allow her to stay on their staff?

For shame.

This is a book that looks at management style through the scope of the Gerald Ford Administration, Rumsfeld’s time at Searle, and his immediate reaction after September 11th. In these views (the book was published in 2002, so it’s not anywhere near current), Rumsfeld was a master manager and a brilliant human strategist.

And the truth is that when it comes to being a Chief Executive Officer, Rumsfeld is truly a master. The work he did in the Ford White House alone is the stuff of political maneuvering legend – when you add his amazing job as the CEO of Searle pharmaceuticals, this man and his style really becomes required reading for any MBA course. Much of this book talks about his time at Searle – and he did some amazing things there.

For those of you that don’t know, this is the company that created NutraSweet – the saccharin replacement for sugar. It was a mega hit in the 1980’s when it finally hit the market, but it might have never gotten there if it wasn’t for Rumsfeld’s restructuring of the company internally. This was a company that was moping along under the tri-management of two Searle brothers and a brother-in-law and was at odds with the FDA over approving NutraSweet.

So what did Rumsfeld do? He walked in there and reorganized the company so that there was a central command and so that they took the offensive against the FDA. And they won. Also, he hired experts in their fields and ignited the company’s research and development arm as well as their financial arm.

And when things didn’t work? He cut losses and sold off nonperforming assets. Wow! Where was this guy a few years ago with Iraq? But I digress…

For those of you who are interested in looking at a management style (and getting a book out of the $3 rack at Barnes and Noble), I suggest grabbing a copy of The Rumsfeld Way. It’s an interesting look at a guy who should be remembered in a much better light in American history, but sadly will not be after the mistakes of the last few years.

Good book – good read.