My W2 was waiting for me at work tonight.
I looked at it, and noticed how much money FICA hit me for this year.
This is the best paying job I've ever had, so it was larger than normal. yay me.
Then I get to work; which in my case involves a lot of surfing the web, playing games and waiting for stuff to break.
I cruised over to Bushflash.com (great site btw)and watched a few animations.
There was this one in particular that really got to me.
A compilation piece, depicting the horrors we are inflicting on the various peoples of the world.
Children dismembered by cluster bombs, men and women maimed dead or dying by the tools of war we use against them.
Fellow humans whose one chance at life is stripped away by the Greed and Bloodlust of a bunch of facists.
Then it hit me like a brick to the nuts.
I'm paying for this.
I helped pay for the bomb that blew that little boys arm off. Those 18 people in Pakistan?
I helped pay for that too.
Of course, I knew this in theory.
I'm not a complete moron.
But I never really Realized it, ya know?
I look at the W2 form sitting next to me and it feels like a contract signed in blood.
And the worst thing is, I don't know what to do about it.
How can I keep paying taxes, knowing what they are being used for?
What options do I have?
Unemployment starts looking noble.
I am already donating about the same amount anually that I give to FICA to help the good guys/save the earth etc. So I could try to convince myself that I'm balancing it out. But as comforting as that rationale would be, I just can't get myself to fall for it.
For now, I guess it's my only option.
But the winds of change are blowing foul....
kinda like living upwind of a paper-mill.
The Facist have control of every branch of Government.
We can take some of the power back in the midterms, but who's to say they won't cheat again?
Like last time...
It's not as though Joe Sixpack gives a damn as long as ESPN stays on the air and Walmart stays open.
Dont get me wrong.. I'm not a defeatist.
I will never stop fighting to reclaim the beautiful dream that America is from the tender mercies of these rapists and killers.
But I can't shake the fear that it may not be enough...
and can't ignore the inevitable "What If?" that accompanys that fear.
Worst case scenario...
The tinfoliers are vindicated, all pretense of Democracy is stripped away, The masks drop and the Dictatorship stands plain for us to see...
What the hell can we do about it?
What if we all just stopped giving them our money??