Why we don't care any more.

Around 1991 maybe 2? I remember it was cold day, I think it rained but I knew I had to go. This was the most important thing that I would do that year.I saw the future and it didn't look like a good one. I saw death and destruction advancing uncontrollably. I saw a whole generation lost to the whims of corporate America. I thought I better get down there and at least try to stop it. I went and was joined by a few other people, maybe twenty that saw what I did too. We saw the ignnorance and heard the arrogence of the proposal and we all knew it had to stop. We stayed there listening to Bill Clinton speak, holdinng our signs in what seemed like a futile effort to at least raise awarness to the coming disaster.
You see I'm from Wisconsin, the laboratory state of the neocons and Tommy Thompson their leader. With help of the conservative talking heads all hell would break loose if they got their way, they did.You see, Thompson at the time was propsing an insane plan, W-2(welfare to work), which at the time was promoted as the budgetary saving grace. Always presented by the likes of the a.m. radio elites as a way to forever fix any momentary short falls the corrupted could use to patch the holes. It was easily sold to their lazy listeners in a way they could get behind. The first shot from those neocon elites was such a racist one I couldn't beleive that there wasn't any push back from the public. The image that became acceptable by the listening population was a mother sitting at home on a couch eating bon-bons watching daytime t.v. and doing nothing more while her kids ran like animals in the street. Of course the image had a connotaion of that woman being black. They never stated it out worldly but that image was very clear when the conversation was provoked after hearing the comments by those listeners, it was crystal clear, the blanks filled in. You have to remember this was in the early ninties, before the internet became widspead and other arguements could be presented. A.m. radio was pre Fox news and mixed with real news, the only way of getting information about what was going on.The perfect brain washing tool! In order to get a weather report outside of the five o'clock news that was it. Between the forcasts the racism was painfully apparent and also the conditioning. We shudder at times what Trump and Co. are saying but you need to understand that it was in this time that the public became immune to the the blatant misery of this insane rederick. It worked for them. They succeded to draw this picture of a single mom as the enemy of the state, this was before LGBTQ would take her place, she was the problem and forcing her to get off the couch was the answer. The neocon, now known as ALEC, got their footing.
Corporate america loves a slave, no different than the slave owners of history. They wanted new blood and found it in the likes of mothers that they could easily control and keep a boot on their necks, just force them to work. Most men went for it here, they liked the idea of getting those welfare moms off the system and into the work force. They never drew the parallel of how is this going to effect them. No, the arguement was only presented as you have to work and so should they! The information was NEVER accurate, the truth is, more of the white population were on government programs vs. the minoraity ones, but it didnt mater. that picture drummed in deeper and deeper into their brains.
Suddenly, it happened, WI. was the first to adopt the program, and it was a mess! The corporations finally won their slaves back. Moms who once had the oppertunity to raise their kids began putting them into daycares, forever barring those kids from knowing who their moms are and off to work they went. And as predicted by all of us at that protest the wages across the board went down and violence increased. The listening public was played. Gone were the days of a twenty dollare an hour job and hello twelve fifty an hour, if your lucky. Gone were the endless job openings to now limited prospects. no one didnt think about that. We all became slaves for them, even those listeners.
I may sound kinda sexist by presenting the arguement this way but that is excatly how it was portrayed. Only moms were the enemies and fathers saintly even though they were recieving more in assistance money than women were, actaully men were rarely turned away like women were reguarly. This was done soley due to demographics of the listening public which was overwhelmingly male.
Then the first of the now long list of school shootings happened, columbine. I watched it live on t.v. Saw the kids run out of a school with hands in the air hoping to not get shot by the police outside as the fog of a new kind of war began. Everyone was angry but the discussion only limited to the boys that carried out the tragedy then later about guns but never the fact that mom had to work now, because thats what the neocons wanted, she was still the enemy and an easy target whom the world blamed for what her son had commited. Not once was the tragedy framed as it should have been like why wasn't he raised, the neocons wouldn't have liked that. Instead in a mad dash to keep the subject off of her they propsosed guns. It was the guns fault. It was the fault of the guns used, never heard of a person stabbing ten plus people before that. It would have talen olympic endurance to stab and fight off all the kids affected. Guns made volume convientant and possible. That wasn't the only issue, anger was and still is today.
When I was growing up in the eighties mom worked parttime at best and dad had a good paying job that allowed him to come home at night, like most people.Most kids actually had a parent at home when they got there from school. You knew what you had to do- chores, homework etc.. there was some structure there because of it. It was only the really poor kids that had no one home due to mom being gone all day and night working. And they were angry because of it. Today it's the new normal. A kid needs a parent to show them and teach them about the world. It's like getting peices of wood without instruction on assembly to finish that dresser. The world becomes confusing and irrational without the guidance of instruction and understanding. Parenting is the most important job on the planet! It has to be taken seriously! I am not suggesting that marraige should be compulseary with child rearing, quiet the opposite as we have seen kids from two parent households more likely to commit these murders as single parent households, marrage is not the answer as those that are are exposing their kids to domestic abuse which leads to an angry kid. Rather, we stop forcing women to have babies they cant afford or we all start contributing to the care of her kids. It really does take a village to raise a kid because if the village decides not to it will be the WHOLE village that pays for it in the end.