Becoming a 99’er, Battling Depression, and Why I’m Voting Bachmann

So, last week, I became a 99’er. For those of you that are fortunate enough to have a job, and therefore not know what that means, it is the term for people who have been unemployed for so long (i.e. 99 weeks), that they are no longer able to collect unemployment. When you hear statistics bandied about like (14 million unemployed Americans), that’s really only about half of the people who are actually unemployed. The rest are people like me, who no longer “count” as unemployed because we aren’t collecting unemployment. You see, I just helped out the economic recovery of America last week. “Officially” there’s one less unemployed person in this country, because I’m not collecting anymore. Whew, I’m sure glad that I’m not unemployed anymore…er…wait a minute!

Saw two interesting stories this week. My mom was kind enough to pass along a story that she saw in the newspaper about how many companies are only filling their open spots with people who already have a job. Like it isn’t difficult enough for me to get a job battling the other 20,000 unemployed people in Lane County, now I need to REALLY worry about the people who already have a job. Great.

The other story was one that took the “raw numbers” and tried to put it into a little better context for the average person to be able to understand. Just taking the “official” number of unemployed Americans (which as we mentioned above is only about half of the people who are ACTUALLY unemployed), there are more people unemployed in this country than the total population of all but four states. There are twice as many unemployed people in this country than the total population of the country of Norway. There are literally dozens of COUNTRIES that have fewer people living in them than the U.S. has unemployed.

Of course, I realize that this is all my fault. If I really WANTED to get a job, I’d just get off my lazy ass and get one, right? I mean, just because I’m filling out 20 applications a week doesn’t mean anything. I should be filling out 40 a week, because the problem is that I’m just not trying hard enough. The fact that I’ve had close to 500 applications turned in doesn’t really play into it.

I really don’t know what is worse, the indignation from the people who can’t fathom being unemployed and therefore think that anyone who is unemployed is just lazy (or worse), or the pity from people who do understand what I’m going through. The whole process has truly broken so much of who I am. I battle depression every day now. The happy person that I have spent most of my adult life now has now morphed into the clown that cries on the inside. It takes all of my strength to put on a happy face for most of the world to see. To remain positive for people I don’t know, or only know in passing. It takes work now, where in the past my happiness just flowed from me. The more I think about it, the harder it is, and the more depressed I get. I have a good day now and again, but then I’ll sit down in front of the computer to attack the day’s applications, and just feel wiped out.

The hardest are the interviews. I’m 0-12 on interviews now. I have a couple more on the horizon, and hope that one of them will pan out. But it is so hard to get this close and then fall so agonizingly close. I remember years ago, I knew someone who was standing in line behind a guy who bought a winning lottery ticket. I remember thinking that it was almost cruel to be that close to something and still lose out. That’s kind of how I have felt after my interviews. I just miss, and think that I was sitting next to the person who actually got it, or that if I had answered just one question a little bit different than the next person, maybe it would be me getting the good phone call instead of the “bad” email.

I look at what is happening locally, and realize that it is only a microcosm of what is happening nationwide, and even globally. The system is broken, and isn’t going to be fixed. We’re jury-rigging the whole system over and over again, fixing the effects and not the cause. But we’re doing it in a way that benefits fewer and fewer people, and leaves more and more on the outside looking in. It’s the biggest pyramid scheme in the history of the world, and almost everyone is buying in. They just don’t realize that they’re buying in at the point that they’ll never see a return on their investment.

I cannot recommend the film Inside Job highly enough. Despite the fact that it is the single most depressing thing I have ever seen, and is the only time in my life that I actually have FELT a complete and utter loss of hope, it is a film that everyone should watch. It shows how the banking industry collapse came to be, and why it will happen again. But more than that, it shows how little it matters if a Democrat or a Republican being in office really matters. The same people are being appointed behind the scenes, and they’re the ones dictating policy and truly making the decisions that affect most of us on a daily basis.

If Reagan and Bush on the Rep’s side, and Clinton and Obama on the Dem’s side are trusting the same people, and those people are screwing us over, then where will it end? The people who can make a positive difference in Washington (I’m looking at you, Kucinich), can’t get elected because they don’t “look” Presidential. So I’ve decided to take a different tack. I have pledged my vote to either Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin if they can win the nomination of their party.

No, I haven’t gone crazy, and don’t think either of them will make a good President. I think they’ll be the biggest, most overwhelming failures in the history of the country. I think they’ll make ‘W’ look like Thomas Jefferson. But I’m hoping that they’ll screw it up so spectacularly that it will crash the whole system. Because that’s what it’s going to take.

People are stupid, scared, and afraid of anything different. Most of them wouldn’t know how to stand up for themselves if their lives depended on it. You can continue to shovel shit in front of them and tell them it’s all there is to eat, and they’ll keep guzzling it down. They are easily manipulated, and given the state of our educational system, they’re only becoming more so all the time. They need the system to crash entirely, and something new to spring up in its place before they’re going to be willing to change.

If people can have banks and corporations take away their jobs, their retirement funds, their homes and their livelihood, and STILL vote Republican because they’re afraid of gay marriage and they think someone’s coming for their guns, then they need to be given what they’re asking for. You want it? Okay, I’m willing to give it to you. My party isn’t willing to stand up for itself, so I’m giving your party my vote. But only if it’s one of the truly crazy ones. I’m not voting for Rick Perry or Mitt Romney. That would be like a Republican voting for John Kerry and expecting change. That’s way too “by the book” for me. They’ll only screw it up a little bit, and I can get that from Obama, without losing abortion rights and social issues along the way. If I want it screwed up a little bit, I’ll stick with my guy. But if you give me a chance to ride this glorious country down into a fiery heap of colossal failure, I’m going to jump on board and smile all the way down, just like this guy:



Bachmann in 2012!!!