On Anger

There are so, so many things in the world to be angry about, that allow one to go about filled with righteous, life-giving rage. One could be angry about unjust wars (pick one!), children dying of preventable diseases, children dying of starvation, various and sundry experiments with genocide, and, really, let's not even get started on Infuriatingly Awful Things That Happen to Women Everywhere, or The Environment, or Animals, because the anti-depressants are just starting to work over here. So there are these big, enraging things, and then there are the little daily outrages, the kind that make you mutter "Motherfuckers" in the library and disturb the girl who's like, totally trying to post a clever status update on Twitter ("In Davis lib! So boring!").

The news that the top hedge fund managers made a collective $25 billion dollars last year (in case you're wondering, no, there are not 25 billion hedge fund managers; in fact, this was the combined income of just 25 men) was of the latter variety of anger (if it had a flavor, it would be nuts, surrounded by bitter nougat). To add a topping to my anger nougat, it turns out that hedge fund managers only have to pay 15% income tax on that income! Know why? Because income made from managing other people's money is taxed at a lower rate than regular income--treated as long-term capital gains (which, by the way, up there on the Scale of Outrage is the fact that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than regular income anyway, because I think money for which people actually WORK should be taxed at a lower rate than money that your other money earned for you, while you were summering in Mauritius). Hahahahahaha, motherfuckers.

So while these Tea Bagging Lunatics eat an outrage sandwich comprised of racism (Obama is a muslin kenyan witch doctor!), fearmongering (death panels! kill grandma! take our guns!), and falsehoods (see above; also, health care reform=socialism, Sarah Palin=Real American, &c.) they don't pay any attention to the fact that someone who made 2.3 billion dollars last year--during the worst economic recession since the Depression, while the unemployment rate topped 10%--paid taxes at a rate half what a middle-class American pays. Or the fact that no one in the world needs 2.3 billion dollars a year in income anyway, goddammit. They know they're being manipulated, that something is not quite what it seems, but they are so gullible that they blame the brown people and the government and think that corporations are on their side somehow, and big business needs defending. They honestly think that their interests are the same as the interests of rich people. Because everyone will be rich, someday, in America.