The Way Things Are

Often I sit around, worrying about when I’ll make it on TV again or what funny thought I can tweet. Obviously this is a very good and productive use of my time and brain waves. We all do that. We sit around, getting ever so slightly fatter and more sedated. Eventually those fat layers drip off of us and out into the streets, covering the entire world with layers and layers of sedimentary apathy. Over time the world gets clogged and sags with the thick slime of our own indifference. The same world that used to look crisp and clean, is now dull with that sludge. We walk around in it, all day, our feet heavy from the weight of the world we carry with each step, our necks cranked down, looking at those feet. Keep walking. Pay rent. Take pill. Clock in. Clock Out. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge.

Yesterday I tweeted this: “The occupation of Wall Street seems to be working. Everything seems to be changing.”

Pretty cynical huh? Yeah that’s me. I’m a shit talker. And often I jump to the joke before anything else. I’m a comic, forgive me. No really, forgive me.

I’m sorry that I didn’t tweet this instead: “Change Everything. Occupy Wall Street.” Watch this video.

This isn’t weird. This isn’t anomalous. This is life in the sludge. This is the status quo. This is the way things are.

The people in power will scrape and fight to keep that power at any cost. Many of them for no discernible reason. Do I blame the police in the above video for abuses of their power? I mean I suppose I do but the bigger culprit is the invisible phantom behind them all. No not the intelligentsia or some cabal of puppet masters. These ideas are ridiculous red herrings that prevent us from confronting the real enemy. The inexorable push of the way things are. Those cops aren’t swinging their clubs and shooting pepper spray into the crowd because they personally support the corporate takeover of government and the insertion of the greedy dick of the banks into our collective asses. They are doing it because, put simply, that’s what they do. Cops come out to stop protests, sometimes violating peoples rights in the process. Banks lend to and prey on the poor while lining their pockets with gold. Corporations pretend to be people in a laughable legal fiction while not paying taxes and pushing legislation that effects us all. That’s the way it is. That’s the sludge we walk through. The thick weight we ignore every day. There is so much apathetic momentum against us that change seems impossible. Those who are trying to make change seem marginal and extreme. We all trudge in line because it seems so hard to turn around and walk the other way.

I am sorry that I am apathetic. I am sorry that I am a hypocrite. I am sorry that I often hide beneath a security blanket of cynicism, not believing that I can change anything. I feel helpless.

Of course I do.

Because, the only thing that can change that push of the way things are is to change everything. To change the way things are. The only way to change a world in which the police and the banks and the corporations act that way is, in fact, to change the world. And, while I might not be able to do that, I want to try not to stand in the way of that change by being a speed bump of apathy. Movements like Occupy Wall Street are the only thing that can change the world. And, even if I’m not ready to go camp on Wall Street, I will at least pick my feet up out of the sludge and take a step. To walk with those people who are choosing to go the other way. The 99% of people who are sick of the way things are.

We are the 99%.

Moshe Kasher is a stand up comedian and writer who has been featured on Comedy Central , NBC and E!. His album, “Everyone You Know is Going To Die, And Then You Are (Unless You Die First)” was named one of the top 20 comedy Albums of 2009 by Itunes. It can be purchased on his website, www.moshekasher.com where you can also find his tour dates. His memoir “Kasher in the Rye” will be released next year by Grand Central Publishing. You can follow him on twitter: @moshekasher