Luvtoread (Trying to catch up)

“heal the roots, to see the tree grow vibrant.”
― Matthew Edward Hall, San Mateo: Proof of The Divine

“Terrible days are sneaks, aren’t they? They love to lull you into a false sense of safety. Dress themselves up in the terrible mundane, make you think that everything’s okay when actually, nothing is.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“So she went on. “You hear the word, and you know what it means in a purely intellectual sense. But you don’t really know what people mean when they say it. You don’t know how they feel. You watch people have fun and it’s like listening to a conversation in a foreign language.” I realized as she spoke that my mouth was open. Thank goodness there was no meatball sub in there at the moment. “How did you know all that?” I asked. “I was an intellectually gifted child myself.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Life, Loss, and Puffins

“There's a reason that education sucks.
And it's the same reason
that it will never ever, ever be fixed.

It's never going to get any better,
don't look for it,
be happy with what you got.

Because the owners of this country don't want that.

I'm talking about the real owners now.
The real owners.
The big, wealthy business interests that control things
and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians.
The politicians are put there
to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.

You don't.

You have no choice.
You have owners.
They own you.
They own everything.

They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations.
They've long since bought and paid for the Senate,
the Congress, the state houses, and city halls.
They got the judges in their back pocket.
And they own all the big media companies
so they control just about
all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying,
lobbying to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want.
They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I'll tell you what they don't want.
They don't want a population
of citizens capable of critical thinking.
They don't want well-informed, well-educated people,
capable of critical thinking.

They're not interested in that.
That doesn't help them.
That's against their interest.
That's right.

They don't want people who are smart enough
to figure out how badly they're getting fucked
by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don't want that.

You know what they want?
They want obedient workers.
Obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork
and just dumb enough, to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs,
with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits,
the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension
that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now, they're coming for your Social Security money.
They want your fucking retirement money.
They want it back,
so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

And you know something, they'll get it.
They'll get it all from you, sooner or later,
because they own this fucking place.

It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the big club.”
― George Carlin, Life Is Worth Losing