The Half-Mad Ravings of a Sleep Deprived Misanthrope

Forgive the cold, cynical nature of the following words. Heavy thoughts kept me from sleep last night and I am paying the price today. If you’ve ever seen the crossroads where madness meets desperation, you’ll know what I’m talking about. At any rate, enough bs on my end, let’s get to it shall we? There was a brief snippet of a story in the Ann Arbor Observer last week about a man who was being chastised in Ypsilanti over the way he was raising his kids. The gist of the story was that he was raising his young kids to question everything. He even *gasp* told his kids that cops weren’t always their friends. It got me thinking about the mindset of the public today. Everywhere you look, someone is looking to a savior. Be it a religious leader, be it a politician, or even a cop. Most people want to be saved by someone which, at first, struck me as odd. At least until I remembered how we raise our kids. From birth we tell them that they can be anything they want, and that the world is a bright and beautiful place. We treasure the innocence of kids because we know at some point, they will find out the truth. One day they will wake up and find out that this world has teeth and that NO ONE makes it through life without some deep, deep, scars. We tell them these things while at the same time omitting the fact that some kids are raised to think that they are truly bred better than the rest.

I knew a kid who was raised like that. I had the misfortune of meeting him my first day of 5th grade at Catholic School. His father had donated half a million dollars to build the school an athletic field-house and so little KC was off limits to teachers and administrators alike. He was the little savior of the school. I suppose you won’t really be surprised when I tell you he acted like it as well. I got into a fight with him one day after weeks and weeks off bullshit from his end. I was suspended for three days, he was not. I learned a lot from that little incident. When I returned from my three days off, he was worse than ever. Thankfully summer break arrived and I didnt have to see him for three months. When school started my 6th grade year, his crew had expanded. Seems kids learned the advantages of being friends with the savior. Finally, after three months of being knocked around daily by his little crew, I decided that if they wanted a savior, I would make sure he took his rightful place…towering above them. If you’ve read 9 Lives and Counting, you know what’s coming next. I decided that I would crucify the king in his own schoolyard. I almost succeeded had it not been for an untimely intervention. My intent wasn’t to kill the kid, more or less scare the shit out of him. Turns out I scared the shit out of people with a lot more power than he had. Despite my testimony of his constant torment, they expelled me from school and the little savior turned his attention to someone else. Would it surprise you to learn that last year he was arrested for beating his wife? Turns out the little savior grew up to be a big drinker and a giant fiend. Would it also surprise you to know that he received no punishment for his crime? I guess when you inherit a major media company in Detroit from your father, people give you a bit more leeway than the average Joe.

Allow me to bring this back full circle. The politicians and the religious leaders you look at as saviors? They are nothing more than devil’s in disguise. Little savior’s who have never had to answer for their behavior. You really think Joel Osteen gives a single fuck about you? Do you really think Mike Huckabee cares about the issues in your life? You lift up these fake ass ballers as saviors and then wonder why things don’t change. You think that casting a vote every two years somehow makes a difference in this world? 239 years and nothing has changed. You lie to your kids at night and tell them that everything will be alright, and that you will be there to protect them, but one day you won’t be, and on that day, they will learn the vicious truth about humanity. They will learn that we seek out saviors because we are too weak to save ourselves. That it is easier to give the reins to some smooth talker than it is to do what’s right. Maybe if more parents went about things the way this guy in Ypsi did, those teeth wouldn’t be so sharp.