Fear and Loathing in Overland Park 107

I need to get better. Jesus do I need to get better at posting on here.

Tax day, another in a long line of reasons why we can't have nice things.
Or can we?

This is my second tax day as a married man. And it's a weird feeling. Doing
my taxes really frustrates me as I'm an easily frustrated guy.

Small stuff gets to me.

But this is big stuff, this is taxes. This is money that our country seems
to need so badly that I should feel honored to assist them in paying back
debts.

But I don't.

No one is standing next to me cutting the heads off chickens to decide what
should happen for my tax break.

Though I wish life was more like South Park, that isn't very likely to ever
happen.

Now, because of the way my parents brought me up, taxes were completed
early this year. Just like last year and every year before that.

And before that.

Before that.

And so on and so forth.

Since I've been working since I was 14 years old, the last two years of my
life, the two married years, came with a little bit of extra-happiness.

I got money back.

I actually got money back.

The deductions helped.

But no kids. No mortgage. No massive expenses. Nothing really affecting my
credit score.

Though I do have the need to buy frivolous things, don't we all?

So this tax day came with a small glimmer of hope. Another check to assist
in my ongoing struggle to pay off my credit card and my school bills.

Just like millions of other people, I'm in debt.

We've talked about this before.

But tax day is seen as a general blight on society. Something that causes
people to freak out and see the world trying to take their money away and
treat them like heathens and bastards and general scum of the Earth.

When in reality, we should all be looking at tax day as just another day.
Another unfortunate day of life where something slightly different than the
norm happens.

Slightly different.

I mean, we all pay taxes on everything we buy, right? We don't live in New
Hampshire or Oregon, we live in Kansas and Missouri.

So we pay taxes.

On food.

Gas.

Cigarettes.

Beer.

Clothing and books and movies and everything else we purchase.

So we pay taxes. It's a normal thing for us.

But the sheer sense of earning and need outweighs this day because it's a
day filled with greed and wanting. It's a day where people look at the big
brother government as taking their "hard-earned" funds away and putting it
toward things they don't agree with.

Like a trillion dollar deficit. Or building schools. Bridges. Green
initiatives.

You know, things that might help save the world.

So because the idea of paying a chunk of taxes at once to your government
is so disgusting, people are throwing Tea Parties.

That's right, Tea Party.

Just like the Boston Tea Party way back during the Revolutionary War which
protested big brother Britain and their power over the colonies, people are
using these Tea Parties as a way to rebel against paying taxes.

In an absolutely stupid way.

I'm not a fan of government. I'm sure everyone knows who I voted for. It's
not hard. I don't believe in big spending, but I also believe in freedom.

Freedom to assemble. Freedom of choice. Freedom of speech.

Basic freedoms that we all deserve no matter how stupidly we decide to
display them.

And displaying our freedoms as a tea party against taxes just seems so
completely idiotic that it makes no sense to me at all.

Why?

Most people who will take part in these tea parties are people who voted
for McCain. People who agree that the world needs change and policies and
believe that fixing the US will take time and effort but they also think
that things were generally okay.

They just don't want to fix things if it costs money. Especially their own.

These are the people that are easily swept up in the next big craze or fad.
People that hate others who are brainwashed but are just as easily
brainwashed on their own end.

They don't think for themselves.

They look around the world and see what's trendy and empathize with that
and then steal it for themselves.

Like Tea Parties.

These are people who look at the last 8 years as progress. Moving forward.
Making the world a better place.

Yet "progress" to them entails protesting in a way that harkens back to the
1700s when slavery was no big deal and when owning land meant killing your
neighbors and taking the land for yourself.

You know, good old American progress.

These people believe that the American system should stay free market and
should stay the course. Stay the way it was and that will eventually right
everything and everyone out in the end.

They apparently haven't seen the "prosperity" that this thinking has
afforded the world.

They apparently don't have friends and family who have lost their jobs and
have had to stay with other family members after losing everything they
own.

Like I said, good old American progress.

Care about yourself first and your neighbor second.

Really goes to show how far we've made it these last 200 years, huh? Ever
since that first Tea Party.

I'm not for big government spending, I just want things to get better.

I don't think staying the course of the last 8 years would have been a good
idea. I also don't think judging our present in a way that uses the past to
create some form of protest just seems utterly ridiculous.

What's next?

People joining this protest will demand that the world go back to the
politics of the 18th Century. So I'll be allowed to own you. You'll be
allowed to shoot me for my land. And we can all marry our cousins.

Or...

We can actually move forward into the future and surpass this old way of
thinking.

This old way of getting things accomplished or letting things happen as
they have to just seems to be so completely ridiculous.

But you go right ahead and have yourself a tea party. A tea party.

Seriously? No wine? No nothing? Just a tea party?

And the best part is, these people believe that this protest will
accomplish something.

It will.

Anyone who goes and doesn't pay their taxes because they think they are
doing the work necessary to them to make a statement will probably end up
in jail, or at least, with legal action or a nice severe audit taken
against them.

Just look at Method Man. Wesley Snipes. And all the millions of people who
don't pay taxes because they forgot.

But you go ahead and have your tea party. See if it accomplishes anything
at all.

Or you can make a choice and be an adult. See how that works out.

But it's up to you. As always, the choice is yours to make. Let's see how
this works out.