Depending on what the flavor of the month was, 2014 was a year to remember in some aspects, and better to forget in others. You can attribute 2014 to reminding us of a handful of specific points:
-Our personal financial information is more at risk and less secure than we could ever imagine.
-Cyber hacking conducted by sovereign nations has the ability to rattle daily life for billions of people.
-Social activism, organized and well thought out, can undeniably help bring issues to light and be proactive in helping people.
-Everyone in Congress are a bunch of fools, except my representative, we sent him/her back for another term. Everyone else is the problem.
-Sunni/Shia hatred has been around for thousands of years and contrary to popular belief, it didn't boil over yet.
-Ebola was terrifying, then it wasn't, then it was.
-The United States is a divided country when it comes to matters on race, sex, and socioeconomic issues.
- The looming student loan debt crisis will make the banking/housing collapse of 2008 look like a hiccup compared to what will come of its fallout. We'll bail banking institutions out of their own mistakes because they are too big to fail while condemning millions of college students for wanting to go to college, but taking on hundreds of thousands in debt. But if corporations are people, can people get the same treatment as corporations?
Whether it was the hacking's at Home Depot or Target earlier this year, putting at risk millions of people's personal and financial information, or the recent breach at SONY showing how many top tier executives and employees still gossip like they never really left high school, 2014 could easily be "The year of cyber warfare/crime'. It is a sobering reality for a lot of people, when multibillion dollar corporations can't protect themselves from these breaches of security, unable to assure consumers and customers that their information is safe with them, let alone keeping private e-mails out of the limelight. The digitalization of information has rapidly transformed how we as people conduct daily life, and the means of securing this will be one of the biggest issues going forth. If I had money, my concern would be much greater. Hopefully, 2015 will make it rain.
We all saw the videos, we may have even done it ourselves. The ALS Association "topped $100 million in donations from people all over the globe who were moved to action by this summer’s Ice Bucket Challenge. As of August 29, the Association has received $100.9 million in donations compared to $2.8 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 29)." http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-challenge-082914.html Numbers don't lie, and you can thank everyone who participated in the Ice Bucket challenge and the donations they made. But as with kind intentions, you always have people trying to bring down the optimism and activism of others. There will always be that 10% attempting to delegitimize the work others do, as if the actions of millions people are equal to the inaction and criticism of others. Well they are not equal. More so, the self righteousness of some people criticizing anyone who participated in the IBC for ALS Research, the noise you made was the equivalent of that of a walrus rolling over on a rock to warm the other side of its body. An enormous amount of money was raised by people with good intentions to help people who aren't afforded the spotlight, frankly because ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) is terrifying, and you don't see its victims, because if you did, you'd cry your heart out thank the Lord himself and fate that you weren't chosen to bear the burden of such a disease. A 'way to go' to Beverly, MA native Pete Frates, as well as Pat Quinn, on starting something for the sake of doing something. Lets see what we are able to do to help for the sake of helping in 2015.
In another recap for 2014, Congress reelected 90% of its constituents in the 2014 elections, to the surprise of everyone, except the case of their own representatives, of course. He or she isn't the problem, it is always 'the other guy'. "That ridiculous state and their communist population always acting so smug like they know what's going on, quoting Aristotle and Marx and sipping their latte's writing their 'novels' ", or "Those fracking oil whores and their false patriotism and self righteousness and their uncomfortable vulnerability because they confuse not possessing absolute rule with becoming the persecuted." Needless to say, the gloves were off these elections, and nothing the changed. The incumbent president is one party, so the people vote for the other party during the midterms. It is that simple. Media loves to delve into things, maybe because they need to make a five minute professional analytical take on something so simple, into a 24 hour binge because you don't want to be that guy that doesn't have something to say alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the time. I am going to get more into the political aspect of the country some time down the road, because my thoughts, if you even read this far, as much deeper than this recap.
ISIS, ISIL, IS... They have been called many things. JV, the biggest threat to the United States, AQ on steroids... Are we tracking? A perfect melting pot of ethnic fighting, religious conflict, Syria's civil war, as well as foreign intervention, and at times lack of, has given rise to a concentrated and determined enemy in western Iraq as well as southern Syria. They are known and recognized for their brutality, warped ideology, and unrelenting desire to establish a caliphate in the Middle East to fulfill old Islamic prophecy, as well as their calling to arms anyone who agrees with their views. During the summer, everything revolved around ISIL and their capabilities, what they wanted, why they were doing what they were doing, and the sadistic manner in how they were going about their treachery. It was disheartening to see places where many Americans shed their blood to put into control of allied hands be so quickly run back over before we even closed the door on the way out. But to say that ISIL has come into play only from the action of current POTUS or his predecessor doesn't only delegitimize the real reasons behind the fighting, it makes it all about us as a country, like we as a nation are at all times the center of attention, and that nothing happens on this earth without going through us, and that is simply not the case. It is time to stop the dick swinging and really look into the dynamics and origins of what has happened, why it has, and what we will be looking ahead to in 2015, and where Al Anbar province as well as Damascus will come into play. Needless to say, more to follow.
2014 and the names Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice will be synonymous with each other. There are times where lumping those three names together are not appropriate and at times, it is all too obvious to why they are put together. 2014 was a sobering reminder that we as a nation and a people are so blatantly divided in terms of race, socioeconomics, and sex in this country. There is no better indicator of this then the fact that you subconsciously were going over in your head what kind of write up this is going to turn into, if I am a race baiting hippy that hates the law or if I am an ignorant white Irish kid from Boston that just doesn't get being a minority in America. Here's the thing, we are all entitled to our opinions, as I was reminded of this countless times on my newsfeed (I didn't know how many law experts and civil rights analysts I was friends with on social media. Answer = Everyone), but there is a definite disconnect between letting your opinion be known and believing it to be more "right" than someone else's. It's an opinion. Nobody asked you the time, nor did anyone ask me the time. You know what I do know, though? Personal history and experience with race will cause you to have a specific opinion. It's called life. It is also fragmentation when you put more weight behind your personal history and thoughts than someone else's. It's also called a couple other things: Insulting, naïve, and wait for it... Ignorant. 6 billion people have lived a life, many who look, sound, and talk different than you. I can assure you their experiences are sometimes similar and sometimes different than yours. I am as guilty as anyone, subconsciously putting my own experiences on a throne and being ignorant enough to believe that I, the almighty, know what the 'real world' is and what it entails and everybody else is just riding along. There is so much more to this and I look forward devoting more time to put it out there.
The student loan crisis/ the student debt crisis, however you want to phrase is, is the single biggest monetary debt held by the American people, recently surpassing credit card debt to take the top spot. It is a more polarizing subject than meets the eye, especially at a generational level. I am personally a big proponent of what my generation is capable of in the future, and I am quick to defend my generation against accusations of being lazy, feeling entitled, unaware of the value of a dollar, and I could go on. It absolutely grinds my gears and boils my blood at the consensus that my generation today is somewhat less able to take on the challenges of today than generations before my own. The student loan debt crisis is a prime example of what solely my generation faces today at a level unprecedented to what anyone over the age of 50 could imagine paying for. College prices since 1985 have risen 538%. The average American home could not qualify as collateral for a piece of paper that says the system thinks I am more qualified for a job than I was without it. I learned more on the streets of Dorchester and at the lessons of my own family about life, respect, and effort than any book or Bachelor's could ever give me, but because society says I need a degree, society also told me that I need to take on student loan debt. "It'll make you more financially responsible, it'll better your credit by having something to pay off." Lessons learned at the hands of people who single handedly brought the world economy to its knees in September of 2008 want to lecture me on my student debt. I would in turn like to make you aware that you can't spend more money than what you make, simple I know, but it seems to not have arrived at your brain housing group since the 1980's. Needless to say, this is one of those topics that I will bring to the forefront of many a discussions in the future.
These were just some thoughts and a quick appetizer to preview what is to come in the near future. What 2015 will bring is a lot of challenges, that is about the only guarantee in the world right now. We can either complain and blame like we did all this year, or we can take great examples of what taking action looks like, and retry that again and again until we can perfect giving a shit.
Mikey Mac. Out.
S/F
