Is Portland, Oregon a City of Sloth?

City of slackers some may call it. Portland, Oregon: a metropolis of anti's and anarchists, unwilling to sign up for sludge work at the local Starbucks, instead trudging on about the abuse of corporate corruption. At least that's what a recent article in a popular portland newspaper suggests. The recent buy-out of Coffee People by coffee monolith Starbucks has pushed local hippies to look for other sources of income, for they feel that Starbucks is an evil force of corporate corruption. Some would even prefer to go on income-less rather than slave away at Starbucks and continue to blame Bush for the miseries of American life.

If I were to observe from the eyes of the calloused, the easy way to decipher the complaints is to stuff them in an oversized box of illiterate immigrants and ex-marine meth addicts... Mothers skimping on pampers for Prada, paying for Cheetos and diet sodas with welfare distributions. Slackers in street corners dressed in a self-mutilated hodgepodge of gothic queen princess chaps and army boots, sitting alongside a lethargic puppy or gooey-eyed cat with a sign reading "help the poor" as they suck the tar out of their newly purchased pack of camels. Camel Joe won't donate to the Humane Society, either.

Those who managed to schlep together a resume drive mom's Lexus downtown and are spouting about brown air blogs and black hole consumptionism, telling me I don't give a shit about the dying dirt and crack house labor statistics, preaching poor-me euphemisms while ringing their donation bells and soliciting signatures with dollar sign graphs and photos of Christian-less children in need of Campbell's and Gerber's and monsters called missionaries. Donate to the dirt and help clean the children, open your eyes to the dimming atmosphere and shout circular reason to the real-estate developers mowing down on the land for McDonald's and payday loan sharks (sending their kids to college).

Frankly, I am not interested. Solicit Uncle Sam. Learn to write a grant and quit smoking. Go to the library and conjure up a resume. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Yes, the heartless is in all of us. The uselessness of users is abundant and taxing. Putting them in the box is so wormily satisfying; it's so much easier to dig the hole for them than to see it all from level ground. Laziness is the new cool because those go-getter self sufficient ladder climbers gave their soul to banks and bartenders: the new breed of psychologists, the experts on monetary and emotional investments. The rant at the onslaught of bad returns from bed-demon businessmen seducing secretaries and bad-faith buyers and sellers addicted to Vicodin and insulin.

Frankly, it's all bullshit. We are all sitting in quicksand, no one makes it out alive; capitalism at it's worst creates superiority complexes and political divisiveness. Lines are drawn to establish pseudo-security and whitewashed values ridden with agenda and money funneling. Lines are drawn to establish pseudo-security and whitewashed values ridden with agenda and money funneling, creating and solidifying the division of class structure and ideologies so as to ease the sleazy labels slapped on "Rat Republicans" and "Laziness enabling Liberals."

All extremes are counterproductive to the harmony so obviously lacking as evidenced by questionable elections, homegrown bomb manufacturing, and terrorist elitists. Backed with Jesus, Allah, L.Ron Hubbard, or the dietary superiority of Atkins kitchens, the righteousness of right-ness spreads like a contagious disease to non-thinkers and desperate cause-seekers. When pushed to the outer limits of ideals, the inclination to hold fast to illusory beliefs becomes a slate for terror, war, greed, and apathy.

I am no Republican. To simplify to the uber-left: I do not believe that poverty is a fate for only stupidity or sloth. But the abject nature to blame Bushists is as tiring as the debate over the validity of the Iraq war - it's too late to complain, the US is there despite your cries of injustice. Quit complaining and deal with the hand you are dealt; every day is a choice to be a better human and contributor to American life.

So please, don't eat your happy meal and ask me to feed the poor. Don't tell me to avoid the dirty dollar while you hold up your want ad and donation chamber. I am not my bank account; neither is Oprah or Bill Gates, and neither are you. Wake up, wash up and wonder about your life from all angles. Even from the small rung in Starbucks. We all start somewhere.