Exploited

BINGO! BINGO! BINGO! BINGO! BINGO!

I stopped playing by their rules a long time ago. No more Mr Nice Guy.

So did i, but unfortunately the only way it makes any difference is if alot more people stop playing the game.

[quote=Mandi]So did i, but unfortunately the only way it makes any difference is if alot more people stop playing the game.[/quote]

Yep! BUT… we have to start somewhere. It is better to light one little candle that to curse the darkness.

Humans suck for the most part. They are motivated by comfort and discomfort. Pleasure/pain. People in power are generally very comfortable so there really are no positive reinforcements that will motivate them. To get these people to change for the better you need to make them uncomfortable. You can rarely do that by play by their rules. You need to find a way to spit in their soup and use a pillow and a punch. I have had a great deal of success in reforming the eating habits of the great American glutton, comfort, contentment and pleasure and very powerful motivators but altruism is about as rare as rocking horse poo. Gluttons tend to be very egoistic. I am not just talking about foodies. I am talking about all forms of selfish behavior.

I found a way to use the egoism of gluttons against them. I pretty much hold up a mirror and let them take a good look. In the case of the incompetent lazy person who make a living by pretending to help people my strategies are not as defined but telling the truth on them and then asking them to justify their existence is a good place to start.

I set my fatlings up. I hook em and then I trap em with their own words. Being egoistic they can’t handle it. The cognitive dissonance becomes too much and that trips to McDonalds because a bit less desirable. In an ideal world you would fire the people who run incompetent and dangerous agencies and in the case of gluttons you would deny them health care until they lost weight and toss them into Marine boot camps with no nonsense drill instructors. That would be so much fun! Unfortunately we are not the ones in power so we need to appear as though we are working within the system. Eventually we can ramp up our militancy as more people come on board.

In the meantime we must all do our part to make these greedy tin gods uncomfortable.

You might find some of these books helpful.
http://www.librarything.com/author/haydukegeorge

Clearly what is needed is some common sense applied to the problem. Affirmative action for folks with LD would be a good thing. A 30 substantial tax break to employers who hire LDers and other with disabilities. A lowering of the bar without a lowering of wages would be the correct and moral thing to do. Sadly we line a a social Darwinist construct and until all the neo cons and Republicans die off (there are eating themselves to death) we are left with the status quo.

In theory if there were and organization like AARP for Lders and other with cognitive impairments who could say, “there are 2 million of us and we vote” things could change.

We need an Americans with Disabilities Act that has some teeth. Right now it is just an annoyance to employers. Many years ago before I know that most non profit orgs were scams I was told by a clueless hen to write my resume. In my resume I listed my abilities and disabilities. Thinking that honesty was the best policy. I said I was looking for an employer who felt that my impairments would not interfere with the tasks they expected of me. The clueless hen ragged at me and said not to be honest and to withhold the fact that I had a disability. I wanted to punch her in her face a few times. It may have been worth a month in jail. This rag wanted me to be dishonest, get a the job and when I could not meet the expectations of the employer to sue them for not accomodating me. Employers have one main responsibility and that is to make profit. They are not social workers nor are they job coaches. They need to stay in business. It is not their responsibility to accomodate us unless they are getting paid to do so. That hen who gave me the wrong advice worked for an org whose responsibility it was to accommodate my needs.

I did end up screwing with that org in a George Hayduke manner. I think now they are a bit better for it. I also dressed down 2 of the hens and brought them to tears. The rooster hid.

It is really a very simple problem with a very simple answer. Simply put: We allow them to mistreat us and use us and lable us etc, we don’t fight back. We sit there and we take it. Because we worry what if they are right? They are not right though. And the more we allow them to take the more they will take and use and abuse etc… The only way we will ever be able to stop this is to not demand change but command change by standing up together against this nonsense and accepting no less than the accomedations we need and demanding no more than the acomedations that we need. The only way to be heard is with money. So it is a question where to get it and how to use it? I have wanted to astart an LD union and lobby group for a long time. All LD adults could be part of it and then the union would take care of it’s own etc… And we would lobby in washington too for some tax breaks as we don’t make as much due to our lables. And i would set up a fund to help assist those with LD and i would make public what experts donated and what experts were in it for personal gain. Our books would be open and online for anyone to see who we are in bed with. No bullshit not for sale or for proffit but instead, for the ending of the exploitation of those with LD.

We can need things all that we want and the little red man in hell with horns may need a glass of ice water, but it doesn’t mean he or we are going to get it if we stay in our respective hell holes simply waiting for it. So the question is what to do about it? 1 person alone is nothing.

A lot of it boils down to credibility. Style often trumps substance. Some neuro psychologist is more impressive than a real person to a politico. Unfortunately neuro psychologists and much like academics in that they don’t deal with real world solutions for real world problems. They have a habit of barking up the wrong tree while lost in the wrong woods and not even realizing it. Years of greed and intellectual dishonesty will do that.

Politician need to be bribed. It has always been that way. Votes are important top them. Keep in mind politicos are sly but not always too smart. It you were to start a 501 C 3 non profit and create a web presence and boast that you had 100,000+ members they would sit up and take notice. Right now I do not have the resources to do that.

This has to be a grassroots thing. If you get professional organization involved they will try to hyjack it for their purposes. I live in a very backwards part of the country but you live in MA. You may be able to find some like minded people who care more about doing the right thing than the almighty dollar. Create a website called LD PAC or something to that effect. Submit a proposal to every sitting senator and congressman with the promise if they don’t do what you want you control X number of votes in their district.

Create a Google blogspot blog like mine. They are free and easy. Make it a clearinghouse for LD information. Create a powerful and clear mission statement like the one on my blog. Then kick ass and take names.

You can make a difference. One person can. In may case I have saved about 10 lives and rescued many more kids from having to be raised by uncaring gluttonous parents. Reform is possible.

I hate the notion of self advocacy but sometimes it is all we have when the people who are supposed to help us don’t do their jobs. I can go on and on about what dreadful charlatans they are but that won’t fix the problem. We can debate how much we think educators and other professionals suck but that won’t fix the problem. All we can do is define the problem and create a solution that they will be forced to employ. That will take years of heard work. We may catch a break from someone like a Hillary Clinton or a Barak Obama but sadly they have bigger fish to fry.

We need real world solutions not academic theory spouted by eggheads from their ivory towers.

I have a great deal of contempt for doctors and the entire medical industrial complex. They are a powerful lot of crooks. Do you realize they have not found a cure for a disease in 50 years? Monoliths can be toppled. Ogars have an Achillies heal. For instance; I came across a weight loss surgery site. I posted a link to a CDC article that showed gastric bypass kills 1 in 50 patients. The surgeon was making the claim that the number was 1 in 2000. I did not get mad. I got even. The point is, I did make a difference. I made a pretty decent sized dent in this scumbag’s wallet. 1000 clones of me (God help the brutal world) would cost these creeps millions and that is substantial. Things like this snowball. In a very short time one of my blog characters has gotten over 1100 profile views. My blog has gotten over 2 million views.

Here is an LD blogspot blog
http://adhdguide.blogspot.com/

And another
http://disabilitymessageboard.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-learning-disability-should-not-be.html

I hear you but here is where you are wrong. I am no longer in mass. Between my studies and my husband’s carreer we are constantly moving i am so sick of it i am ready to sacrifice chickens in the name of settling down at this point…. Presently we are in Austria. They have alot less scummery here. Me and the web are not buddies i don’t know how to do this stuff. But if you need your scull analyzed for information about your brain gimme a ring cuz i can help you out. Or if you need someone to dig a hole in a very neat and organized fashion… Or find ancient shit in your garden…. I am just who you want to call. Thas what i do. Not web junk… But you have some good ideas sadly they do me no good from here.

You probably have a different perspective being in Europe. They are a bit more humane there.

Google blogging is actually very fun and easy. It is simpler than email and quite compelling.

Change is not easy and it is not usually quick. If I were in Austria now I would stay there. The US is a toilet. I really hate the intense greed and dog eat dog mentality. I live in the South and the politician here are the lowest of the low. I used to live in NY and I thought the sleaze factor was high there but the savage South takes the cake but what would you expect from former slave owners?

I had a neuro psych test done and I pretty much have a handle on what I am up against. I have more of a clue than they people who are supposed to read it.

Because I have damage to my frontal lobe I have a very low tolerance for being played. I have wanted on more than a few occasions to throttle some jerk that needed it. I have learned restraint but it come with a price… STRESS!! Maybe someday I will snap and pummel some punk who needs it.

You can still contact your elected officials, write letters to the papers, make doctors look like the idiots that they are and blog about it. Somebody with some clout may read it.