Mass Effect is a great game with a nicely developed backstory and universe. But where is the antimatter?

Update 1/15/2012 5:30 p.m.

I have to apologize. I just started my second playthrough of Mass Effect II as I prepare my seven Mass Effect playthroughs for the release of the finale in a month and a half.

The very first new codex entry in the game I received puts my foot square in my mouth. Antimatter does make it into the Mass Effect universe. The codex entry on Cerberus clearly states that antimatter is in the ME universe and was on a frigate and stolen by the evil shadow organization. So yes, I make mistakes. And yes, I own up them. And now I am going back to playing ME2.

Original Post:

I love the universe in the Mass Effect series of games by Bioware. And one of the biggest reasons I love the universe is because its very reasonable and believable, while still embracing the fact that it’s science fiction.

It strikes a nice balance, which is a fresh idea compared to other big science fiction franchises I like including Star Trek, Stargate, and Battlestar Galactica.

I can admit that Star Trek and Stargate can get bogged down in technobabble. Entire episodes of the show were crafted around some strange and crazy theoretical physics idea. One episode of Stargate centered around what a black whole would do to a wormhole with some character development scenes added in. Fun stuff but not really conducive to the story.

On the other side of the spectrum, Battlestar Galactica never used a science concept except in its pilot when Captain Lee Adama let off an EMP pulse to kill his Cylon attackers. Aliens were a no go, which makes sense, but even on alien planets and worlds pine trees and other earth plants were inexplicably present in order to avoid any science fiction questions or presence.

Then there’s Mass Effect where there are aliens, but instead of just being weird for weird’s sake, they are believable. The evolutionary background of each race makes sense and isn’t far out and super crazy. They even thought of how food would work with races that don’t have the same chemical make up we do.

The weapons too aren’t crazy plasma rifles or lasers or other fantastic technical things that are too futuristic. Guns still fire bullets, but just at a higher velocity and with more damage than they do now with smaller projectiles. But there is one science fiction idea I wish was in mass Effect  but isn’t. Antimatter

Antimatter is and isn’t a futuristic concept. PET scans use positrons to make medical images. Antimatter can be created in a laboratory. The issue is that most uses of antimatter require it to be more readily available and that’s what makes it futuristic.

So why doesn’t it appear in the game? There are no antimatter weapons like torpedoes. The game never says what kind of energy technology is used 150 years in the future, but I doubt its fossil fuel based. My guess is that nuclear reactors are the norm, or fusion, but to be honest antimatter reactors would make the most sense but aren’t mentioned at all in the universe’s canon.

Why is antimatter neglected in the Mass Effect stories. There are probably two reason: they have a futuristic technology that dominates the lives of everyone in the universe and Star Trek has ruined the term.

Antimatter is tossed around in Trek like socialism is tossed around a Tea Party rally. And to avoid being lumped in with Trek, the writers decided to just ignore the term. Which sucks for the technology and the depth it can add to a pretty “realistic” science fiction universe.

The more undestandable reason is that Mass Effect is based on a technology around the mass effect, fields of dark energy created by electrically charging a rare element in the universe. The fields of dark energy can increase or decrease the mass inside the field allowing for faster than light travel or other technological uses. Its a complex idea and they probably didn’t want to have to add anything else to it.

Both reasons have their merits, but I still think antimatter has its place in the ME universe.

The ME universe needs a power source for all those mass effect fields. It takes electricity to influence them and that power has to come from somewhere. And nuclear power is so inefficient.

Nuclear fission is dirty and you don’t get a lot of power from the plutonium or uranium you use as fuel. Nuclear fusion is viable in the ME universe since you could use those mass effect fields to contain the intense temperature and violence of a fusion reaction. But again the fuel source is limited, you have toxic waste, and at the end of the day the reactor is filled with a fusion reaction the temperature of the sun.

Antimatter is room temperature until it reacts, and then the entire amount of matter and antimatter reacts. Its a 100 percent matter to energy reaction. You get high temps but that can all go towards energy production. There is no waste to deal with. And those same mass effect fields that make fusion reactions viable also make antimatter a lot easier to work with.

So Bioware is antimatter in Mass Effect? Or are you avoiding it?

http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/article_035b31e0-368a-11e1-b661-001871e3ce6c.html

Ryan Thomas only had an hour left to go in his shift at the Black Bear Point Drive-in, and the time could not go by quick enough. His feet were killing him from standing on them for the last six hours, and the smell from the fryers was once again making him queasy. Today was Friday, and the fryers wouldn’t be cleaned until tomorrow morning. That was another task that Ryan did not look forward to, but he had to pay his rent somehow and in a college town like Black Bear Point the only jobs were cooking or serving food.

The lunch rush was finally fading away, and Ryan’s manager sent him back to do the dishes. The sink was piled high with grease encrusted utensils, buckets filled with sticky, slimy chicken flour, and other nasty things. Ryan pulled on a plastic apron in a futile attempt to keep himself dry while he tackled the dishes and lost himself in a fantasy of being anywhere than where he was.

An hour later, the dishes were all clean, the coolers were stocked with fries and onion rings and cheese curds for the next shift, and Ryan’s clothing was soaking wet. The manager told him he could go, so Ryan clocked out and headed to his car, a beat up 1992 Chevy Lumina.

He got in the car, turned on the ignition and immediately was blasted by rock music. His feet burned, his clothing was grimy and slimy, and all he wanted to do was take a nap. But Ryan had to hurry if he was going to be able to get to his next appointment.

Ryan drove back to his apartment, went up to his studio up on the fourth floor, and entered his apartment. He pushed some stuff out of the way of the door, and it always seemed like the pile was inching forward. He had way too much stuff and not enough room for it, unfortunately.

Ryan didn’t bother turning on the lights or sitting down. He rushed to his dresser and grabbed some clean underwear. He jumped in the shower and washed off the day’s grime: grease from the fryers, and the dirty water from cleaning pans and buckets.

Toweling off, he cleaned his glasses, threw on some deodorant and got dressed. His work uniform was an ugly red polo and a pair of slacks that were way too long, he kept stepping on them and having to buy a new pair. The clothing he put on now was a pair of khaki pants with cargo pockets, a dark blue dress shirt, and a striking purple, blue, and black tie. He checked himself quick in the mirror, grabbed his black backpack that was lying near the door, and hurried out of the apartment again.

It was 3:37 now. He had a little less than an hour to get where he was going, but he should have plenty of time now. Ryan’s feet still hurt, and he was wanted nothing better than to sit in front of his couch and relax in front of one of the national news channels, but this was his chance to get away from flipping burgers and do something more with his life.

Ryan got in his car and got onto University Drive. Black Bear Point was a college town in Wisconsin, so University Drive was the main street that cut through the heart of the city. After ten or so minutes of driving Ryan got to where he was headed, the office building of The Black Bear Point Chronicle.

Ryan loved journalism. He had gone to college and gotten his degree in mathematics, but he found out during his tenure at the University of Wisconsin – Black Bear Point that he was good at writing opinion pieces and interviewing people for news stories. He had been and editor at the school paper, needing money to pay the rent and buy food his junior year and loved every minute of his time in the paper’s office.

After he graduated, Ryan decided that it would be much easier in the recession to go to graduate school for journalism than to get a job at a paper with his math degree. He had finished his first year of graduate school before his money had run out and he realized that he wouldn’t be able to get a degree in journalism after all, at least for now.

Ryan knew he couldn’t spend the rest of his life flipping burgers, so even though he didn’t have the right degree, he was set on getting some kind of work at the city’s paper, even if it was just as a janitor or something.

He walked into the office and said hello to the receptionist at the front desk of the offices and asked if the paper was hiring.

The receptionist looked at him for a minute, and then said, “I think we have a few positions opening up in the newsroom. Do you want to leave a resume?”

Ryan opened up his backpack and took out a folder. Inside was a copy of his resume and several photocopies of his work when he was at the student paper. He gave both of them to the receptionist.

“Thanks, I will give this to the editor and he should get back to you.”

Ryan thanked the lady, wished her a good day and went home, hoping his work would impress the editor and soon he would be hearing a call back from him. He went home, got off his aching feet, and watched the news until he nodded off to sleep.

His alarm woke him the next morning at 7:00. Since he showered after work the afternoon before, Ryan pulled on his work uniform. It had dried off from the day before, but smelled decidedly of fryer oil and grease. Since he worked thirty-five hours a week, he only got a single uniform, and he couldn’t wash and dry it every day.

He got to work that morning and since it was Saturday, his first task was clean the fryers for the week. The fryers got filtered so that all the bits that fell down when they were cooking got cleaned out, but today he was scrubbing them and switching the oil before it got too nasty.

He emptied out the fryer that was getting switched today into a five gallon pail and carried the nasty, black oil out to the dumpster, where it would wait to be collected. The entire dumpster was sticky, covered with old congealed grease, and the smell was quite unpleasant.

Ryan went back in and began to scrub the fryer with a green scrub pad and soapy water, rinsing out all the gunk and debris into another pail he dumped down the sink in the back of the restaurant. He then went and cleaned the gunk and junk out of the other fryers and added oil so that they were all at capacity.

Ryan was sweaty, covered in grease already, but it was only 9:15. The restaurant opened for business at 10:30 and Ryan was going to have to hurry if he was going to be ready by then.

He went to the cooler in back and proceeded to grab a box of chicken, a bag of flour, and the spice canisters from dry storage. Since it was Saturday, the drive-in would see a lot of older customers stop in and they loved getting a bucket of fried chicken to take home for lunch.

Breading the chicken wasn’t difficult, it was just very time consuming and messy. The flour and spices needed to be blended just so to fit in with the drive-in’s secret recipe – which simply was salt, pepper, paprika, and onion powder. Ryan had a better recipe he got off the internet, but he was sworn to secrecy when he started work there.

After breading up several pans of the chicken, Ryan made up the batter for the fried fish and the onion rings, stocked the freezer with fries, chicken fingers, and the other frozen items that he cooked up for the customers and sliced the onions for the rings.

He had just finished when the drive-in opened up for business and he took his spot in the sweltering kitchen for the rest of his shift. Today Ryan had a double shift and the only reason he got through it was hoping that he would have a phone call for an interview or job offer when he got home.

When Ryan did get home, exhausted, sore, and smelling even worse than yesterday, the only messages on his answering machine was from the University asking for money since he was an alumni.

Ryan deleted that message, muttering “Why should I give to them when they couldn’t even find me a stipend in the graduate school?” Ryan hoped that he would hear something tomorrow.

Tomorrow again there was no word from newspaper, or the day after that, or the day after that. After hearing nothing for over a week, Ryan decided to stop by the paper again after work.

The same receptionist was there when he showed up, and he asked again if the paper was still hiring in the newsroom. The receptionist assured Ryan that the editor had gotten his resume and writings, but if he wanted to he could take the editor’s card and give him a call as he was out for the day.

Ryan had hoped for a little more than that, but he took the card, and called the number on it when he got home. He got the editor’s voicemail.

“This is Logan Andrews, News Editor for the Black Bear Point Chronicle. Please leave your name, number, and a short message and I will get back to you as soon as possible,” the recorded voice said.

“Hi this is Ryan Thomas. I left my resume and some samples of my work when I was editor of UW-BBP’s student paper. I was wondering if you had a chance to look it over and if there were any opening at your paper. I would really love a chance to continue working in journalism and if you have any kind of opening, freelance, part-time, anything that you feel I would be a good fit for that would great. Thanks, and have a good day!”

Ryan hoped the editor would get back to him soon. He had only been out of school a few months and at the Drive-in a little over a month, but he was sure that it wouldn’t be longer before he permanently smelled like French fries and his feet fell off.

The whole next week, Ryan’s hopes were up, even thought it seemed that the Drive-in was indeed trying to kill him. As summer got warmer, the restaurant saw an increase in customers and it was all Ryan could do to keep all of the fryers full and cooking fries or onion rings or chicken fast enough.

Every day after work, Ryan checked his messages hoping that it was a call from Logan Andrews, but each day his messages were usually just mundane ones. He got a call from Blockbuster telling him his rental was overdue, his friends kept asking him to go out to the bar with them, and his sister was on her third new boyfriend this year.

Ryan returned the movie and his friends’ phone calls, but he didn’t have any money to go out with them yet since he had just paid rent and bought groceries for the month. So Ryan spent most of his nights on the couch watching television.

After a particularly grueling shift in which he had had to bread extra chicken twice, and whose pile of dishes kept him at the restaurant until five, Ryan managed to swap shifts and get the next day off. Wet, tired, and sick of working the fryers, Ryan decided he would go in and see this Logan guy face to face.

Ryan had a calzone and cheese sticks from his favorite pizza place the next day and stopped in at the newspaper’s office early in the afternoon. The same receptionist was there from before, but this time there was a second one in the adjacent cubicle.

Ryan asked the lady to see the editor. She looked at him, and said that the editor was busy right now, but he could call the editor’s number and leave a message on his voicemail. She promised that he would get back to Ryan as soon as he was free.

“No. If it is all right, I will just wait here and see if he gets a minute?” Ryan asked.

“It may be awhile but it’s your time. You can have a seat over there,” the receptionist said pointing to a pair of chairs between a stack of copies of the day’s issue of the Chronicle.

Ryan had brought a book with him to read, and luckily for him it was a long one. Ryan sat in the chair for what seemed an eternity, but was in fact only a couple of hours. Every half an hour or so the receptionist would ask him if he wanted to leave a message with her or he could always call him at his work number, but Ryan politely refused and held his ground.

Eventually, the receptionist left and came back a few minutes later.

“He won’t be able to see you today, he is just too busy,” she told Ryan. “Try leaving him a voicemail, I am sure he will get back to you,” she said consolingly.

Ryan didn’t feel consoled, he felt angry at having wasted his time, but he thanked her and left. He did call again when he was home and in a better mood and left another message asking the editor if there were any positions open and to get back to him.

Ryan had the next day off as well, and it was Saturday so he slept in, and was completely lazy. Work Sunday was horrible, and he barely got through, but it was payday as well, so the day wasn’t a total waste.

Monday, Ryan had an early shift, and after a tub of filled with soapy water and sticky chicken breading that had turned to paste fell on him at work, he decided that he would try again at the newspaper today, and he would sit down and ask the editor for a job if it killed him.

Ryan sped home from work at 3:00, grabbed a quick shower and a change of clothes again into a dress shirt and tie, and sped downtown to the newspaper’s offices. He told the receptionist that he would like to speak to the editor again and that he would wait until he became available, sitting down in the waiting area. The receptionist immediately left and went into the editor’s office, coming back and sitting down a few minutes later.

Ryan sat down and proceeded to read the current issue of the paper. It must have been a slow news day since the story on the front page dealt with the theft of a scrap metal parrot from a small town nearby. Other than that, the big news was that the mayor was keeping his promise to give away a free beer to everyone who showed up at the city’s fundraising gala.

Turning over to the opinion section, Ryan saw that it was filled with the usual: residents opining on the fact that the communists were taking over because their kids weren’t allowed to bring their guns or prayers into school, hippies begging everyone to move to Canada where healthcare, love, and happiness were free to all who wanted it, and politicians calling the paper a liberal bastion of socialism and a member of the mainstream liberal media that never reported things fairly or accurately.

The cartoon in the paper was actually pretty good this time, showing a picture of the President holding Osama bin Laden’s death certificate. The caption read, “Do you still need to see my birth certificate or is this good enough for ya?”

Looking up, Ryan saw that it was 4:23 and that the office would be closing in seven minutes. The two receptionists were getting ready to leave for the day, looking at the clock, and down the hall to where the editor’s office must be.

Just then a man walked out of one of the doorways down that hall, looked at Ryan and came up.

“You must be Ryan,” he said offering his hand, which Ryan took and shook. “I am Logan Andrews, the editor of the paper. I hear you are looking for work with us? Let’s go back to my office.”

Logan led Ryan down the hall and into his office. It was a nice place and impressed Ryan. It was outfitted almost like an apartment. There was a coffee maker, a small fridge, and a hot plate in one corner of the office, making it almost like a small apartment. Looking around and comparing, Ryan thought that if he ignored the bathroom space in his studio, the office was actually the same size as his apartment.

“Sit down,” Logan said, motioning to one of the chairs in front of a table in his office. The other thing Ryan noticed was that all the counter and desk space in the office was buried under papers, notes, notepads, and mail. Logan seemed to be a lot busier than he could keep up with. Maybe they are understaffed and are looking for reporters, Ryan thought.

Ryan sat down, and looked the editor in the eye, waiting for him to speak first. Logan looked at him and said, “Well, I have take a look at your resume, and your work for the school paper, and I don’t know if you are quite ready to be a full-time reporter just yet.”

Logan must have seen the disappointment in Ryan’s eyes because next he said, “That doesn’t mean we can’t come up with something.”

“I’ll do anything,” Ryan said, and meant it. “I’ll do freelance work or whatever you can come up with, all I want is a chance to prove myself and get my foot in the door as a reporter.”

Logan smiled, “That’s good. Now we don’t pay our freelancers very well, only about $30 to $50 an article –“

“That’s great. We only got $15 dollars and article at the school paper, and anyway it is not about the money anyway, like I said I just want a chance,” Ryan said, knowing he was lying. Food service minimum wage sucked, but he would do anything for a chance to get out of there.

“All right then. I have your email address, and I will come up with a freelance assignment for you in the next day or two. Do well on it and I will keep feeding you more assignments. Just so you know, I really admire your passion. Look for the email in a day or so and have a good one!”

Logan walked him out to the front door, and Ryan could not be happier. Here was his shot! He was back to doing what he loved, reporting the news. He couldn’t wait to get the email and see what his first assignment was.

I have decided that is going to change, and that I am going to start blogging again.  But that also means I have to figure out what to use this space for.  I cannot opine about politics or local organizations.  I could write movie reviews or just blog about my day, but I don’t know if that is interesting to anyone or enough for me as a blogger.  So I am asking anyone who reads this to comment on what they think I should do.  Since my posts are broadcasted to my Facebook friends and twitter feed subscribers this means my friends will have a chance to decide where this blog goes from here.   What do you want to hear about from me?

The new expansion set for World of Warcraft came out this last winter and I was thinking of maybe picking up a copy at the store and trying it out.  But first I thought I would take a look at my account on Battle.net and buy some game time or even purchase the game digitally from Blizzard online.  When I look at WoW account it says that its blocked or locked and I figured it was just leftover from when my account got hacked.

I have always bought every Blizzard game up until the WoW Cataclysm expansion. Now I might never buy another Blizzard game due to the requirements to reactivate my account with them.

So sent Blizzard a request to reactivate and let me back into my WoW account.  Their reply contains a link to a page I can print and fill out.  In it I have to provide my name, address, phone number, email, and materials to prove my identity.  These materials include options for driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, etc.  I essentially have to provide the same information that I did when I first started a job in order to get back into an account that I own through a game industry!

I realize that Blizzard is making money hand over fist and that greed causes people to make some poor decisions, but I think it is utterly ridiculous what they require to allow me to use what is essentially my property.  I owe the account and paid for it with my own money, and the bastards are making me fill out the same kind of paperwork a Hispanic looking person would have to fill out to receive decent and humane treatment in the southern states!

I have played Blizzard games since I was just a kid.  I got Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and played it on a Windows 3.1 computer.  I got Diablo for Christmas the year it came out.  I have owned every Blizzard game since then, but right now I don’t know if I would own or purchase another.

WoW and Blizzard’s greed over the money the game makes them is turning them into what EA has become and every other major corporate software developer, and gamers hate those people.  You can tolerate a corporate movie since you only dropped eight or nine dollars.  But Blizzard charges fifty or sixty bucks for their games and for content like that a little bit of class is still required, especially in troubled economic times.

So Blizzard, will you continue to tell me to fill out your crazy reactivation forms, or can I just talk to a customer representative to get my account back?  Thanks!

Planned Parenthood does provide information and helps women gain access to abortion services, but they receive no federal funds that they can spend on this service.  Their federal dollars go towards sexually transmitted disease screenings and treatments, family planning services, making contraception available and affordable to those who want it, and sexual and reproductive health services, that include prenatal care.  That is right, Planned Parenthood spends a lot of money helping poorer women AND men who want to make sure they are healthy enough to have kids someday, and help women who want to have a child make sure that the pregnancy is safe and the child is born healthy.

Family planning centers and organizations are dedicated to provided safe, affordable healthcare for all aspects of human sexuality and reproduction.  Abortion just takes the focus because that is more controversial and conservatives can rake in tons of money and voice support by making their crusade against family planning about abortion.  Which is a lie.  No federal dollars are spent or will be spent on abortions or abortion services according to federal laws.  Any place that breaks these rules will lose their funding, and no since these places rely on federal and state funding, they won’t do it.

Republicans just love poor mothers and fathers, and kicking infants when they are down.  Unless you are reasonably wealthy, contraception, sexual healthcare, and even pregnancy are expensive and sometime prohibitive things a lot of people can’t effectively afford.  Family planning centers and organizations make sure that women and men have children when they want and can afford to provide for them, and make sure the child has a good start in life by being born safely and healthy.

Walker’s bill and the politics behind it were that Wisconsin was broke.  It could not continue to spend at the levels it was so it was going to cut spending, mainly by hitting public workers with wage decreases and increasing the amount of money they had to put toward their benefits, along with cutting huge amounts of money for schools, criminal investigation, and local governments.  So in order for the budget to increase spending by 1%, the money is being spent elsewhere.  So where is it going?

The Associated Press doesn’t mention that, but we do know that Walker is raising the state’s tourism subsidies by ten percent this year and more the next.  Yes, Wisconsin is in a recession and everyone has to tighten their belt, but not Wisconsin Dells and other private tourist traps that get an increase in public money going toward private enterprise.  Walker called it ‘investing in the future,’ but I am sure a lot of people see it as investing in the corporate business owners, who are already showing record profits for the year.  If I had a hundred bucks, I would place my money on that bet.

Schools, tools for crime fighting and preventing terrorism, all were on the chopping block, but the money wasn’t ‘saved.’  It was just diverted to private enterprise who shouldn’t get the money in the first place, let alone increased funding by the corporate toady, Scott Walker.  Wisconsin is indeed open for business, Walker will subsidize your profits with taxpayer money!

Madison where freedom, rights, and the fight to have a life still go strong.

A couple of Saturdays ago I went to the protests and rallies at the Madison state capitol to see what it was like and to voice my support for public employees, unions, and the rights of workers in general.  One of the things that I got when I was in Madison was a list of businesses that support Walker, busting unions, or financed his gubernatorial bid with lots of soft money.  Included in the list were Kwik Trip, Culver’s (which deserves boycotting, it hates unions, benefits, and treating even its high level employees with any kind of respect), Walmart, and the local bank, M & I.  A few days ago a friend mentioned another business that should be boycotted for its treatment of its salaried store managers.

Menard’s salaried store manager positions require a minimum of 60+ hours of work each week for a relatively tiny 40,000-45,000 dollars a year.  The managers are salaried so that they don’t get any overtime pay whatsoever, they get paid for forty hours of work each week, but are required to work sixty, sixty-five,  sometimes even seventy hours each week.  I mentioned this is passing to my father, who himself works a seventy hour week, and the idea of someone complaining about working a sixty to seventy hour week infuriated him.

It didn’t matter to him that the people who work this kind of job literally have no life.  He chose to be a farmer and run his own business and if he doesn’t get to spend time away from working more than a few hours each week, neither should anyone else.  Anyone who complains about having no free time or ability to have a life away from work, is just lazy and has been brainwashed by the liberals and the teachers into thinking that they are entitled to things like the pursuit of happiness and a life of meaning.  And after thinking about it for awhile while eating lunch yesterday while buying groceries and stopping by the post office so he can have his few hours of freedom and a nap that day, I realized that this kind of attitude is creating a new vassalage for people.

Save big money at Menards, where the owners own the lives of the employees.

Think about the average manager of a Menard’s location.  He has no stake in the company, he doesn’t own the store, he is just working to make ends meet.  If he works the seventy hours a week, and I assume he works every day, then he puts in a ten hour day on the clock.  If you add in getting there early, not getting out on time, and an average commute, then that is another hour the manager loses to his work.  Add in three hours for showering, shaving, doing your hair, makeup, breakfast, lunch and dinner each day we are up to fourteen hours used up each and every day, seven days a week.  That leaves just enough time for sleep each night when you add in other chores like cleaning, doing dishes, running errands, buying groceries, paying bills, etc.

Remember that this high level manager, in charge of running an entire store, has not real stake in the company.  It is a job to do, and he pretty much spends his entire day doing that job and other chores required to be able to do that job like cleaning his clothes, eating his meals so that he has the energy to work so much, and commuting.  He has no life outside of the company other than maybe a week or two each year he gets for a paid vacation.  Out of 365 days each year, he only gets seven where he is not living for another person.  And that is the definition of vassalage.

A vassal would swear an oath to his lord to live his life according to the wants and needs of his master, same as the manager of a Menard’s location.  Yes the manager gets paid, raises, and that vacation each year, but vassals were given payment and rewards for making sure the lord was rich, the lands well tended, so the lord could live his own life on his own terms.  Is this a real life, for the manager?  Does he feel fulfilled at the end of the day, or is he just hoping and praying that someday he will get that rare promotion and get to be a lord instead of the vassal?  What happened to life, liberty, AND the pursuit of happiness?  Did our love affair and deification of capitalism and the pursuit of money, greed, and power over people replace that fundamental right of mankind?

I went to the protest on Saturday, and I was amazed by what I saw.  If you listen to the media or my Tea Party father, everyone at the rally were lazy, dirty, hippie, unwashed vagrants and union members (pretty much the same as dirty hippies) who don’t want to work and want the federal government to take care of them from cradle to grave.  Yet that could be farther from the truth.

On the van ride up to the capitol we had farmers, lawyers, a nurse, a teacher, and students riding along.  The farmers got their chores done early so they could come along because they didn’t have Barack Obama plowing their fields and milking their cows for them so they could protest.  The crowds were filled with not only union members, but small business owners and even Republicans from Wisconsin who have seen the public discourse shut down with their elected representatives and were appalled by the lack of representation.  The signs quoting prominent Republican leaders like Lincoln were amazing.  Today’s GOP forgets how liberal their saint was and his stance on labor and organizing labor.

I didn’t see any palm trees lining the streets, but a few people carried plastic ones around with them.  The signs were mostly positive, a few compared Scott Walker to Hitler, but other protesters made sure that we knew not to make the comparison; it wouldn’t be fair to Hitler:  he had speaking skills and was actually good at seizing power.  There were a few scraps of paper littering the ground, but the annual parade in my hometown filled with Masons and marching bands and other conservative happy groups left more litter than the 100,000 descended on Madison on Saturday.  Even the evil union members with their cigarettes marching around the capitol moved out of the march to put their butts in a waste receptacle.

No one called for violence or acted violent.  Mainly people chanted for working together and making our democracy work.  There was the one counter-protester I saw who drove by after the rally was over with a sign saying “I heart Walker” who flipped us off, but he was probably just a plant by Michael Moore or Obama.

All-in-all the protest was an amazing scene.  There were a hundred thousand people working together, standing together.  We all do better when we all do better, which I feel is a much better public policy and makes America much stronger than the conservative message that is “everyone needs to stand or fall alone because that is how capitalism and Jesus works.”  No one succeeds or fails alone; we are all connected, we all need friends and family and community.  If we all look for only ourselves, then America will surely fail.