Gail Overman in 1955

My father wrote this about his daughter, –my sister Gail,– years before his death in 2006.  Gail was diagnosed schizophrenic in the early 1970s, and he wrote this after a quarter a century of caring and coping.  It captures a loving parent’s frustration with an incomprehensible illness and a system that has serially and cruelly mistreated the mentally ill. Both my father and sister are freed from their pain, and their story should be told.  It’s not as uncommon as you might imagine. Enter, if you will, the world of a parent dealing with schizophrenia.

“She has never trod the boards or donned the greasepaint; nonetheless, her life is played out behind the masques of comedy and tragedy.

“Her performances are impromptu…her moods…ever changing. At times she sits limp and motionless, wearing a grotesque scowl of desperation for an eternity; then, abruptly, she becomes the face of mirth, gesticulating happily, speaking unintelligible lines to a cast of players she alone can see and hear. Often, she takes refuge within the impenetrable walls of her mind. She remains there for seemingly interminable periods; then abruptly bursts the bonds of silence to curse the God that consigned her to a living hell.

“This caricature of a once bright and loving daughter is a stranger, at times a primitive, unrecognizable life form…unkempt, unwashed, and devoid of social graces once common to her.

“Her waking hours are spent in constant slaking of a seemingly unquenchable thirst and the smoking of an endless succession of cigarettes. She sleeps fitfully, or not at all, prowling. the darkened corridors of our home until night has ended and exhaustion has overtaken her.

“To hold a single thought in place is an impossible task. Her mind careens wildly through twisting, torturous, tunnels of fantasy, hurtling her into frightening and hostile worlds we cannot comprehend. Voices and visions are her only true companions.

“A headstone will likely be her life’s milestone.

“We few who love her, and remember her as she once was, have never ceased to care. Others fear her, see her as an aberration, a social outcast…pitiful, bizarre, and an object of scorn. Long ago declared “schizophrenic,” she has been relegated to the status of a social leper…untouchable, unmentionable, and, worst of all, incurable.

“She has precious little to hope for. The demigods and soothsayers of the psychiatric profession find that she can no longer be seduced by Freudian evangelism. Too often, she has worn the hair shirt of their pills and potions; too often has her very soul been seared by their high voltage detoxicants.

“She both fears and despises those officials empowered to administer to her…they whom she well knows will skewer her upon her affliction itself should she resist their direction. Her impotence in the face of their ministrations is an ever present specter nourishing her belief that her place on earth is that of research animal in some nightmarish experiment.

“Her world is one of constant pain and loneliness, a place of such unbearable suffering that she has often tried to leave it. Someday she may succeed in making that journey, and when she leaves our world, few will mourn her passage.

“Friends have year by year abandoned her to a reclusive existence as her malady worsened. Should she leave this world in my time, I will give thanks for her joyous release. It seems sufficient to have mourned for her throughout her lifetime in hell.

“My daughter will leave little of substance behind to mark her miserable passage through this life. Were I to compose her epitaph it would read, “Farewell to a beloved daughter. Death was perhaps her happiest experience.”

“My worst nightmare is the prospect that I will leave her behind in a world largely hostile to all afflicted by this disease of the damned.”

–by Dallas Overman

Gail died on April 2, 2012, not from mental illness, but from cancer, another cruelly isolating and terrifying disease. She spent her final months with family, and then under hospice care. Upon hearing of her death, longtime family friends reminded me of my father’s requiem for Gail.  I share it in hopes  that it will do two things: 1) expose some truths about the difficulties families face in dealing with mental illness, and, 2) help remind me that we never know what the stranger beside us is facing.

What has changed in the 40+ years I’ve been around the seriously mentally ill? We’ve progressed from electric lobotomy and institutionalization to chemical lobotomy and abandonment.

We count ourselves first among nations. We call ourselves followers of Christ. And we allow families to be financially ruined and ripped asunder by the high financial and emotional costs of coping with health issues that might afflict anyone.  Shame on us for how we treat our weak and afflicted.

Thanks, Pete and Connie, for reminding me. And thanks to all of Gail’s friends who remained friends. You know who you are.

Back when Big Koch Productions first took over Potomac Pork it was not immediately clear that the creative model for future presentations would be World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), but the theatrical styling and the White Hat/Black Hat faux conflict approach has bedazzled and enchanted the American public. As one wag put it: “The stupid just gets deeper and deeper.”

And from curtain rise to curtain call, we get what we paid for: a grand show of folly and vituperation that cleverly manipulates the audience from all sides of the aisle into believing they got something they wanted and that heroic efforts went into making it happen. But like the bank bail out, the Hagel nomination, and eff-all else that Ronnie Reagan paved the way for with the performance of a lifetime, it’s all just a grand illusion.

It’s a story of greed, corruption and the triumph of unregulated capitalism, wherein an entire nation is lost at sea, castaway on an island without food or resources, and only the biggest and the strongest eat well; The Amazing Race For Big Brother’s Other Thigh might well be the final chapter.

It takes a strong stomach to watch to the denouement, but television, the media and the entertainment business in general have been preparing us for a long time, like a turkey brining before the Thanksgiving feast. At the risk of repeating someone, the stupid just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

But if you like to be played like a whorehouse piano, be sure to catch the ongoing performances. It’s a hell of a show.

I give it two middle fingers up.

Spoiler Alert:  You lose in the end.

On the farm I learned quite a bit about pigs and other large livestock, much of which I didn’t want to know, including the fact that even the “friendly” animals from Looney-Tunes could be dangerous. So I wasn’t much surprised the other day when I read about an Oregon farmer who was eaten by his pigs.

Actually, my thoughts ranged from fearful memories to dark laughter. But if you know anything about pigs, you’ll know that they’re omnivores, like we humans. And that this isn’t the first time pigs have turned the tables on humans.

Pigs, if you’ve never been near one in real life, aren’t animated film, comic strip and greeting-card-cute little creatures; they’re all about consuming, defecating and breeding, like, um, us –their genetic cousins. Scientifically speaking the difference between pig and person is just 2% of the genome. So we probably taste like bacon to them, too.

Pigs are astonishingly indifferent to us folk. They don’t give a wit about pain, suffering, poverty, disability, illness, education, plurality, hunger and so forth so long as it isn’t interfering with their feed or wallowing time. But pigs aren’t cruel. They’re just pigs. And if you keep them fed and don’t fall down in the pen, they’ll be ham, bacon, chops and BBQ before they get a chance to eat you. Their interest in the affairs of humans basically ends at the trough.

This makes them not much different than most politicians, –the pigs who dress up in dark suits and power ties and run for political office. Which, like the “family farm” is now largely corporate owned and operated. Think of it as the corporate pigsty.

But real pigs lack arrogance and hubris. Neither are they sociopathic. You could pass them off as members of the American ruling class and take them to a political fundraiser; just keep the lights down and the food coming. No one would be surprised by the grunts, snuffles and gorging. Even the foul odor would probably be attributed to elderly and incontinent human attendees. Political fundraisers are not repelled by much.

I like to think of the denizens of the corporate pigsty as Homo Sus, part human, part pig and like the real pig, missing a critical 2% of the genome. The 2% that gives us ethics, compassion, morality and humanity, among other things.

Their version of slop is money and power. You don’t have to be very bright to figure it out. Has a politician ever spoken to you when they didn’t want something? Then you haven’t the money or power to be worth their time.

Think of the speeches, ads and accusations thrown about in a campaign. No one gets a pass here. No one is “clean.” Clean doesn’t sell. Politics is a dirty business. The sides are divided by shared beliefs*. People are frightened and angry. Keeping us that way keeps them safe.

It really is “us” versus “them”. It’ll stay that way because there are billions of dollars at stake and that money can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. They need us ignorant, and angry about the wrong things.

If we started thinking logically there would be heads on pikes near every statehouse, and gated communities would look like Aleppo. Corporate profit and commoditization wouldn’t be the driving forces in society.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was right, you see. Would you know how to open a Cayman Islands bank account? Write off flying a horse to London? Get people to “loan” you private jets and yachts? The rich are different from you and me.

There’s nothing wrong with being rich, nothing wrong with making money. If you can do it, kudos to you. But don’t tread on me.

Coax the value from the land, the air, the sea? Create the jobs that give our lives meaning? No you didn’t. Not all by yourself, not without shared sacrifice, not without decades of contribution by those who came before, not without a national infrastructure, property protection and a million other things you could never do for yourself. Most of these pig-people aren’t creators, they’re parasites who live off the creativity of others.

Listen to the Romney/Ryan Rovian Revival talk about the “useless eaters” when they think they’re off mic, the worthless 47%, the more than worthless 30%. That’s what they call us.

I’m reminded of Anne Richard’s famous description of George Bush Sr., “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” It’s how you can tell who the real pigs are in our society.

And it ain’t me, Babe.

###

*Just think about it. We’re every mother’s child of us stuck in this spacecraft that’s running out of fuel, water and air. All major religions share the same basic values. The predominant form of government is “democracy”. Is it all just “lip service”?

I’d like to be allowed to die, please.

Yes. I know. You’re supposed to want to live. But life is no longer rewarding, and not because I’m a lovesick teenager, and not because I don’t have good benefits, and not for any other normal reason that might cross your mind.

I’d like to die because I have a terminal disease and I’ve been in pain and have been suffering for three years now. I was a “cancer survivor” for 10 years, but it came back and I’m going to lose my title. I can’t lose it fast enough.  But I was taught to trust doctors, and they keep telling me about the next thing.

I now know the next thing won’t save me. It may prolong my death, but probably not more than a few weeks or months. It won’t help me enjoy life more. I am already taking enough opiates to knock down a hippo, and even if they cured my cancer, my drug habit would kill me.

But they’re not going to cure my cancer. When your skeleton is gone, they’re pretty much lost.  So they’re going to harvest my benefits to the best of their ability, and boy are they able.

I have stage 4 metastatic cancer to the bone. It’s everywhere, head to toe. I’ve had this operation and that operation to beat it back, but it’s like the Patriots’ offense; it just keeps coming. 41 days of radiation helped with the pain, but it’s still there, like a mean friend.

But what do my doctors see? It’s not like I have rich private health insurance. I ate that up years ago, along with any money my family ever had, because I had the misfortune to be mentally ill in the Shining City on the Hill.  Instant insolvency for most families who care.

I now have Medicare disability and my state medicaid and I was lucky to get it before you were an automatic total scumbag for needing help.  As much as the medical community complain about the limits, they harvest the hell out of what’s there. They know I’m dying. I know I’m dying. Hell, anyone who looks at me knows I’m dying. But until I shuffle off to the crematorium, I’m a frigging cash cow.

And people wonder why Medicare is in trouble. Of course, most people are incapable of observing and thinking, so why am I surprised?

A year ago, I was told I’d be lucky to be alive in 18 months. But I have a primary care physician who sees me every month and does a blood test. I have an oncologist who sees me every week and does a blood test. I have a cardiologist who sees me every 3 months and does a blood test.  I have a gastroenterologist who does blood tests. I have as many as 5 blood tests a month.* You’d think they could talk to each other.  Share the test results. But no.

I probably should disclose that I also have a psychiatrist. He doesn’t usually do blood tests, but every month he has me fill out a form, asks me if I want to kill myself or anyone else, and writes me a couple of prescriptions. His ten minutes with me every 2 months means everything in the world to me. But I guess because I’m crazy I can’t get away with wanting to die. I tried to give my medical decisions to someone else, but I can’t get them to kill me either.

Prescriptions. I am the drug industry’s brightest hope. Because I have a disability, I qualify for extra help. This is not a bad thing. It is an abused thing. It’s not abused by the patients like me. It’s abused by the drug companies and pharmacies. It’s yet another secret subsidy to corporate America that they access through the back door by abusing programs designed for good.

It’s in the way the doctors abuse the system. They’re not going to save my life. Not with treatment. Not with prayer. Not with magic beans. I am a close to an ex person as you can get and still talk.

I mean, I have a DNR  which I basically had to beg for, because I really don’t want to be revived to undergo more experimentation.   I’m already a living, breathing, walking science experiment.  Does this therapy work, does that drug work, will this procedure help? I don’t get the point. I AM DYING PEOPLE.  I don’t even own a white coat and I can figure that out.

They’re not going to save my life. They aren’t making it any better. Longer, yes. So I can lie in a room in pain for 18 hours a day. So I can generate income for doctors and nurses and home health care folks and hospitals?  You people do a lot of great things, but pay attention to the folks who have a shot, why don’t you?

You want to know why health care costs so much? Why insurance is so high? Why Medicare will fail? It’s because of people like me. Not that we’re doing anything other than what we’re told will make us feel better, live longer, enjoy a higher quality of life.

Because we love vomiting and diarrhea and constipation and gas pains and bone pains and body pains that go on and on, and we love taking medicines that turn us into brick bookends who can’t concentrate, or speak coherently or think in a straight line. Hell, it’s just like the 60s, only without the sex and the music.

You see, we believe in doctors and medicine and science. We didn’t know that it’s about referrals and billing codes and procedures, we thought it was about caring and seeing a patient.  But we’re just a case.

Doctors love to bitch about how little they’re appreciated and how under-compensated they are. Nobody ever hears the patient.

One thing. I’d like my doctors to kiss me before I die. I always felt you should be kissed when you were being f**ked.

—–

*It gets even sillier, but you’d never believe it unless you went through it.

But I’m afraid. The Occupy movement is simply not successfully communicating a real and actionable agenda to the American people. The takeaway by most is that it’s just another anti-government, anti-big business fringe group–despite the claim that it is the 99%. Superficially a great premise, but in reality like Vonnegut’s Bokonist Granfalloon. The “liberal-dominated media” isn’t helping.

That gives the only presently viable* party for change no room to engage. It provides soundbite fodder to the boys at Big Casino and their sheep, making just one more easy target for the folks down at Spinit & Frameit to work their weasel word magic. Already, the talking points are flying: threats to sanitation and safety must be stopped. Class warfare. Harrumph.

While you and I may be able to parse the nonsense, most won’t even try. And we must successfully focus attention on the real rabble –the demented Elect who have done nothing but obstruct forward motion since the day they got elected, whatever office they themselves occupy. And if they put enough splinters in the electorate, they will continue to prevail.

Like most of us, the Occupy folk know that somebody stole their future. You can track the crime with very little effort. But I suspect this refreshing movement won’t have time, money, organization and momentum to mobilize, communicate, and significantly affect things by November 2012. The money, after all, is on the other side of the police lines, along with the biggest media voice. Meanwhile, the Big Casino boys have pimped their shills and honed their talking points. Their “public servant” lackeys have pushed confrontation, created anger, hostility and violence, in the process of painting the OWS folk as total rabble.

Maybe the fear of the public seeing a viable choice and a chance to elect actual representatives instead of corporate tools has brought us here. Perhaps the Elect fear awakening the great beast of self-interested revolution among the Soma class, so are preemptively creating confusion and obfuscation aplenty, lest their gated communities be stormed and their Krug, Caviar & Car Service be wrested away.

I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but I do believe in greed and evil intentions. Evil can be the result of selfishness; it doesn’t require malicious intent. And we have a grasping, greedy, intellectually dishonest and selfish bunch doing their best to leave us in our underwear eating genetically modified, antibiotic enhanced beef-squirtings-on-a-bun while they party behind the gates of Pretensia.

And suddenly we have grass roots organizations popping up like prairie dogs. Occupy Wall Street and their kin. AmericansElect.org (a great idea gone horribly off, like shrimp left out over the weekend). And other movements all rearing their heads to accomplish what? It’s like a scene from Oliver Twist: “Please sir, can we have some more?”– with a denouement Chuck could have written.

So now we have the potential for further fractioning of the voting public, less chance of caring humans being elected, and the defeat of the president who horribly threatened the vested interests, however briefly. All this energy should be directed to keeping a president who is on the side of the people (even if afraid to act like it) and ousting as many anti-average American hooligans from office as possible. Then we have 4 whole years to build a better country.

Solidarity. Get off the streets and into the communities. Organize, win back the lesser insanity, then move forward, not just on.

###

*By viable, I mean a party that might actually act with social responsibility if given the effective majority to do so. That presently means Democrats, flawed though they be.

I’ve never clapped eyes on Cain in real life, never had a conversation with him, know nothing about him except his propensity to trip over his tongue and champion methods of worsening the American condition. I have, however, met hundreds of men and women like him, successful, authoritative, educated without empathy or understanding, confident and amazed at the breadth and depth of their own ability. All oblivious to others and protected from the unfortunate by their own favored circumstance.  Many have had humble beginnings yet ignore the plight of others in similar situations. Florida’s Rick Scott, who lived in public housing as a child, comes to mind.

Just one more clockwork empty dark suit in the long line of politicians tramping up the country, the likes of whom I’ve always had trouble taking seriously.  People who wish to “serve” the public after first having sated themselves on the best of the buffet.  They practice Darwinism while preaching Divinity.

I don’t understand why nobody “gets” that having a black candidate does not absolve the GOP of racism; it’s the most base and cynical form, and it is perfect cover for taking down another powerful African-American whom they would set him against. You could hear the sharp collective intake of Republican breath when Obama won the election.

When the Southern Democrats co-opted the GOP as a result of Nixon’s “Southern” strategy, the GOP got all the tones and ambiguities of generations of acculturation resulting from hundreds of years of racial suppression. That included all the subtle discriminations and social manners that went along the Scarlett O’Hara culture, including the tendency to respect individual members of other tribes, but not the tribe, as an entity.  An unanticipated outcome, I expect.

Has everyone forgotten that Africans selling Africans to slavers was a “market driven” phenomenon? Do they not know that successful “masters” have always given certain of their chattel privilege in return for spying and exerting power in their behalf?  There are opportunists in all segments of society; yet we seldom hear about those Jews who betrayed their own tribe to the Nazis, either. There are thousands of Americans of all ilk willing to wallow in hubris.

Like Ringling and Barnum before them, the GOP trundles forth its quadrennial freak show to suss the mood of the obliviot swing voters.  What flavor do they want this time?  The pig-faced boy? The bearded lady? Chocolate, vanilla, carmel or butterscotch? Nuts? Alien abductee?  (Fear not, Hispania, you shall have your own for Vice President, we know the <subordinate> importance of your vote; we have a Rubio in the wings, already schooled in the art of the lie).

It is perfectly understandable why Cain is where he is;  another modern version of  the type in thrall to power and mammon; buddy to the big bosses. Privilege is an expert seducer, and the more thoroughly we are seduced, the more we believe in our own grandeur. It’s fun to have money and power; it makes you different from the rest of the herd. The view is nicer from up there. Man cannot live on pizza alone. And flying whenever you wish without the TSA bullshit?  Priceless.

Liberals long for rationalism, forgetting those among us who wish to build dynasties and those who see no fault in needless taking, no matter the cost to others.

The Republican party blew up once before in a spectacular way because of their cynical disregard for the needs of the people at large.  They have wormed their way back by creating a plethora of factions of hate, setting business against individuals and this group against that.  They have destroyed public education even as they work tirelessly to dismantle all infrastructure not essential to product and service marketing or war-making.

Instead of working to govern, which, I seem to recall is why we elect, they work to destroy those whose interests are at odds with their own. But here’s something so devilishly wicked  it takes your breath: Setting Cain to “slay” his “brother”.

Wonderfully, darkly, Southern –and Biblical to boot.

You can read what set me off at this link:  http://www.theroot.com/views/wait-isnt-right-supposed-be-racist

They’ve already started taking big bites of the Medicaid funding. They’re working on the Medicare funding, too. No rocket science is required to figure it out.

“Privatize” after all, is Republican code for moving public assets into private hands.  Public assets, you recall, are shared monies we give to the government to safeguard and use “to promote the general welfare”.  Not the welfare of banks or corporations or rich individuals. The general welfare. Us.

But like the privateers of old, the Street has been on a steady course of pillaging the wealth of the nation. Privateers, of course, are simply pirates with government authorization. This is easy to get, once you’ve purchased most of the “elected” representatives.

First, they took down the S&Ls, then some insurance companies, then the mortgage industry, the big small banks and, recently, any equity we had in real estate. They’ve started on education. And now it’s the prize of prizes:  The Social Security trust fund. It’s not enough to privatize education, incarceration, defense and infrastructure. All wealth must be removed from the control of the people who made it real.

Don’t buy the notion that you’d have been better off planning and saving on your own for retirement; millions of people who did just that are living on Social Security now. And it’s not their “fault”.  They had SEPPs and IRAs and 401ks and all manner of private retirement savings programs, all tied largely to the markets and all looted through market and social manipulation since 1980. You can look it up.

First they took all your cash, all the while exhorting you to max out your borrowing power. Then they took all the equity you had in property. For the majority nearing retirement, any future they had “ensured” through private investment has been destroyed time and again by excesses of these pirate crews. If that’s not true in your family, you are either in the top 20% financially, or you’re one of the hogs lined up at the slaughterhouse.

Your refusal to demand honest and competent representatives has sealed the deal. Your indifference to their outrageous behavior and increasingly blatant theft of your basic human rights and your property added blessing to it.

Just so I’m perfectly clear on this:  the people who yell “Let them die” in reference to the sick or injured without health insurance will be no less brutal and indifferent when you, your family and your friends fall further and further out of the spheres of money and purchased influence. (Have you not noticed how cleverly we ignore the problems of homelessness and poverty?  If only those people had made better choices in life!)

Why should we be surprised? For a long time the lesson of justice in America has been “steal big and steal from the right people”. It’s true that, here,  justice is blind; blind to truth, blind to integrity, blind to poverty, blind to need. And most of all, blind to social justice.

As the great American kleptocracy eats more and more of our peoples’ assets it becomes ever more ravenous.  If you are a mere millionaire you are in line to be eaten. A billion might preserve you; it will be a much battered billion by the time you die, because they are never done eating. And your progeny are likely to be eaten after you are gone; if not by the system we have allowed to flourish, then by the people the system will soon have starving. Remember, the ladder is destabilized as the bottom rungs are removed.

Truth is, Social Security as it stands is working fine and can easily work for the long term with minor tweaks and reality adjustments. But apparently, we no longer have the will to do  right or censure wrong.

You can oppose the privateers. You can ignore them. You can support them.

If yours are the last two choices, I encourage you to take a good hard look at what your fellow humans are capable of doing to one another. Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and an increasing majority of white Americans can tell you about it: The privateers will show no mercy.

That, you can take all the way to the bank.

cube farm from http://shoutingthomas.typepad.com

I was trained as a writer –a “Worder” in modern terms– in the BadEra before the New American Republican Republic (NARR), and was successfully re-educated ten years ago, praise Sarah and Barbara. Unlike many who were writers and artists in the BadEra I was not placed in NARR’s Faith Medicine, Nutrition & Future Fossil Fuels program. Occasionally I get an eclip from someone who claims to have known me, but they’re mostly quiet now. There is no point in protesting a perfect society. Can you imagine a government telling you what to do?

Anyway, once I completed NuThot I was placed with INFOSEM a prototype program by FlameOut^R , the NuCon arm of DragonTooth LLC, NARR’s holding company.  My job with INFOSEM is an important one, “information dissemination”.  Our particular group keeps the Consumery up to date on what to think and believe.  Like the Murdochers valiantly struggled to do back in the BadEra.

I am a Sentence Assembly Specialist First Class.  I take what the Subject, Object, Predicate and Clause-Makers send me and assemble complete sentences.  These are passed on to the Parators, who edit them into polished paragraphs.

Can you believe people once had to do this entire task for themselves? Thank the Angel Ronald times have changed. So many more people have been given jobs now that all tasks can be reduced to their smallest parts for maximum teamwork.  I can’t even remember what it was like in the BadEra when there was so much thinking to be done.  May we all Praise Bush for Charter Schools!

Our cohort is lucky, as we work at CompLevel 6. That means our work product is meant for you, the most gracious Supervisor and Guvernater class.

I pray this Screeneval will show that I am competent to continue serving my betters in this capacity, even if deemed unworthy to Word for the higher audience of Capital Generators who make our great NARR possible.

Due to the terms of my NuThot diploma I will never qualify to rise to the level of  Idealator, which is the title for those at the top of my field.  I have heard that they are permitted to construct fully formed ideas and policies for NARR implementation –subject, of course to the enlightened approval of Supervisors, Guvernaters and CGs. This sounds too hard.

I am very happy not to be a CompZero, however, simply writing instruction stickers. But, Praise W, I would do any requested task.  As it is, I’m in my 5th year now, and hope to move up to Level 7, which means I will be responsible for crafting whole thoughts of up to 5 consecutive sentences from the input provided me.  I know I can be worthy of your trust.

I know how much FlameOut, DragonTooth and the NARR have invested in my re-education and training, and don’t want to disappoint you, our higher leaders or the CGs who protect The NARR Way.

Like all Contri-consumers of the great New American Republican Republic Earthwide corporation I am thankful that DragonTooth funded NARR and created FlameOut, providing me real and meaningful employment.  So many new jobs were created.  Billions who might have had nothing are now screen watchers, gamers, cookers, deliverers, keyboard section specialists and tasker-sharers through the amazing discovery of singletasking.

Singletasking is simply brilliant: it’s no longer necessary to have anyone complete an entire work, like, say hang a door or wash a window or even change a lightbulb – like the movie industry in UnionTime.

The workday is greatly reduced, too. Just 10 hours a day will earn you 2 meals and 6 hours of CubeSleep; 2 more hours bring you even more resource consumption perks, like entertainment, and reduced religious training. Should I earn reproduction rights I will show my offspring this good life.

If you don’t work, of course, you aren’t “in” society, so you are automatically enrolled in the Interplanetary Exploration and Colonization program .  It’s the fairest way.

I promise, if you allow this humble Worder to move to Level 7 (Parator) I will become your greatest Truthor –not a Beck nor a Coulter nor a Limbaugh, of course.

But at the paragraph level, none will serve you better.

This is only a beginning, and we hope to add more definitions as we fully understand them.

Americans: white people above a certain economic standard who live in the United States; descended from white people of western European origin. Some African Americans, Arabs, Jews and Cubans are accepted as white people in public settings. Asians are tolerated, but resented.

beltway: the circumferential roadway around Washington DC, inside of which bribes and payoffs are collected for redistributing the wealth of the nation to the top 12% of individuals and corporations and their purchased representatives.

boehner: to unexpectedly cry at the increases in one’s net worth.

budget, budgeting: ensuring that the 12% of the populace controlling 88% of the nation’s wealth are not burdened with any of the costs of governing the society that contributed their wealth; also, ensuring that services essential to protect wealth are adequately funded.

capitalism: evolutionary science applied to government and society.

cause and effect: a meaningless concept of interconnectedness between actions and consequences.

citizen: a tax unit with potential for full economic exploitation.

congress: a combination cocktail party, barbecue and bacchanalia where negotiations take place for the annual redistribution of the earnings of average citizens. Activities include intern boinking, “hiking the Appalachian trail,” “Newting,” junketeering, restroom trolling, and blood alcohol maintenance. Members are easily identifiable due to heightened self-importance, hubris, and lack of ironic sensibility.

communism: failed system of government which did not provide any fantasy of individual freedom with sufficient cynicism.

creationism: the one true science and theology of existence.

democrat: a foolish individual willing to throw a bone with meat left on it to a starving dog. AKA “commie” or “pinko.”

dixiecrat: old name for modern Republican party.

earmark: job security voucher.

education: studying for tests in a pre-prison environment; frequently confused with learning.

entitlement: money you give to the government for the benefit of society at large; routinely appropriated to other interests.

evolution: a false scientific theory unsuitable for knowing.

global warming: science fiction plot favored by liberals and “scientists.”

god: an invisible superior being invoked to add credence to an individual, ceremony or event; or to magically protect an incipient felony. Usually mistaken for a reference to a religious belief system, but clearly not associated with Christian principles.

government: system of societal organization that works for the people who work for the government; useful for creating new income streams; inherently a bad idea that destroys society and individual initiative.

homeless: unwilling to participate in society as Americans practice it.

illegal: non-white individuals who come from other countries to feed off of republican generosity (see oxymoron).

immigrant: non-white individuals imported for housekeeping, child care, landscape maintenance and sanitation duties.

liberal: willing to share spoils of pillage, albeit, usually unwilling to rape.

liberty: the right to remain silent.

lobbyist: paymaster to elected officials.

Native Americans: dark skinned descendants of indigenous individuals who gave us all their resources; now largely kept in casino-anchored parks.

media: news and opinion outlets and broadcasters; universally anti-Republican except on rare occasions.

patriot: dead or gravely war-wounded citizen; also, any republican or democrat, especially high dollar donors, AKA “great patriots.”

pollution: imaginary byproduct of commerce, industry and daily life.

poverty: failure to thrive economically due to unfortunate birth, educational, or other personal choices.

president: current winner of the “Who do I think I trust the most of these people I know nothing about” contest. See also: senator, representative, governor, mayor and other elective titles.

principles: fundamental moral convictions, normally sold at secret auction.

progressive: unhelpfully interested in the plight of the masses; foolishly concerned with a present and future beyond their own.

red state: geographic unit wherein the people habitually vote against themselves.

republican: right, as in correct.

socialism: christian and social justice principles applied to government; not viable, although widely used by prosperous nations.

social security: financial insecurity.

trickle down: economic platform that says “be glad I am urinating on you, for soon the groundwater will be undrinkable.” AKA Reaganomics.

Your suggestions, although welcome, will likely be ignored unless really good, in which case they will be stolen.

(Photo by Wylio.com)

When most of us here in today’s South think “union” we get a mock heroic picture of Sally Fields standing on a table holding a hand-lettered sign. But “Union” was a dirty word in Dixie for over a century because of a guy named Sherman and his pals Lincoln, Grant et. al.  Aside from the Dixiecrats, the Klan and the Baptists, there wasn’t much appetite for organizing. And in the land of the ignorant and the poor, any crumb of a job is a boon.

Starving dogs don’t bark so much. So tanking the economy provides the perfect window to take on and take down the unions.  As I write this, Rand Paul is circulating a petition for a national “Right To Work” law.  If he were an honest man, it would be a “Right To Exploit” law.  But he is a politician, and honesty in that circle is common as hen’s teeth. Although, I’ll concede, not all politicians are crooks.  Many are just stupid.

Just so we’re clear on this: by definition, a union is an organization of workers joined together to achieve common goals: better wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring, firing and promotion of workers, benefits, workplace safety and policies. While these sometimes benefit other workers, they’re done on behalf of union members. Hold that thought.

It’s a fundamentally capitalistic idea: people organizing for a better return on their investment, like, Holy Crap!! – a corporation. In this case the “investment” is physical and intellectual ability – which is the basis of all wealth – in service to a hiring entity. How that got to be “commie pinko” thinking is part of America’s charming dalliance with labeling.  Ask Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter about it.

There are, or were, some pretty powerful unions abroad in the land. Some of them made stupid rules and abused their power, not unlike some countries and corporations. But along the way they made America a safer, saner place to work. And found a way to enable people who work for a living to enjoy some of the fruits of their labor. Unions, more than any other social force, made capitalism acceptable to the masses and fed the furnace of consumerism.

Basically, you have two kinds of unions: Unions of money capital (corporations) and those of labor capital (unions). You can’t make money without labor. But The Golden Rule applies: the one with the gold gets to make the rules. Hence the push to destroy labor unions.

They say Unions have no place in enlightened society because they drive up costs and reduce profitability. It’s much easier to make more profit faster when you needn’t worry about incidentals like working conditions, the environment, fairness, benefits and stuff like that. So in some people’s logic, the source of income has become anti-income. Which is, if you think it through, Slave-owner mentality.

But nobody talks much about the truly dangerous unions:  The ones we call “Congress”, “Senate”, “Legislature”, “Political parties”.  These have morphed into strong unions of self interests and are largely in cahoots with the 12% of our population who fill the coffers and call the shots. The other 88% (let’s call them Us) are merely tax and labor units, here for the cull.

So here’s my suggestion: while we’re getting rid of unions, let’s also put those “people” on a system that ties their income and benefits to the performance and profitability of the US of A and the delivery of benefit to the populace.

If teachers are going to be paid based on their students’ achievement, let’s have elected representatives get paid based on the achievement of their poorest and least fortunate constituents. It makes just as much sense, and might stop the headlong rush back to 1890 that our so called “leadership” keeps herding us towards.

While we’re at it, we might even be able to preserve that most important union. You know the one: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” What commie pinko came up with that?