"The Inevitability" : A short story

(This story was written for my Senior Fiction class. Enjoy as you like. Comment as you like. I frankly don't give a shit.)

The flat front end of the Queens city bus that crushed Reginald’s body and dragged it a good fifteen feet or so wasn’t the worst part of his day. Oh, he’d missed his carpool, so he’d needed to take a cab to work, but he always rose early, so he still had more than enough time to start his preparations for the day by the time he arrived. He’d toyed with the idea of walking the eight or nine blocks past several humble yet overpriced houses and sprawling apartment buildings, picking up a bagel with lox and cream cheese at P & C on the way, and cutting through Juniper Park, but he knew he’d never make it in time. Besides, the week-long rain still hadn’t stopped. He’d had a fine day at work, teaching some of PS 49’s third graders the finer points of analog clock reading. His lunch had been uneventful, but not unpleasant. Hell, he’d even made a date with Delia Simmons, a shapely fifth grade math teacher for later in the week.

No, the worst part of Reginald’s day came after the bus. Obviously the pain of having his skin sloughed off his chest as he was pulled underneath the bus, and the shocking impact of metal and glass on his skull had been briefly agonizing, but thankfully all that had been over so quickly that it hardly mattered. It’s famously said time slows down and you see your life flash before your eyes right before death. Reginald didn’t experience any life hallucinations, but there was something of the slow time sensation, as though someone were watching a film of those seconds, pausing each frame to relish in its exquisite High Definition quality: Droplets of rain plopping in the gathered puddles on either side of the road, each causing its own cascading fountain of shimmering water, exhaust billowing in small tufts from the back end of a ’78 Pontiac Bonneville as it passed, going the opposite direction, the creaking, bending metal as it curved around Reginald’s body, ever so slightly, and the rippling of his skin and fat as seams formed and split with the impact. In those achingly slow seconds, his blood spurted from his cracked and half-severed limbs and seeped out of open wounds from his gaping chest cavity, mixing with dirty rainwater under the bus and the rising sewage from beneath the city streets. His body had released its bowels with his last gasping breath, choked with the stink. In a way, it was giving the world a middle finger as his consciousness left it: A “Here, bitches. Enjoy cleaning this shit up.” moment, if you will.

Reginald had never been especially religious, so in the next second after the bus, when he sucked in a lungful of air and hacked, grasping at what should have been an open gaping wound in his chest, or at least heavily bandaged and damp with bodily fluids, but wasn’t, he held his breath and cursed for not having accepted that baptism in fifth grade at his friend’s church. He looked around. The rain had stopped, for the first time in a week or more, and Juniper Park had disappeared. There was light, but no substance to his surroundings, and as he pushed himself up, against what he couldn’t tell, as there didn’t appear to be a floor or any sort of structures around him, he grasped at his head.

“How’d it happen?” a voice asked from nearby. It was familiar, though he wasn’t certain he’d ever heard it before: A fine baritone, deep, but not unnerving or unpleasant. Reginald’s own voice was unique, and of considerably higher pitch. In his youth, with his long hair, many of his parents’ new friends had made the mistake of thinking him a girl, as “Reggie” was more or less unisex. His father would politely correct them, but encouraged his son to cut his hair for years after.

He hadn’t responded to the voice yet, instead searching for the source. As there didn’t seem to be any kind of structure around him, and certainly no people, he was somewhat speechless.

“I say how’d it happen, man,” the voice said with some impatience.

“Where are you?” Reginald finally managed.

“Oh for Christ’s sake. This one wasn’t expecting anything,” the voice muttered. “Hey Jimmy, pull up the Today show or something. Hey mac, you prefer Lauer or Roker?”

“Matt Lauer?” Reginald asked, mystified.

“You got it,” the voice said as Reginald’s field of vision began to blur. The sight of the world phasing into view caused Reginald’s eyes to water, and he blinked several times between rubbing them vigorously. When he had wiped away the last of the liquid in his eyes, he was on the Today show set, and Matt Lauer was sitting in a chair across a small table. The familiar tiles behind his head gave a bluish hue to the room.

Reginald sputtered some unintelligible nonsense and Matt Lauer sat in the chair, smiling at his guest’s confusion.

“All right, now. That’s enough,” Matt Lauer said. “Listen, you’re dead, right, so who are you, and how’d it happen?”

Reginald stopped muttering and rubbed his eyes again. “Reginald. Reg Carlson. I’m dead. Right. The bus.”

“Finally we’re getting somewhere,” Matt Lauer said, taking a pen and some note cards out of his jacket pocket. Reginald couldn’t help questioning his sanity, but at this point, he was pretty certain this thing wasn’t the real Matt Lauer. His manner of speaking was unlike Lauer’s calm, professional conversation-type persona. “So, Reg. A bus accident. I assume you did something stupid, right, because it’s pretty hard to get killed by one of those otherwise.”

Reginald swallowed and closed his eyes, his breathing rate increasing. He thought back.

“I left school, walked through the park, but why?”

“Listen, man, I don’t really care. I just need a few notes so I can figure out what you’ll be doing around here now. What’d you do?”

“Do?” Reginald asked.

“Yeah, man,” Matt Lauer said, leaning forward in his plush grey chair. “A job, hobbies, what kinda movies did you like. I don’t care, but gimmie something I can work with.”

“I teach third grade. In Queens,” Reginald said, sliding into the chair opposite the facsimile of Matt Lauer.

Lauer grinned at Reginald’s statement. “Taught.”

Reginald couldn’t help but smile. Matt Lauer had an infectious and amiable quality to him, even when he sounded like a tool. “Yeah. I taught third grade. Hey listen, what’s the deal with all this, anyway? You’re not Matt Lauer.”

“Yeah, you nonbelievers are always fun when you get here, we get to make up all kinds of shit. Just be glad you didn’t get assigned to Barry. He likes to pull the Balrog on everybody. Really freaks out the Christians. They just think it’s the devil. The Tolkien fans get a kick out of it, though.” Matt Lauer had leaned back, still smiling.

“I bet. So the cliché would be to ask if this is heaven or hell. But I’d guess it’s neither, right? More like Purgatory?” Reginald asked. He was the one leaning forward now, his interest piqued.

“You Catholic?” Matt Lauer asked.

Reginald shook his head. “I went once when I was a kid. My grandma thought I needed some religion, but after I used that kneeling bench thing as a foot rest, we didn’t go back.”

Matt Lauer laughed. “Not too bad. Met a guy last week who pissed in the stoup at Saint Margaret’s in Queens once. That the place your grandma took you?”

“Not likely. I grew up in Nebraska,” Reginald said, still smiling. “Sounds like you’ve got a pretty interesting job.”

Matt Lauer made notes of everything Reginald said about himself. He hadn’t noticed this until the facsimile scribbled another note on one of his cards after Reginald had mentioned Nebraska.

“Oh, sure,” Matt Lauer said, looking up from his card. “But back to you. You were a teacher. You ever bang a student?”

“What?” Reginald shouted, his face contorted in disgust. “I teach third grade, I told you that. That’s sick.”

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know how things are situated around here, do you?” Matt Lauer said, shifting in his seat. He propped an ankle up on the opposite knee. “Listen, we deal in extremes here. You ever wonder why life is so fucked up? Cause people realize if they don’t do some serious shit, they end up leading boring lives, and why shouldn’t that lead to a boring afterlife?”

“Serious. Shit?”

“Yep,” Matt Lauer said, his face no longer bearing that humor he had been sharing with Reginald earlier. “You should see the place Hitler has set up. Gandhi’s is really swank too.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You see, the more risks you take, the more lives you affected, the extremity to which you lived your life affects your station here. We don’t half-ass this crap, man.”

“Wait, wait, wait. This is ridiculous,” Reginald said, standing and taking a few steps away from Matt Lauer. “You’re telling me what? That your intentions don’t matter here? The things you do aren’t good or evil, it just, what, matters how many people see them?”

“More or less. Why do you think there are so many shitty YouTube videos? Amateur porn being leaked all over the internet? Flash mobs, for fucks sake. Who gives a shit how many stupid people you can convince to go to one place at a specific time and dance to a shitty Katy Perry song?” Matt Lauer had a strange grin on his face with this question. His mouth half open, there was deviance in his eyes, and he licked at the left side of his mouth as he continued. “We do. It’s our job, and we take it very seriously.”

Reginald pressed his palm into his cheek, and rubbed up and down the side of his face a few times. He scratched at the neatly trimmed dark brown patch of hair around his jaw. His entire sense of morality was in flux, and he began to panic as he thought of how little he had done in his life. He’d been an above average student all throughout his school career, he could have applied himself, gotten into a better school than the miserable community college he went to, could have aimed higher than the local state school, could have gone to grad school. He was more than capable of so many more acts than he had felt like doing. He hadn’t bothered to date much, hadn’t gotten married, joined any clubs, or sought public office, like he’d thought he might in high school. He could have been an actor, or an engineer, though math hadn’t really been his favorite subject.

“Man, you look like you’re about to have an aneurism over there,” Matt Lauer said, his voice pressing into Reginald’s ear drum, the pressure exerted on his mind exceeding the remnants of pain he remembered from the bus accident. “Good thing you’re already dead, I guess.”

Reginald sank back into the chair opposite Matt Lauer. “You got any water or something?” he asked. His mouth had gone dry, and beaded sweat had formed at his temples.

Matt Lauer inclined his head to the table between them, where a crystal pitcher and pair of glasses sat. “Not that you need it, but if it’ll calm you down, whatever.”

As Reginald fumbled with the pitcher and splashed himself lightly in the face with a glassful, Matt Lauer spoke again, his voice softening in tone, but the words biting, “Look, the whole existential crisis thing is cute, but we need to get back to work. I take it you didn’t do much with your life, then?”

Reginald jumped on the offensive, tiny droplets of water shaking onto his khakis. He wiped his face and thrust his hand towards Matt Lauer, finger outstretched in a nonthreatening motion clearly intended to be intimidating. “I molded young minds. Created the next generation. I taught—“

“Third grade. I know,” Matt Lauer said, raising his hands in protest. He grinned and leaned in close, planting his elbows on his knees as he spoke. “Listen, third grade is all well and good, but what are you teaching them, really? Multiplication, if they were too stupid to learn it in second? Division, basic reading skills. It’s not like you’re lecturing them on Proust or Chaucer, or extolling on the virtues of the Marxist system of Critical theory, or even brainwashing them with propaganda about how the Founding Fathers of America were saints that could do no wrong. What’d you teach your kids today?”

“Analog clocks…” Reginald muttered, rubbing his temples to ease the tension in his face.

Matt Lauer let out a gasp of laughter that Reginald didn’t expect. “You’re teaching them how to read analog clocks? That’s like negative learning. Do people even use analog clocks anymore? I know we don’t around here, but it’s not like we need to.”

“What’s the purpose of this shit, Matt?” Reginald asked, pulling his hands away from his face.

“I’m determining your worth,” Matt Lauer said, with abject matter-of-fact. “And it’s not looking great, so far, Reggie, sorry to say.”

“My dad used to call me that,” Reginald said, his face alight with tepid amusement. Matt Lauer made the note, but his expression had darkened with boredom. Reginald continued, “I took care of him, you know, when he was going.”

Matt Lauer straightened up a little, scribbling the note. “What was his name?”

“Karl,” Reginald said. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes grew more defined as he smiled. “Karl Carlson. I used to tease him about it all the time.”

Matt Lauer pressed his finger into his ear. “Carlson, Karl. Dead 2003 of kidney failure. Complications with Diabetes. And you took care of him, huh. How involved?”

Reginald nodded, “I don’t know. I was there every day, I guess. I’d just graduated, but hadn’t found a job yet.”

“Pretty big commitment, even if it was just cause you didn’t have anything better to do. Well, that was altruistic of you. A lot of kids put sick parents in homes and visit them once a month till they die. Makes you a little more interesting I guess. You wanna know what we learned about your dad when he got here?”

“Will I see him again?”

“Probably not.”

“Then no,” Reginald said, turning from Matt Lauer in his chair and staring into the lifeless camera aimed at him. After a moment he turned back and bent forward. His eyes tightened into thin slits and his voice took on a raspy quality. “You wanna know the most interesting thing about me?”

Matt Lauer cocked an eyebrow and raised the tip of his pen to a card. “That’s my job.”

“I killed my cousin when I was eight. Totally on purpose. Pushed him off the seven hundred foot sheer cliffs of Canyon De Chelly in Arizona.”

Matt Lauer said nothing, but the look on his face pressed Reginald for more information.

“My extended family used to take vacations together. My grandmother would pick me up, give my parents a week or two to themselves, and we’d go visit some of my other cousins in Kansas, New Mexico, Nevada. On one trip, Grandma decided she wanted to visit the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon in Utah, Canyon De Chelly in Arizona. Was on a real monument kick that year, so she convinced my aunt to come along and bring her boy to keep me company. He was two or three years younger than me, and just a miserable little spoiled piece of shit.

“I remember he wouldn’t ever share with me. His mom gave him little baggies of chips and crackers and he’d chow down while I had carrots in a wet bag from the cooler under my feet. Or when we’d stop, and he’d take his toys out of his suitcase to play with, he’d always take a huge Godzilla and smash the little green army men I’d brought. Even when I’d placed a sniper on a high perch, and shot it in the head, he’d still managed to fly up and eat my sniper’s head. It pissed me off to no end.”

Matt Lauer was grinning now. Reginald continued:

“My Grandma had picked out a ridiculous route up a state highway to hit Canyon De Chelly first, and then we were gonna keep going north and curve back around south, going some hundred sixty miles out of the way to get back to the Grand Canyon.”

“Surely you didn’t still go to the Grand Canyon after your cousin?” Matt Lauer interrupted.

“Nah, no, I was just getting to that,” Reginald said with a slight grin. “So we got to this town at the edge of the Canyon. Chinley, maybe? Grandma’d arranged a tour of the inside of the canyon, so we all got in this jeep with a heavy Indian guy, and he drove us around in the mud underneath those cliffs. There was a little stream at the bottom, and we’d roll through it occasionally, and I’d get a bit splashed with dirty river mud, but I didn’t mind. It was gorgeous. The sun hadn’t quite gotten high enough to turn us into burnt toast, but it shot rays through the cracks in the cliff walls ahead of us. Get caught in that creek, play crazy little light games on those walls. There were so many colors. The rock was layered, reds and browns and deep black, up seven hundred feet of sheer rock face. The prismatic effect the creek had on the sunlight would spray rainbows all over the walls, and little trees dotted the river bed. It was a little cold, since it was still early morning, but by the time our tour was over, and we were back in our own car, driving up to the top of the cliffs, I had warmed up a lot, and was smelling pretty rank from the mud and sweat.”

Matt Lauer was enraptured, and had stopped taking notes.

“We get to the top of these cliffs and I get the piss drained out of me by the sight. There are no guardrails. The cliff is just there, like a little ravine or something, only seven hundred feet deep. In places, you could probably have jumped the thing the tops were so close to each other, and no protection at all. Grandma and my aunt park the car and get out to go peer over the edge, I’m scared shitless. My cousin gets out and runs over, grabbing onto his mother like a sloth to a tree. I follow and get as close as I’m willing to. I see a truck down at the bottom, tiny, red thing, just like my Micro Machines back home. I realized that it had to be a real truck, though, and start to get queasy.

“Grandma and my aunt have wandered a little further on, and are taking pictures of a really gorgeous valley vista off the edge of one cliff. My cousin tries to scare me by giving me a push, but since I’m bigger, it doesn’t work all that well and I just smacked him. But he starts whining and tells me I smell like poop.”

“Then you did it?” Matt Lauer asked.

Reginald nodded. “I grabbed him by the forearm and just…” He made the motion, like swinging a baseball bat.

“Why?”

“I thought motivations didn’t matter.” Reginald said, turning his gaze to Matt Lauer’s confused expression.

“No, I guess they don’t,” Matt Lauer said, leaning back in his chair finally. “But you did it, huh? What was his name?”

Reginald told his cousin’s name, knowing full well he was perfectly alive, and a Chemical Engineer in Wichita. Sure, Reginald had thought about tossing his cousin off the cliff, but of course he hadn’t. In the years after that, Reginald and his cousin had actually gotten a lot closer, and were quite good friends to the day he’d died.

Matt Lauer sat for a moment and then shook his head, smiling knowingly. “It was a good effort, Reg, I’ll give you that. You’ve got the gift of gab, and delayed this as long as you could.”

“Oh no way, I’ve got plenty more stories,” Reginald said with a weak smile.

“Unless you robbed a bank, or kept sex slaves in your basement, I doubt we’ve got anything to talk about,” Matt Lauer said, returning Reginald’s expression. There was almost a hint of pity in his eyes.

“Well, there was this one time in college,” Reginald began.

A fairly random entry...

To commemorate my return.

According to my last entry, the last thing I wrote here was back in bloody April, so I can safely say my blog feels neglected. My Grandmother recently sought information on how to create a blog, so I told her about my own, and where she could start hers, which she has. And she already has as many entries as I do! So I'm here to try and catch up again, On to my topic!
---


Vitriol and Hyperbole!

Hate and Exaggeration!

...In other words? The midterm elections.

Really... Any election in this country any more, it seems. And I know that the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision has been talked about to death, and no one really likes it, (Except the only people that matter, that is: Politicians.) but Cit. Uni. is an enormous contributing factor to the vitriol and hyperbole this election season. What better way to demonize the administration and the Democratic Congress than with $2 billion in negative ads?

Who cares if the people you're campaigning for are batshit fucking insane, as long as they vote the way you want them to, which, of course they will, because they know damn well who got them elected. I mean, for God's sake... Sharron Angle!? If people didn't hate Harry Reid, and she didn't have $30 million dollars and Sean Hannity, people might think she was literally a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Of course, the same can be said for *insert Tea Party Candidate here* or pretty much any other Republican on the ticket this year. And you might ask me, then, "Chris, what about the Democrats? Don't they run the same type of negative ads?" And I would have to say, "Yeah, probably, but have you even seen any of them this year? Probably not, cause they don't have any damn money."

I mean, sure Unions have always been pretty supportive of Democrats, and environmental movements, and gay rights groups, etc give, and even some more impartial large corporations thankfully give equal contributions to both parties, but in the end, none of that helps, because it is ALL special interests, and they ALL want something in return. And the more money they have and freely give, the more likely they are to achieve their legislative goals, be it rampant deregulation of safety standards on oil rigs and in mines (Thank you Deepwater Horizon and Massey Energy), or the complete dismantling of everything we're worked for in the Health Insurance industry bill, the Republican talking points are gaining way too much ground with the common idiot-- sorry... Voter.

All those batshit insane Tea Partiers are running on Conservative talking points about social issues and then the even more batshit ideas of dismantling systems vital to the proper functioning of the very states and counties they're running to represent. Dismantling public school systems and transportation, ending state funding of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and ending taxes entirely. Now, ending taxes entirely sounds appealing now, but just wait till the state has literally no money... See how good everything looks then. (Seriously. See Missouri Prop A. They want to make it so the people can vote on whether they are taxed or not. No one WANTS to be taxed, but there are fucking reasons for it, fools!)

If the middle 45% (Supposing the extreme Right and Left equal roughly 25-35% each) weren't being blindfolded and tossed into a glass shard pit and told to find their own way out, this country might stand a chance. As it is, the Citizen's United ruling just pulled the ladder out of the pit, so now the majority of independents are just rolling around cutting themselves to ribbons with the vitriol and hyperbole of the extremes. (Mostly the extreme right, whose shards are exceptionally sharp)

Now, this weekend, we have our last chance, I think, of returning to sanity, and climbing out of that damn pit. And it's all thanks to John Stewart.

I highly encourage anyone who may happen to read this to watch the Daily Show all this week. (Barack Obama is on tonight!) As he is preparing for his "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington D.C. this weekend. (There will also be a lesser rally this weekend hosted by Stephen Colbert to "Keep Fear Alive" but you don't have to go to that...) Stewart is doing a great series on his show all this week in which some of his correspondents have assembled a group of people from various different backgrounds and political opinions, but the important thing is that they are, TADAH! ALL SANE! They have civil political discourse without resorting to the kind of ridiculous vitriol and hyperbole exampled above. (Even in what I wrote ABOUT the right, not just FROM the right... >_>)

You can go to the Daily Show's web page and see the first two episodes from this week in their entirety. Some great interviews as well as the first two parts of this sane political discourse.

American Terrorists

No one can deny the power of the media.

FOX News says that Obama is a Socialist Nazi who wants to kill your grandmother and take all your money so they can subvert your right to own weapons and speak out against them, the government.

MSNBC news says people like Sarah Palin and Timothy McVeigh are insane because they believe the things that FOX news says, and want to defend themselves, in any way possible.

CNN tries to play middle ground, but everyone knows that they're part of that liberal media, and are only trying to cover up for the government.

But what do you think?

Do you even know?

Or are you undeniably influenced by everything that you see and hear in today's overwhelmingly oversaturated world.

I was watching Rachel Maddow's (Yes, I know, I'm one of those insane Socialist Nazi's who watch MSNBC!) sneak peek of "The McVeigh Tapes: Confession of an American Terrorist," (Due to air on April 19th, 2010, the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing) and I couldn't help but ask myself this same question.

The clips Rachel showed seemed to point to the singularity that Tim McVeigh felt when he and Terry Nichols watched the actions of the Federal Government against the anti-government cultists at Waco, TX. The immediate and violent action taken against a compound of otherwise mostly non-violent people, which ended in many deaths. (Granted, they had guns, and they defended themselves when the army showed up in tanks and SWAT teams, but what were they gonna do, give up!? *gasp*)

Were those lost not to be avenged?

That was the question Tim McVeigh asked himself. He was a decorated war veteran, and he saw an immense injustice in those actions, taken by the government, against her people.

But were they warranted?

In Waco? Perhaps not. Who's to say now that over a seventeen years has passed... But the question now turns to McVeigh and his reactions.

In response to the fiasco at Waco, he and Terry Nichols, and to a lesser extent, Terry's brother James, organized what essentially was a domestic terrorist attack against the government. It was centralized at a government owned building in Oklahoma City, presumably because they would not want to be caught near where they had planned the entire attack in Michigan. (though that is simply conjecture on my part)

They killed over one hundred and sixty people that day, and injured over five hundred more.

Was it warranted, given the heinous actions taken against the right-wing extremists in Waco?

Is it warranted again, even though no such heinous actions have been taken against the right-wing extremists now calling for the death (at most) and impeachment (at minimum) of our President, and others who would do right by the democratic process?

Obviously, I say no, but I'm a Socialist Nazi, so my opinion is worthless.

The point I'm trying to make here is that our political system has become so full of violent, hateful, inflamatory rhetoric, that nothing can be distinguished as mere metaphor any longer.

Sarah Palin says her "Reload" catch phrase is simply a way to get her base energized, that it isn't a call for violence... But the very act of saying the words "Reload" is in itself a call to violence. It implies that one has already fired off an entire clip of bullets at their adversary, who has yet to fall, and that they MUST reload and begin to fire again immediately, lest all be lost.

To her, it may be nothing more than a simple metaphor, and for many who follow her, it will be much the same. I have no doubt that the majority of Sarah Palin fanatics will indeed NOT go out, reload their guns and fire wildly at liberal strangers, or even worse, liberal lawmakers.

However, should she cater her message so that the fringe members of her group (those in the same vein as McVeigh and Nichols) be more or less subdued, to avoid the kind of tragedy we all faced in 1995?

And what of Glenn Beck? Sean Hannity? To a lesser extent, Bill O'Reilly? (He has gotten marginally better over the years, marginally being the key word)

Beck spends every hour of his television (and as far as I understand it, his radio) shows dedicated to conspiracy and mistrust of the government, in every facet possible. From the Census being a way for the government to cull the number of "free thinking citizens" to any number of other absolutely ridiculous conspiracies, (Obama's Birth certificate, Death panels, Progressiveism being code for Socialist Nazi takeovers of the government, plus an uncountable multitude more...) Beck's rhetoric simply fuels the very same fire which destroyed the American hero inside Tim McVeigh.

With the recent actions against the Hutari militia, (a radical fundamentalist Christian group, preparing themselves both for judgment day, and the day the government swarmed down upon them) one can only guess when the next Oklahoma City bombing will occur...

Every day FOX news, MSNBC, and CNN, all fuel the fire from both sides. Conservatives, Liberals, even Moderates, to an extent, are growing tired of the constant bickering and hatred infused into our culture, perpetuated by decades of conflict.

How does one solve it?

I can honestly provide no answer to this question. My job is simply to try and explain the ridiculousness of the entire situation. If one were to ask me, my advice would be to simply accept new and innovative technologies, rid the world of currency and trade entirely, and simply allow a world of constant production, with no restrictions or limitations on creation.

Naturally this world is impossible, perhaps because we are so ingrained in our system as is, but think about it...

You live in a modestly sized house, perfectly suited to your family, in every way. It isn't too big, but it has plenty of room, as well as all the amenities one can expect from a middle class life, a big screen plasma TV and all that business, because, who wouldn't have one if it were possible?
Meanwhile, you will always have the food you need, because everyone would always be needing something, so demand would never decrease, and supply would always be abundant. And technological progress would always be driven, not by the greed of corporate finance, but by the desire for man to better his world, and his people, for the simple sake of bettering his world and people.
Gone would be the days of sixteen foot marble wine fountains and three hundred and fourty foot pools behind the eighteen room mansion, and gone would be the celebrity worship and idolatry we revel in today, but everyone would have a modest and acceptable income, with still more than enough to preserve a sane level of happiness within their family unit, which would be driven not by the desire to be greater than thy father, and best his accomplishments, but to simply love thy father, and treat others as ye would like to be treated.

Is it so much to ask for?

Perhaps it is, for some.

But for those of you who can look at the world I've created and say, "Well that's just fine!"...

I salute you.

An update on Mr. Sparkman

More details have come out concerning Mr. Bill Sparkman's death two weeks ago. The man who found his body described him as naked, bound with duct tape at the ankles and wrists, as well as his eyes covered with it.

So, there is no question any longer that he was murdered, but then again, I had no doubt to start with.

Bill Sparkman: Good Man, Government Man

The body of Census worker Bill Sparkman was found on September 12th in Clay County Kentucky. He was hanging from a tree with the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest in an as of yet unreleased method. He had been going door to door as part of his job to collect information.

The story garnered little more than a short blurb on the local news at first but last night, the story was broken to the rest of the nation.

Naturally, speculation abounds, but the facts are apparent. Bill Sparkman was the victim of a homicide, first and foremost, and the inclusion of the word "Fed" on his chest seems to indicate that the crime was perpetrated by someone with very strong anti-government feelings.

So what does this mean beyond a very unfortunate set of events for one man and his family? Well, it means quite a lot, in fact. Just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a cessation of violent rhetoric in the ongoing debates, and that only further increased the furor of the anti-government, anti-Obama crowds. With protesters bringing loaded assault weapons to Town Hall meetings, and even Presidential addresses, carrying signs railing against President Obama, calling for the "blood of tyrants" to water the tree of liberty and freedom, one can only guess what sort of sentiment drove the killing of Mr. Sparkman.

Since I heard the story last night, I've been encouraging others to read up on the subject as well. This is the first unfortunate example of a politicized murder in this recent debate, and hopefully (though not likely) the last.

Plain and simple, these people are out of control. Pundits like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly have poured so much gasoline over the burning coals of these dissenters that the wildfire they've started won't likely be stopped. And from the looks of things, its going to spread and burn down all of the intelligent, moderate trees in the Republican party.

Gone are the days of healthy debate, and they have been replaced with bitter partisanship and staunch opposition to any and all Democratic proposals from all members of the party, regardless of any personal opinion.

Having only been alive and politically conscious during bitter political battles between Neo-conservatives and democrats, I can't say if this is different from old politics, but it appears to me that the Republican party has no standards of their own, with the exception of being Against whatever the Democrats are For, but for me, this is just politics as usual.

I am currently taking a class in American Literature, and so far have read somewhat on the subjects which drove the American Revolution, and then several writings made after the conclusion of the war, during the reconstruction period in which our Founding Fathers were attempting to create their government. Thomas Jefferson, whom the Tea Bagging protesters have taken their "blood of tyrants" and "tree of liberty" phrases from, was an anti-federalist, but was wise enough to see that the country needed a strong central government in order to maintain control over the states, which if they had their way, would probably be individual countries today.

The American system of government is far from perfect. It is easily impacted by special interests and marred by intense bureaucracy. The legislation created by the Congress is impossible to read without a PhD in Political Law, and therefore there is a clear and deliberate separation of people and their representatives, which members of the House and Senate use to their political advantage to dupe their constituents into supporting them regardless of actual policy decisions. They throw around buzzwords and do little more than play popularity games with "he said, she said" rules.

There is no doubt about why anti-government sentiments exist, that is certain. However, distrust of the half of the government that is actually attempting to make life better for the people is just ignorant.

There was logical reason to oppose the Bush government, or any Republican government for that matter. The Republicans seem to stand for few things, but what they do stand for, they enforce swiftly and effectively whenever they achieve office. Deregulation of industries, which effectively makes their particular special interests an incredible amount of money, even if it ruins the market for the consumer, is a prime example.

Until the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (enacted by a Republican-controlled congress), it was illegal for large media companies to own too many different media outlets, which therefore provided a wider range of competition in the market for Cable outlets, Internet service providers, Television networks and radio broadcasters. AFTER, the Act was passed, the already giant conglomorate companies such as AOL (now AOL/Time Warner) and Newscorp (You may know them better as FOX) began to further expand their holdings, and today as little as 3 or 4 companies dominate all media industries.

In short, deregulation is bad. It is only through regulation of industries that the individual consumer gets the best deal for his or her dollar, or is provided the best chance at living a relatively easy life.

Naturally, you can't over-regulate industries or you end up with a "1984" scenario, but Republicans are so staunchly anti-regulation that they won't even allow simple, basic, and entirely necessary regulation of certain industries which DESPERATELY need it, such as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

Up to the publishing of the environmentalist book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson, VERY little was done in the way of protecting the environment. Republicans will often point the the republican president Teddy Roosevelt as their shining example. And while I will agree, both Roosevelt's were two of the finest Presidents of the last century, if Teddy were active in politics today, I believe he would be emphatically behind the Democratic party. His progressive policies are what initially disenfranchised him from the Republican party to start with, and they were what dominated the latter part of his life, notably his love for the wilderness and the desire to see it preserved.

Reading back a bit, I see that I've come off on a vast tangent, so I'll end this here. I leave you with a comment which I've pulled from the webpage of the story I began this note speaking of. It was left amidst a tidal wave of anti-Obama hate speech and claims that Democrats probably killed Bill Sparkman themselves... It was the one shining light I saw in my hopes for humanity amongst the seething hatred pronounced for essentially everything I believe...

"The right wing gets up in the morning and makes their coffee with safe drinking water because of government requirements, has a breakfast made with safe foods because of the FDA, breathes cleaner air as he walks to his safer car to drive on his federal highway to his government subsidized airport to fly on his safe plane controlled by government controllers until he lands in Washington DC where he takes public transportation to a federal mall where the government police protect his constitutional right to stand there and criticize the government. Someone should ask him if he wants to give up his social security and his Medicare, his VA benefits and his unemployment protection. Yes, we're all against the government, until we stop and think what would happen with out them. There is nothing wrong with having them, it takes putting together a plan and finances that big to make those things work. For god's sake people, stop and think."

I could scarcely have said it better myself...

The rising Communist threat in America, and discussion on how YOU can help.

-- This was a note I wrote on Facebook at about 5 in the morning after waking up from a nightmare.--

Sunday, 13 September 2009 at 05:28

I had something horrible just occur to me in a dream, and thought it might be prudent to write it down... V.I. Lenin took power in Pre-Communist Russia by convincing the majority of Russian people (through various means such as grassroots campaigns, protests, and rallies) that his party was actually the majority (rather than an extremist fringe party who would have had no real power had the people not handed it to them after they decided to: ...) in power and then murdering the monarchy in power (Through a wonderful bit of deceit by the Czar's honor guard.)

The reason I bring this up is because the people in Czarist Russia were angry. They were tired of the aristocratic jerks pushing them around and wanted revolution, and rallied behind the first person to promise the czar's blood would run in the streets.

I will make a parallel here, and I hope you don't consider it to forward when I say that the American people are also angry. They're tired of constant bickering and of nothing ever actually being accomplished.

Now here's where I may lose some of you...

The Birthers, Tea Baggers, Wilsonites, Beckians, and O'Reilly-cons are the Bolsheviks.

Period. End of statement.

***

We are the Mensheviks, people, the majority in the "minority." Glenn Beck and the others have begun creating their blind army; an army of zombies who can do nothing but watch FOX News all day, absorbing their propaganda, processing it through the lens which FOX News gave them, and then forming their FOX-friendly opinion of it.

What's dangerous about this is that, while the opinions expressed by the FOX n' Friends crews are not those of the majority of the country, their viewers are constantly told that they are.

They show footage of gun-toting protesters calling for the blood of the President to feed their freedom tree, and then they call them heroes, champions for their cause against the evils of Liberalism, and the tyranny it brings.

Thomas Jefferson called for everyone to take up arms against a government which was no longer serving the needs of the people, and in doing so, helped start a revolution that would eventually create our great country.

But his work, our home, is in danger of the exact thing that he proposed, from people who would have lined up behind him in 1776, believing his cause to be the noblest of all time.

In what I like to consider the modern age, with information available at your fingertips constantly for anyone who wants it, there should be no worry of anyone ever having to repeat history. Most every important event has been recorded so that future generations may look back on them, study them, and learn from humanity's mistakes, but no one ever seems to do so.

Just as the masses allowed themselves to be manipulated by Lenin's propaganda in 1917, simple, uninformed masses are allowing the very same, and in the end, are calling for the same results.

Information is powerful. Misinformation is powerfully dangerous.

***

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Am I just being paranoid, or do my fears have ground to stand on? Leave comments below and we can engage each other to talk about what problems this groundswell of right-wing terrorists could provoke.

A Facebook blog on Health Care Reform

Title: So two guys walk into a bar...

Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 9:26pm |

... And they avoid the bar fight between the douchebag hillbillies because they don't have any health insurance...

*****-----*****
As I was waking this morning, my mind for some reason drifted to the current debate being waged over implementing a more universal heath care system; My sleep-hazed mind was, even in this state, actively pursuing an answer, even a compromise to the debate.

Yes, I know I'm odd.

The conscious portion of my brain waged war with itself, my dominant side clearly being the victor, providing what I consider sound, logical reasoning, and numbers to back up why we should have a more socialized system.

It occurred to me that most people must not have this sort of rational debate going on in their own heads, even at their most attentive state, which, I considered, must make me some sort of superhuman to have been having it in a near sleeping state.

So here I am, writing this note to at least make some attempt to bridge a gap between the two sides of this debate. Now I realize it won't make much of a difference what I write on here, since very few people who would be friends with me on facebook would be the sort who would be against a reformed health care system anyway, but we'll see. I always enjoy lively debate, and would most certainly accept any criticism in the form of logical and rational debate, rather than instant demonization of the subject matter (which has become the primary form of opposition to a Socialized system).

So let's start at the top, or rather the bottom. Those without Health Insurance of any kind. The numbers floated around during last year's campaign said something like 40 million Americans have no health insurance. I don't think much needs to be said beyond that. They don't have it, we can give it to them, so why shouldn't we? OH! Because you don't want to pay more money to make someone else's life easier, right? That's not self-serving at all.

I apologize for the acerbic sarcasm, but when you add everything up, the only real answer to opposition to universal health coverage is simply this: Greed.

Now, it is most certainly not the average voter's greed, so don't take offense unless you're the President of Aetna or Pfizer...

I'm going to go into the realm of hypotheticals now, so stay with me. Suppose you are a middle class white male, approximately 43 years of age, who smokes, but has no other life impacting illnesses. You're a manager of a store, so you have a decent salary of roughly $48,000 a year. This puts you at bringing home just under a thousand dollars a week. Your company health insurance plan has your premiums (this week, might be different next week, who knows...) at about $1200 a month. Seems pricey, I know, but it's a great policy! You've never been denied a claim... so far.

Now, the current tax rate on people in this income bracket is 25%, so of that thousand dollars, the government is already taking a mandatory $250 of it each week, plus the stipend paid to your social security, the money the company takes to pay their part of your health insurance, as well as any other taxes and expenses removed before you get your check each month, leaves you with roughly $2,000 a month for car payments, house payments, food, gas, utilities, AND your insurance premiums. It's just a peachy keen system, ain't it? Luckily, your wife brings home the real bacon, so you don't have to worry about it. ;-)

So let's try something else, eh?

Let's take this same person, increase his taxes by, say 5% to cover his government funded health insurance. Without the company automatically taking a certain percentage from your check every month, you're now bringing home just under $2,000 for the month, but you at least don't have to spend over half of it on insurance. Sounds mighty fine to me.

So now we have nothing taken out of the check to cover health insurance from the company, no premium to pay to the company directly, no co-pay at any doctor you go to see, simply 5 extra percent taken from your check and whatever ghastly large amount you now have to pay to get any prescriptions you may need from our monster giant pharmaceutical companies, which now have to hike prices since they no longer have total control of every hospital and private practice doctor in the country.

Sounds better than that first way to me, except for that last bit, eh?

Which brings me back to Greed.

Let's take a look at someone... a little higher up the food chain. Say, a CEO of some kind. For, let's say, a giant pharmaceutical conglomerate.

I can only guess at the kind of insane pay those fellows receive, but let's put it in the ballpark of $2,000,000 a year (which is probably an understatement with all the gifts and bonuses they receive from their companies). Our CEO friend is probably 55+ with such fantastic medical coverage, his claims adjuster may as well be Jesus Christ himself. Now, he pays a bit more for this care, his premiums totaling a whopping $10,000, but, you see, after taxes, our friend the CEO brings home roughly $100,000 a month. (He is, of course, in a higher tax bracket than we are, and has 35% taken from his checks.)

Ten thousand out of a hundred thousand seems a little less daunting than twelve hundred from two thousand, eh?

But the debate simply goes beyond personal greed, and personal income.

If socialized insurance is accepted, it wouldn't be long before small businesses all converted their work staff to it, since it would most certainly be cheaper than continuing to have it provided by a company like Blue Cross and Blue Shield, since they would no longer be responsible for-

(I want to pause here and just say that as I was writing this piece, my Grandma called out for some assistance and has now had to be taken to the hospital for a third time after her recent gall bladder surgery last month. I believe the commentary speaks for itself...)

their employee's health insurance, and that money can instead go towards expanding the business itself, or hiring new employees, or simply buying extra stock to sell. As it stands, this system would benefit the small businessman much more than our current system.

Who it does NOT benefit is obvious, though. The thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of workers who are currently employed by the private sector insurance companies, and a large portion of people working as salesmen in the pharmaceutical industry. Those people may very well find themselves without employment, and it may persist that way for some time until they can either learn new workplace skills or find restitution within another similar workplace, such as the ninth circle of hell.

I jest, but in all seriousness, socializing health care would cause these losses, yes, but can create so many more jobs in all forms of the medical field. Nurses, Doctors, yes, but administrative assistants for new hospitals, janitorial services will be needed, hospice care and private nurses, even nannies for mothers returning home after a hospital visit, to help them adjust to life with a baby.

So the myth of massive job losses has its truths and its falsehoods, but that isn't even the largest problem the anti-UHC movement boasts. They constantly speak of a government run system putting bureaucrats between you and your doctor. This rumor is constantly being shot down by reputable sources, but the opposition doesn't seem to listen, care, or even break their stride, so I'm going to propose this:

Have you ever tried to get treatment that isn't specifically covered by your HMO to be paid for by your current insurance company?

Our current system is DESIGNED for profit, and therefore, will outright refuse costly procedures if it means they might go in "the red" for the current quarter. The system is corrupt and greedy, and has been so for over 35 years, thanks in part to Richard Milhouse Nixon, who encouraged the populous to purchase health insurance from large companies in 1971 and solidified their dominance with the HMO Act of '73.**

So why do people still oppose universal health care of any kind? The answer seems simple to me, but I'll go ahead and lay it right out for you, feel free to disagree: Gullibility and Fear. The right-wing smear machine is well-versed in tactics designed to make you scared of change, and to fool you into thinking that what we have is the best system in the world and fuck anyone who disagrees, cause this is America GOD DAMN IT! But what we need now is an educated populous who has the amazing ability to ask questions and demand accountability for mistakes, and provide new alternate solutions to problems we've had for countless decades. We need Innovation, new blood, and an end to polarization in modern politics. Yes if you go to far to the left you get trouble, but we've been doing it the wrong way (the RIGHT way) for 40 years, maybe its time to give something else a chance.

If you made it this far, thank you, and feel free to leave comments and criticism.

--Chris

** And this is on a completely unrelated note, but if you're still worried about how we would pay for this sort of socialized system, then legalize, regulate and tax the shit out of weed. The jobs and products created from that process alone should be more than enough...

Erin Ashley Hall:
I happen to agree wholeheartedly since an added benefit of socialized health care would be that there could be more entrepreneurs. Without the fear of rejection for coverage for diseases that one may have, but had no control over (Diabetes, Addison's Disease, Heart Defects, etc), there would be many who would love to start businesses who cannot because they *must* work for someone who provides it for them... This inhibits freedom, and even worse for the conservatives, it inhibits our economy.

Kathryn Gerringer:
I think that 5% might be a little low. It might do us well to look at others who have already walked down this road and assess whether or not it has indeed worked for them. Norway for instance is a prime example of government run health care.

As for greed...if I recall correctly our economic system depends on it. So while it is not a good character trait...

Anyway just some things to consider.

My response to Kathryn:
Yes, I agree that we need to take leaves from other successful government run systems, but the moment you bring up other countries' systems, that is when the ethnocentrics pipe up and "defend america" with bogus and defamatory statements. Canada, France and Great Britain all have government run systems, that aren't perfect, but they work in many ways leaps and bounds better than ours, but if one tries to explain this in a calm and sensible manner, they are met with nothing but stern opposition and no real ideas on anything better. So it may yet behoove us to try and find our own way to make our system work.

As far as 5% being too little, I expect you're right, but as I am merely a theorist, and not a logistical engineer, I was producing a hypothetical situation to illustrate my point. I am not nearly trained enough to begin to create a balanced tax system using our current set of guidelines. Like all men of vision, I leave that to someone else! (Hah, a little joke)

In all seriousness, though, a 5% tax increase (conservatives already cringing in their seats) while not really being a substantial increase in the amount taken, if spread across the board (by which I mean to all tax brackets), could yield a very large amount of return of capital to the government, which could easily be used, if not for the new health care system, then for other government programs which drastically need to be better funded. (Education, for one, though that is more of a necessary redistribution of funds, rather than addition, though an addition could serve it well also.)

This obviously could raise the question of how to balance the budget and that is an entirely different argument.

And finally, to the point of Greed...

You admit yourself it isn't a good character trait, and yet you defend it as sound business practice?

Unacceptable.

That is the kind of fundamental, laissez-faire, Capitalist-centered idea system that has put us in our current state. Trapped in a maelstrom, constantly being pulled inexorably down into the depths of debt and consumerism. And it is exactly the sort of thought that needs to be suppressed if we are to pull ourselves from the grasp of Greed itself.

The first step is to stop being self-centered, thinking only of how to make the best for oneself, and damn anyone who gets in your way. I'm sure you've heard the old phrase, "It is easier for a camel to walk through the head of a pin than for a rich man to walk through the gates of heaven."

Anyone who knows me knows I am in almost no way religious, but Jesus was a brilliant theorist, and I like to think that the way our system is run is a complete antithesis to what he would propose.