When I woke this morning and looked outside my office window, nothing seemed much changed: on recently watered suburban lawns, American Goldfinches plucked bugs from the space between grass blades, fat rabbits nibbled at the local Fescue pluming up around water main covers, and in the distance I could hear the droning of a riding mower growling its way across prairie grass and patches of goat head and thistle brush, the Mexican landscapers who work for the town up early, the very best of us, these folks, dawn risers in cheap denim shirts and Dodger caps and bad mustaches sweating out cilantro while we bourgeois materialists nestle our fat asses into well-groomed subdivisions, presumptuous, sprawling, earth-killing outposts where the middle class move to distance themselves from the hustle of city life and city people and city taxes.
And yet here I was, yesterday a free man and today a subject, a piece on some central planner’s RISK board, wondering about the future — about my children, both born free and both now slaves to a central authority with the Constitutional right to tax what they both do and don’t do — and it struck me: the best thing for me to do, in this, the new Socialist Utopia, is nothing that I’m commanded to do.
It’s a tacit, very personal embrace of a kind of Bartleby-esque anarchy — I simply prefer not to, thanks for your concern about the earth and the water and the children and the obese, trundling masses in ill-fitting Gap khakis who pollute your central planning paradise, &etc — that I’ve decided to assume, because once you’ve been a free man it’s difficult to embrace slavery, painless and bureaucratic though the various coercions of a Socialist Paradise may be. Being whipped with feathers and scolded with tough love for failure to abide the State is still being whipped and scolded, and, well — I’m jut not that into it.
So here I am, sitting in my office, Socialist Utopia of America, day 1. And I’ve decided how to go forward: by not going forward.
You’re all welcome to join me. In spirit. I’d ask you to join me in person by the house is kind of a mess right now, thanks to a couple of shedding dogs and an eight-year-old boy who refuses to police up his Nerf gun brass.
now you’re just begging to be taxed
Tax him.
I for one am amenable to addressing my fellows, and being addressed in turn as, ‘subject’. This, even though I’ve neither been commanded to speak thus, nor forbidden to speak thus, but simply on my own whim to heighten the contradictions, so to say.
So:
“Hello, subject!”, I shall say to the checkout lady at the grocery, “And how are you today? Are we enjoying our newly acquired servitude? And isn’t it a joy to be relieved of thinking of ‘Washington talk? “, I shall ask. “Oh, yes! And how glad of that I am,” she’ll reply. And we will be happy, we last men.
An armed 8-year-old? Expect a visit from the authorities, my friend. You’re about to experience a whole new level of moving forward!
You let your child play with guns? Child protective services is on the way.
Great minds, Squid.
We are all free men recast as serfs to comfort the terrified would-be slaves who huddle at the feet of the would-be masters..
Except fort those of use who aren’t men. I meant “men” in the not animals sense. Even though we ARE all animals. Except Alan Grayson who is more like a fungus.
“Hungry, subject? How about I share the half of my remaining McDonald’s hamburger with you? Oh, wait, perhaps we should ask our masters first? Yes, that would be better.”
McDonald’s? Are you trying to poison your fellow subjects with Unapproved Food™? Shame on you, sir. Shame.
I believe there is a tax for that.
Today at lunch I was introduced to a new member of staff as “our token right-winger”. “Don’t get him started on global warming or antisemitism in The Guardian!”. Laugh? I nearly did.
Sometimes the unicorn is unrideable.
Wow, I wonder how you are described when you are not around sw
Once upon a time, motionview, I would have given a damn. Now, I can’t even spare a rat’s ass.
an eight-year-old boy who refuses to police up his Nerf gun brass.
Thanks to an eleven and four year old I have a house full of the same.
It’s ok though, you fight like you train and if the time comes I don’t want them worrying about the empties, it will be fire and maneuver all the way.
I can see that on a personal side sw but what about promotions raises etc.? You’re right though, down that road lies bitterness.
I can see that on a personal side sw but what about promotions raises etc.?
I’ll let you know if I ever get one, motionview.
Silver Whistle says June 29, 2012 at 10:28 am
Silly reich-wingers, not hating teh Jooooo!
Wait, what?