America's Divided Self

This is a short political satire of how one who is reasonable can quickly become the opposite.

“At the precipice of the greatest social upheaval in our time, we Americans stand ready to fall…on the sword of our own arrogance. Having bought into the propaganda of the moneyed age; the wealthy and the potentates of greed who serve them, have convinced the average citizen that it is big government, but not big business, who takes our money, wastes it, and sends us the bill in the form of unfair taxes.

In that argument, business people are cast in the role of saviors bringing, fiscal “discipline” to a ravaged economy which some erroneously believe , they themselves laid waste to. And casting “public servants” at all levels of government into the single category of lazy, overpaid, leeches, in a system they control at the detriment of the citizenry. An argument which frequently omits the fact that those public servants are tax payers as well; and working and middle class citizens, for that matter.

“Schools are rotten,” say parents. I guess? How much TV do you allow your kid to watch? How well do you know your children’s teachers? Do you make the Parent/Teacher conferences or are you too busy working? How many hours is your local library open? Do your children know how to use it? Are you ready to sue the school if your child comes home with a scraped knee? How many of the other parents do you know? Do you know that basic skills like Home Economics and Wood Shop no longer exist? That saves some money. How about Civics? Or is it more important that your child know how to operate a cell phone or an ATM machine rather than know the way their government works? Perhaps, it is too difficult for them to understand? Or is it not important enough? Do you ask children what they think or tell them what you think? Was the last conversation you had with them a text saying, “Hi, 2 U 2”? Are teachers responsible for your kids being obese, depressed, ADD, or couch potatoes? Perhaps it is the fault of the school that cut out basic physical education and intramural sports to pay for the “educational versions” of software, since we want to keep our kids current and technologically fit.

And by God, technology is the future! All those labor saving devices are so cool and so easy to replace. And, a computer doesn’t need a pension after all! When they are done, broken, or outdated, just throw them away. But of course, “ not in my backyard!” And what a relief that no one has to listen to the complaining of a public employee who needs time off to “take their kid to the doctor.” Jeez! Do that on your own time! What do you think this is, charity? You are working here pal. If you want all those benefits go buy them yourself. Get a grip! No one gets their needs met unless you take what you need. That is what the successful tell us, and of course we want our kids to be just like them.

All business people have the best interests of the community at heart. These are good folks and we just mistake their altruism for ambition. Nothing stands further from the truth! These folks want society to succeed because they want to succeed. Profit is just the way that we reward these people for a job well done. In fact, whatever they pay themselves they have a right to because they earned it. So they had to move a factory overseas because our lazy American union workers couldn’t do the job as cheaply as child labor. What of it? Quit whining! It’s our own damn faults for wanting wages and working conditions like those who have earned it.

And those damn regulators, here they put all this regulation on air and water and food purity, stifling business so much that they up and left for China. I mean who needs those laws anyway when you have no job or no money? If it weren’t for those pesky regulations that liberals keep heaping on us for so-called safety and fairness and health, business could thrive and all the money they’d had to spend on compliance would automatically go to hiring more people. Wouldn’t that be great?! And let’s get rid of that damned IRS. Oh sure, they are one of the most efficient organizations to ever exist, but they take my money! Government should just exist to defend the borders of our country, and that’s all! Plus, with all those fired government employees now having to do real work in the private sector, we’ll finally get some actual productivity out of them.

Fire, police, hospitals, roads, bridges, sewers, water systems, all could be done more cheaply by the private sector. Just let us “pay as you go.” If your house catches fire, just pull out you credit card and as soon as it clears, then they’ll put out the fire. If someone robs you or rapes you, investigations will be as deep and thorough as the money you can spend on them. What could be more fair than that? And health care, don’t get me started. If people actually paid for their own care we’d have allot less abuse and a lot fewer costs. And heck, so what if people die a bit sooner, that’s God’s will right? Besides without birth control or abortions, we’ll have a fresh crop of babies to grow up and fill those jobs with new, younger bodies.

What a great system Jesus created when he came up with capitalism. The best and brightest become the richest and they lead the rest of us because they are smarter, harder working, and care so much about us. Who needs government, who needs democracy? It is all for the best that we get rid of liberals, social programs (you know supporting those lousy no good, immigrants, slackers, and retards) and the laws that supposedly prevent us from getting abused by business. What a joke! Anybody interested in making their business work needs the rest of us committed to buying their products. So saying that business would ever do anything to rip-us-off or sell us substandard items (especially since we could buy someone else’s product) is just a front for some lazy people calling themselves regulators and law enforcement to have a nice fat paycheck. Put an end to that shit and let those buggers get a real job and suffer just like the rest of us.

That’ll show ‘em! None of this kindness, common welfare BS of those dope smoking hippies. Now is the time for people to get tough and take up arms against that repressive government which keeps business from expanding where they want to and creating jobs for all those people who are willing to hustle. The rest of them can fend for themselves. It’s good for their character. If we have to, we’ll arrest them and put them in jail for the low-life’s they are. Put them to work in prison and let them work off their debt to society. These scums don’t deserve to be called Americans. Hell, we ought to ship them oversees to Afghanistan or Iraq, let them defend this country and since they were prisoners, we wouldn’t even have to pay them. Heck, they’ll be treated all-right! They can watch pro sports on the cable TV on their off shifts. We ought to probably bill them for their gun and uniform since they wouldn’t be there in the first place if they weren’t vagrant convicts.

Then, when they come home after serving their time, we have to make sure that the “good and decent God fearing” people are protected from those criminals. So we will all have to be armed. If one of them gets out of line, we might have to take matters into our own hands since we don’t need a police force to actually arrest them and go to all the expense of a trial. None of that crap. If they were in jail then they are already criminals, but even worse sinners. Jesus said something to the effect, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, well that would be me! So as the Lord commanded, I will be stoning (or shooting) to death all those unemployed, liberal teachers and bureaucrats, who nobody wanted to hire when they lost their government jobs, and had to be arrested and imprisoned for being vagrant sinners. Now since their guilt is established, I am on a holy crusade to get rid of these heretics. Let God sort out whom HE wants to forgive. But that is not for me to judge.

All I know is once we get rid of all this government interference in our lives, and each person is paying their own way, and we are all back to worshipping Jesus the right way (not like the Catholics or Mormons, mind you) then the world will be a better place and all those new babies will grow up to be just the kind of people we want them to be.

But if we are too late, and we have let those godless, dirty, promiscuous, liberal, elite, slackers live too long, and have disappointed God in our tolerance of those shiftless swine, and the Almighty sounds the trumpets of Armageddon, HE knows I will fight for him! And as a reward for my piety and good American values, I will be one of the 144,000 souls taken up to Heaven in the Rapture.

But heck, we all know where this is going. The Liberals, the minorities, the women are all breaking God’s commandment that says “though shalt obey white men.” “Tolerating the sinner is tolerating the sin,” my Preacher said last Sunday right before the Guns and Ammo Swap meet held in the church parking lot. So I say, let’s get to clearing out all of these ne-er-do-well, Liberal, whining, fruitcakes who actually believe that we came from monkeys instead of the hand of God. I have a crucifix etched into my 30 ought 6 with the inscription: “A Soldier of Christ”. I am proud to be one of the Lord’s lock-n-load layman. Hallelujah and pass the ammunition. We have some holy work to carry out.

In fact, I want my children to grow up to be lovers of Jesus since he was so kind to bless us with this technology so we can defend ourselves against the forces of Satan. That surplus Sherman Tank I bought from the military second-hand store comes complete with a 75mm Howitzer that will blast any demon spawn right back to Hades, or the Middle East, or wherever they come from. And besides, now that we have all those good business folk doing their best to make profits, they will be spending their money on us and our little businesses and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

Now is that divided, or what?