As you likely have noticed, the Dis Brimstone Daily Pitchfork has taken a well deserved break from terrestrial matters over the past few weeks. This respite will continue for a brief period as we shift from American political and social matters, which I as Editor-in-Chief feel are decided at least for the near term, to focus on the larger and more pressing matters that affect all of Terra’s population. The new and more global vision of Hell’s leading daily newspaper will debut on the day many feel the Mayans predicted your planet would cease to exist, 21 December 2012.
Until then our writers will post opinion pieces from time to time about the subjects of their choice. I begin this soft period of transition with a return to American social and political matters. I read this morning at Blogs for Victory a post by Mark Edward Noonan that made me think very deeply about the future of American politics. Mr Noonan, who is keen to make predictions without taking all the myriad forces at play, stares into his conservative crystal ball yet again. This time he looks toward his latter years and even predicts the age of his death, 77 in 2041, and the cause, liberalism:
I’ll have died at the age of 77 of an easily treatable disease which I could not get care for because the National Health Service didn’t have sufficient resources to treat me before the disease went too far.
I’ll have been living from the age of 67 forward in a one-room, government-supplied retirement home which I was forced in to because given the way the economy developed I was never able to secure enough wealth to replace the home I lost in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
My 401k had been destroyed years previously. First by a government program to start taxing it, secondly by the massive inflation which was necessary to get our annual deficit to become 15% of GDP.
While I officially retired at the age of 67 and started to collect my Social Security (worth about 50% less than it is today because during that bout of inflation the government kept insisting, in spite of rising food and fuel prices, that inflation was non-existent and thus SS payments remained constant in dollar amounts while going down in actual value), I actually quit work at the age of 60 because I found out that by a varied combination of government benefits, I could actually get more income by sitting on my duff than by working 40 hours a week. At that point, it stopped bothering me so much that a cheeseburger costs $12 because Uncle Sam was picking up the tab. Until, that is, they banned the purchase of cheeseburgers in the interests of cutting National Health Service costs.
I did get some exercise from the age of about 57 on because the government mandates on fuel efficiency priced me out of automobile ownership. This resulted in a great deal of walking on my part as the inefficient bus system provided by government didn’t get me to where I needed to be when I needed to be there. I moved out of the suburbs and in to the city center because at least there were stores closer to home: on the other hand, I had to pay higher prices for the basics because government policy was to forbid “big box” stores in the area because they provided “unfair” competition to the small shops.
I found as I entered my 50′s that food was harder to obtain – the price kept rising and there kept being less of it. Various agricultural policies were taking more farm land out of production while various taxes were making the production and consumption of things like beef out of the question. I was given Supplementary Food Insurance which allowed me to buy whole grain bread, government cheese and all the potatoes I could eat.
I got a boost to my health as I gave up cigarette smoking when the banned it outdoors, where I did most of my smoking. Also, even buying generic smokes at the Indian reservation was running me $80 a carton. On the other hand, I found out that ‘Capulco Gold Lights were an admirable substitute, though they did make things a bit hazy; on the plus side, I was permitted to fire up a joint even indoors at work!
My initial reaction to this post was that Noonan was suffering from eating to many sour grapes. However, there is something more deeper and more telling about this post than first met my eyes. The writer is clearly anguished that his worldview has been rejected, in clear electoral terms, by million of people in the United States of America. Terrans like Mr Noonan believed that the election of 2008 and the attendant social struggles that have been championed by the Democratic Party [steps toward single payer health care, tax relief for the middle class, gay rights, worker's rights, women's reproductive rights and pay equality] was an historical outlier driven by the desire for minorities and liberal voters to elect the first man of color to the highest office in the land. They did that and nearly immediately forces in the conservative power camp lept into the fray with hundreds of millions of dollars to give birth to the TEA Party which was able to disguise bigotry behind a hood of lowering taxes for the middle class.
Of course, it is well realized now that this was not only a waste of treasure by the Kochs and Adelsons of American conservatism but also a group delusion on the part of their lesser heeled followers. All of the lies failed in the end for the conservatives refused to admit the clearest of truths–their numbers are smaller than the numbers of the coalition built by liberals. Plainly, the right does not know how to attract blacks, gays, Latinos or women to their ranks because their policies have a negative impact on these groups and they will continue to do so as they triple down and move more to the Right.
Noonan believes he will die from the lack of health care to which he can be exposed due to ObamaCare in 2041 at the age of 77. More than likely Mr Noonan will die of stupidity and fear long before that if he continues to believe that his worldview has a national following large enough to have a majority in both houses of Congress. Noonan is angry that his beliefs have been rejected by the voting public and to be fair we likely would have seen a similar reaction from liberals had Obama lost the election. That die has been cast; the American people have spoken and Noonan and the Religious Right and the TEA Party bigots still are far more free than virtually anyone in opposition politically anywhere else on Terra.
The suffering for Mr Noonan must be horrible. His wishes of a Cold War apocalypse where his End Times beliefs would come to fruition were dashed so he joined in the worship of conservatism’s only deity–Ronald Reagan. Years later his own religion was exposed as corrupt as countless priests were found guilty of the sexual abuse of children not only abroad but in the United States. Then comes the criminal behavior of the Bush administration post 9/11 to restrict freedom strictly out of fear that corporations and the wealthy would flee and America bombarded with terror attacks. Now Noonan is staring down a recovery for which a liberal government can take credit with a man of color at the helm. These are dark times for the man who feels that America is devolving into communism when actually what is happening is America is becoming just socialist enough to assure that capitalists continue to be prosperous. As a demon journalist I wish for Mark Edward Noonan, our American cousin, two things, that he have a long life so he can witness all the prosperity to come and that he live in interesting times.
Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!
Cavalor Epþiþ, Esquire, O.B.R.E., O.D.A.J.[1er], O.Q.H.[Journ.], D.S.V.J., J.F.
Editor-in-Chief
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
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