"His and Hers"

“His and Hers”

                 a parable

                       I

His tastes ran toward the old—

Antiques; knickknacks sold

At an eccentric’s former estate;

Flea-market stuff few experts could date.

Chromolithographic prints

Inviting professorial squints;

Ivory and bronzes of late vintage

Formed his archeological assemblage.

                       II

She, glad in disposition,

Had in her possession

A cheery set of objects: so bright

As to assault one’s sense of sight.

Gewgaws (what she called a “variety”

Of Yuletide ornaments), all of gaudy

Manufacture, gave her heart a lift.

Such, between his view and hers, was the rift.

                       III

One day, out of caprice,

She gathered every piece

Of forlorn junk he owned, and with a smile

Threw the antiquarian pile

Into an industrial furnace,

Which hissed and roared in earnest,

Turning every trinket, tin, and medal

Into smoke and molten metal.

Learning of this holocaust,

He vowed revenge, whatever the cost,

Bulldozing into a pit her cutesy

(i.e., Hallmark, Hobby Lobby, Disney)

Crap, covering it over with dirt,

As though assuaging his hurt—

Her entire personal collection,

Like his, consigned to oblivion.

                       IV

Yet nature and posterity

Turn every calamity

To some use: his formless metal,

Years later, becomes the material

(A mix of new-fangled alloys)

Used to make cheap charms and toys.

Decades pass, and, excavated,

Her tchotchkes, now discolored, are traded

And celebrated as antiques

By the same old melancholic geeks.

Even in the most heart-rending

Twists of fate, there is hope; but the ending

Of this tale of his and hers

Can hardly be worse.

The Four Horsemen of Our Apocalypse

I came to this country a quarter of a century ago, when America was one of two superpowers.  Today, despite having won the Cold War, America nonetheless finds itself “buried”—to use Khrushchev’s word.  Buried in debt; buried in red tape.  Worst of all, America has buried its head in the sand.

     Back in the old country, politicians were shameless in their corruption.  American politics, though increasingly vile, still requires a veneer of hypocrisy, but, take it from me, we are degenerating into a banana republic.  I should know; I was born in the Philippines.

     There are four forces tearing this nation apart.  The first consists of the millions of illegal aliens subsisting parasitically on our welfare system.  Most of these illegals are fine, hard-working people; some are dangerous; many are mendicant.  All, having broken our immigration laws, are criminals.

     The second threat in our own backyard is radical Islam, that segment of the Muslim community which seeks to overthrow our democratic tradition, and replace it with Sharia law.  Islamists are a minority among their co-religionists, but they are vocal, determined, and growing.  They will not stop until their jihad is accomplished, or until they themselves are stopped.  But who is to stop them, when their unwitting allies—the third threat to our civilization—are the very secularists and liberals who control the levers of power in our institutions?  The American elite, in academia, Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington, sympathize with our enemies.  In the eyes of the Left, indiscriminate diversity—not liberty—is the way to peace.

     And finally, this nation is literally going to the dogs.  Pet owners, like the rest of society, have gone soft.  Dogs and cats rule America’s homes.  In the old country, we fed them scraps, before we ourselves ate the dogs.

My $6,376 Question

 

Well, I’ve filed my federal and state tax returns.  I now file this report on what it’s like to be brow-beaten by Uncle Sam, who scowls more fiercely around this time of the year.  Last year I earned $12,000 less than I did in 2010, yet the tax table tells me I owe the IRS just $780 less than in the previous year.  The “making work pay” credit has been eliminated by our astute leaders, you see, and they’re right; working hard IS pointless.

     My $6,376 check to the government, dated April 1st, 2012, will retroactively pay for some long-forgotten Congressman’s ear-marked project approved in 1992.  The bill for nearly half of everything the federal government does TODAY will eventually go on my, and your, children’s tab.  The guy who, with his marginal savings, is currently paying for all of Obama’s green initiatives is the factory worker in China—the same worker making the solar panels which undercut Solyndra’s products.

     I feel my $6,376 check entitles me to ask a few questions about the government.  Why, when it cannot run the postal service competently, does the government think it can manage the health-care industry, which is one-sixth of our economy? 

     The goal of the Environmental Protection Agency, originally, was to keep us from having to breathe foul air.  Recently the agency designated our very exhalations (carbon dioxide) as a pollutant, which means we—far from breathing bad air—are now producing it.  The EPA has met the enemy, and he is us.

     But the government isn’t always overly ambitious.  For instance, since it cannot seal our southern border, or deal effectively with Iran, it resorts to campaigning against bullying, steroids in baseball, and the use of incandescent lamps.

     The government sure is big, and my own world so, so small.

A Tale of Three Victims

Native Americans lost their land to the white man.  They were defeated by superior technology, and, one might argue, by materialist values.  But what finally, utterly destroyed Native American culture was the white man’s liberality.  Enclosed in reservations, American Indians were provided with shelter, provisions, and a cornucopia of government largesse that ensured their total and permanent dependence on Washington, D.C.  Their race has survived, but it is dispirited by alcoholism, unemployment, and all manner of social dysfunction.

In the same way, black Americans have been victimized.  Their forebears were exploited as slaves, and then repressed as second-class citizens.  But what finally devastated black American culture, starting in the sixties, was the white man’s liberality.  “Enlightened” urban planning ruined the black neighborhood, by forcing its inhabitants into public housing, feeding them welfare checks and the empty calories of progressivist propaganda.  What followed from the programs of LBJ’s Great Society?  Illegitimate births, drugs, crime, the demise of responsible fatherhood, and an addiction to federal handouts.  Affirmative Action has hobbled the abilities of black youth, who, lacking initiative, have turned their energies toward sports, rap music, and making parole.

And now, at last, it is the majority’s turn.  Follow the “life” of Julia online.  Obama’s campaign has laid it out for everyone to see.  Free school lunches, free condoms and contraceptive pills, food stamps, college grants, rent subsidies, energy credits, insurance waivers, reimbursements for prescription drugs, plus ten thousand other “entitlements.”  This—not war, or economic calamity—is what will finally kill the American spirit.  America will degenerate into a maze of revisionism, micro-legislation, and quotas, smothering the Constitution.  In that instant the legacy of liberalism will come full circle, and Elizabeth Warren, Cherokee or not, will let out a triumphant whoop in Massachusetts.

Friends: Vote with care in November.

Letter from a Peasant

Beloved Leader Quinn Jong-il:

     Greetings from the collared counties!  From the shackled suburbs, we sing your praise! 

     I am proud to report that, for 2011, my state income tax is $990 MORE than it was for 2010, even though I made $12,000 LESS last year than in the previous year.  As it is written in your campaign literature, the individual person in Illinois matters less than a kernel of corn.  The people are grateful for the kernels of corn which you have allowed us to gather in your billing fields.  Think of all the ethanol your regime might have produced were not our mouths in the way!

     You have raised our taxes, imposed new fees at state parks, hiked tolls, and closed prisons and health facilities—all while carrying billions of dollars of debt!  Your economic acumen must make Gov. Mitch Daniels blush in embarrassment.  In Indiana, I hear the government has distributed its budget surplus back to the people.  Renegade Republicans!  And in Wisconsin, Gov. Walker has trimmed his government’s excesses by defanging the labor unions.  Is nothing sacrosanct?

     We are indeed fortunate in Illinois not to have conservatives, with their crazy notions of liberty and self-sufficiency.  Illinois is as “blue” as the ocean, with a deficit as deep.  Our leaders are real men, taciturn and avuncular, or else glib and imperturbable—men among men in prison garb.

     And as Illinois’ high-speed trains and hybrid cars whiz by, we the people shall wave from our ramshackle homes, eating our pooped corn.  So as you drink your vodka, Dear Leader, we toast you with our cups of Kool-Aid.  May you prosper, even as our pensions suffer!  Hand in hand with Madigan, you shall lead us to the Promised Land, where everyone—I mean everyone—is entitled to everything!