This is kind of a Fornit continuation. On the same day it shat out my August 12th, 2018 post, I heard this most remarkable line from a CNA at the nursing home. She makes me laugh. All I really know about her is she used to have a Jeep Commander before she went to school and got married. Now she has a Chekhov Killer. I have kept Jeeps around for many years. We have a bond. It’s a Jeep thing. You wouldn’t understand.
While the religious terrorists in America keep seeking power and higher taxes on everything they don’t consider suitable for a Fundamentalist and Carly Fiona arguably spins them into homicidal acts by using the magic words at a Presidential Debate, reality keeps pushing back. Social Security is bankrupt because these terrorists keep taxing all the joy out of life. Don’t believe me? We used to be a happy country. Guys and gals graduated high school, took a factory job, got married shortly after and lived the American Dream. As part of that dream they smoked like chimneys, drank like fish and died long before they became eligible for Social Security. Now we are miserable, nasty, mean to each other and trying to survive 30+ years on the pittance which is Social Security. The 50-something and younger crowd firmly believes, with just cause, that Social Security won’t be there, especially once the criminals in Washington “privatize” it. That’s going to go the exact same way our retirement accounts did when Jamie Dimon and friends sucked north of a trillion dollars out of the global economy without going to prison, thanks to Hillary taking a bribe.
Her phrase was funny, but also reality. Soldiers in WWII and Nam smoked knowing it wasn’t good for them, but, when every second can be your last, grab what little pleasure you can. It was the same way for the factory worker. Management and government kept trying to break the unions, then they finally off-shored all of the good paying factory jobs. Just like the soldier in the war, life was miserable, grab what little pleasure you can.
Now we have many generations graduating with mountains of student loan debt they will never pay off. The Christian Fundamentalist terrorist hiss at them and call for fire and damnation to take these sinners from a world they wish to subjugate. Health professionals rail against the evils of smoking, yet many smoke themselves, because they are buried in a mountain of debt which can never be paid off.
Reality has come full circle. Tobacco use, in taking 7 minutes off your life, as they say, takes 7 minutes off your debt.
People are simply trying to smoke their way out of debt and the bible thumping terrorists will deny them even that tiny pleasure.
I don’t remember the name of the movie, it was about a soldier during WWII. He was the only survivor of his entire division. Well, there were two, but the movie opened with him carrying a wounded soldier on his back while trying to retreat to the aid station. The soldier bled out before he got there. D-Day through to the mud field where the army was stopped had chewed them all up. They all went home in body bags or had body parts scattered in the no-man’s land you see a bit later. A new commander called him in to re-assign him and words were exchanged.
“Do you want me to court marshal you private?”
“They send you home for that don’t they sir?”
Give that scene a whole lot of thought.
