Horace, this older assclown I used to work with stopped by the job today. He was laid off over half a year ago. While employed he was barely amiable in a creepy car salesman way. No one cared for him much.
Before joining us, Horace claimed to have been in Iraq, working for Halliburton. If that was the truth then he must have been doing it wrong to have to get a shit job, because dumb motherfuckers are leaving there after a year with 80 grand tax-free. Horace maintains he “saw corruption” firsthand and that’s why he left Iraq. When I asked him why he didn’t become a whistleblower, he implied he’d have been killed.
I silently agreed Halliburton may possibly have wanted to remove Horace from the gene pool, but not because of any evil conspiracy: Horace was simply lazy and barely did any work. We were all glad to see him go.
While with us, Horace claimed to have directed and produced a public access TV debate about the Iraq war, gathering various characters with opposing points of view.
Sad to say, I couldn’t fit a public access program into my busy schedule of doing jack shit, so I’ll never know how awful it was.
Today Horace was complaining that all local public access TV programming had been ended due to some rewriting of laws. I remembered reading something about that months ago, but even the local paper–a liberal rag in denial–didn’t go as far as Horace, claiming it was all a conspiracy to silence The People.
My guess is if public access TV is really off the air, the 5 people who watched it religiously probably moved on to macramé or watching paint dry.
During his mini-rant, Horace said, “Anyone who voted for Republicans should be shot.” I found this amusing, since it’s avowed nanny-state socialists like him who want to ban all guns…who does he think would win any ensuing gunfights?
Really, I don’t want to get into a civil war with nutball Horace-types. Watching a fat 50-something graying hippie in camouflage trying to hide behind a tree that’s two sizes too small for him during a gun battle, I would die of embarassment on his behalf long before any bullets (or thrown rocks) would hit me.
One of the inescapable facts of history is that over time, a minority does accrue the lion’s share of wealth…in more “enlightened” societies government then disperses and redistributes the wealth before the poor grow angry enough to rise up and kill the rich. Of course, what also happens over time is government forgets it’s merely a relief valve and starts to play Santa Claus, as it’s doing now…
I don’t think anyone who’s thought it through can remain static in their position on what should be done next in this neverending economic/comic cycle. It’s like surfing: sometimes you’re paddling like hell while other times the sole trick is to maintain balance and enjoy the ride.
I cast myself as leaning in favor of people keeping most of their wealth, even though I’m poor. Most wealthy don’t keep all their gold coins in a silo like Scrooge McDuck, they invest and create jobs, etc. So the greater crime, to me, is taking money from people who’ve earned it (most rich Americans started average and earned their coin; there are very few inherit-only Paris Hiltons) and giving it away to those who didn’t do anything. I don’t weep for the poor, the American poor, anyway, over half of which own their own homes, 2 cars and 3 TVs. America is the land of the hustle, but you won’t find any place on earth that rewards honest hustling more.
History has shown that pure capitalism won’t work any more than pure socialism, so in my older years I’ve accepted that some regulation and government programs, no matter how inept and corrupt, are necessary, despite being only symbolically effective.
What exact point I’m trying to make I don’t know, I just enjoy typing. And that bit about having to shoot the Horaces of the world, I’d really rather avoid that.
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