Safe to Grow

                I hope most sincerely that everyone who is eligible will vote on Tuesday. We cling to the crumbling remains of democracy by a fingertip ledge, those of us who have not already released our grip on accountability and self-reliance, too weary or too afraid to chart our own course or too distracted by the seductions of instant gratification and popular culture to care. An iron hand in a velvet glove waits to catch us if we fall, financed by the ability to conjure money out of thin air and backed up by the labors of millions of wage slaves content to sacrifice the vital years of their lives for the fuzzy promises of casino style retirement accounts and socialized security.

                This hand has been busy attaching “safety lines” to protect us from ourselves. (Any resemblance to puppet strings is coincidental.) The nanny state monitors what we spend, in case we want to buy anything “bad,” and to make sure that we all pay our fair share. The state monitors our travel in case someone who hates our freedom tries to blow us up. The state sends armies overseas to protect our oil from terrorists who insist on living where our oil is found. (Our freedom depends on having plenty of cheap gasoline so that we can drive to work and back.) The state monitors our communications. It listens in on our phone calls, reads our emails and scans our texts to protect us from bad opinions.

                As we grow weary of having to form our own opinions, of having to choose the best options, in short, of having to think for ourselves, the state will again provide. What a comfort it must be for New Yorkers to have a mayor who will choose for them what size soft drink they can buy; an old man, successful, experienced, who will choose for mothers how they should feed their newborn babies. Residents of Boston and Chicago can sleep well at night knowing that their protectors will not allow them to buy chicken tainted by an opinion which does not conform to the popular notion of tolerance and diversity. We will tolerate no dissenting opinions when it comes to diversity.

                By the time this newspaper goes to print, our own state will have decided whether we should pay more so that our area is not constrained by the inability to grow. We must always grow. That opinion rarely leaves room for dissent, and the best way to ensure growth must be for the state to extract more wealth from the stream of economic activity. Perhaps it would be best if all economic activity were channeled through the state, which could then provide for all of us equally, from the cradle to the grave, nurtured, secure, growing…drones protecting us overhead, watching, listening, always deciding in our own best interests.  How simple life would then be.