PostHeaderIcon Thanksgiving 2020

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Thanksgiving 2020

“Winston, come into the dining room, it’s time to eat,” Julia yelled to her husband. “In a minute, honey, it’s a tie score,” he answered. Actually Winston wasn’t very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington . Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its “unseemly violence” and the “bad example it sets for the rest of the world,” Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn’t nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn’t the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another TofuTurkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn’t anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of “Thanksgiving Day” to “A National Day of Atonement” in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims’ historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the TofuTurkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats—which were monitored and controlled by the electric company—be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. “The RHC’s resources are limited,” explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. “Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Ed couldn’t make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2019 outlawed the use of the combustion engines—for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn’t want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston’s brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added “inconvenience” was an “absolute necessity” in order to stay “one step ahead of the terrorists.” Winston’s own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2017. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for “unequal scrutiny,” even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. “A living Constitution is extremely flexible,” said the Court’s eldest member, Elena Kagan. “ Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example,” she added.

Winston’s thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether.. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were “just around the corner,” but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn’t help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to “spur economic growth.” This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life “fair for everyone” realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn’t happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense began. “Maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today if we’d just said ‘enough is enough’ when we had the chance,” he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

I wish I could attribute this excellent piece to its author, but the e-mail didn’t have this information. â—„Daveâ–º

One Response to “Thanksgiving 2020”

  • Troy says:

    This piece was very cleverly written — and, might even be accurate, were we (as a nation) to last that long. I increasingly have my doubts. Just yesterday, while driving to and from on a distant shopping trip, I listened to several radio reports, quoting or playing tapes of our august leaders who are so desperately attacking our fiscal problems.

    It seems that beloved leader Boehner and his cronies really believe they can coerce a $61,000,000,000 spending reduction out of the Democrazies. I admit, this seems a lot of money, given that I somehow make do on a around $4,000 a month. But, along comes beloved leader Schumer and his merry band of loonies to assure me that such “draconian” cuts will surely send the entire world into a depression.

    Clearly, we are doomed either way we go. I admit that my first thought was to simply drive off a bridge into Lake Waco and end my part of the suffering right then and there. Then, I thought that perhaps putting this crap into some sort of rational context might be a better use of my time.

    As noted above, $61,000,000,000 sounds like a LOT of money. It sounds that way because it IS a LOT of money. Indeed, it should be enough to fund a relatively large government — probably more government than any rational nation could need. But, how does this LOT of money actually compare to what is going on in our beloved capital? You see, I think that the sums we are asked to deal with today are simply beyond easy comprehension — so much so that we tend to simply let it float right over without really rationalizing what is being done to us. Now I am a pretty savvy guy. I can tell you in an instant that 25 cents is 1/4 of a dollar. But I had to turn to the mathematical abilities of my faithful laptop to come up with the following…

    Government spending this year is estimated to be around $3,500,000,000,000 (3.5 trillion). The deficit this year (the amount we will spend despite the fact that we don’t have it) is estimated to be around $1,500,000,000,000 (1.5 trillion).

    Lets see how our LOT of money, that $61,000,000,000 in proposed draconian spending cuts measures up:

    – It comes to about 4% of the estimated deficit. FOUR PERCENT.
    – It comes to about 1.7% of the estimated total spending. ONE POINT SEVEN PERCENT.

    I claim to squeak by on about $4,000 a month. Were I to reduce my personal spending by 1.7%, I would have to start squeaking by on a mere $3,932 a month. That is, I would have to cut $68 from my outlandish spending. That’s $17 a week!!! How ever will I exist???

    The way I have stated all this was meant to be slightly amusing. But, make no mistake; we are headed over the edge of an economic abyss. If you are really looking forward to that roast tofurkey in 2020, than all of us must demand change, real change, TODAY!

    Our, some of you might want to join me at a bridge over Lake Waco.

    Troy

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