These Are Not Romantic Times

There is a movement underfoot at the factory to oust me.  The first wave, of course, came from above.  I'm a mouthy son of a bitch and very pro-worker.  I have stuck my neck out too many times and was finally told in the last reorganization that my job had changed, and while I was an important and vocal advocate for workers, that was no longer my role.

That is why the second wave of dissent caught me so much by surprise.  A group of workers whom I supervise complained about the schedules I assigned to them.  I work very hard to give fair schedules to everyone, but some thought they should be given more favor because they had seniority.  Not by much, but some.  I did not learn of the complaint until I was called in by H.R.  I hope you don't know what that means or how that goes.

But that is the preamble, not the story.  The story is an internal one.  It is about the effect on the human psyche of one who believed in all the old stories and movies about heroes. . . blah, blah, blah.  None of it was true, of course, but propaganda works.  I have told myself that I must live by those liberal heroic ideals.  But you can tell yourself anything you want.  You can tell yourself the other just as well.  Or, rather, have someone else tell it to you.  It begins, perhaps, with bedtime stories.  Right there, young, on the verge of unconsciousness, we practice a form of hypnotism to inculcate the shapeable mind with values.  What they read to me was not the same as what is read to kids today.  If anyone still reads to kids.

Just take a look back to the early days of television and the tale that it told.  We could be extensive, but for the sake of brevity, just take a look at westerns.  Someone was wronged by people in authority, so the hero set about to right that wrong.  O.K.  Maybe I should have considered something else.  They didn't all end up winners.  Still, the idea wasn't that you won, it was that you were a hero who did the right thing.

That and all the rest has ruined me for the modern world.  That ideology is idiotic today.  Postmodernism has destroyed the idea of "the right thing" along with such goofy ideals as eternal verities and heroism.  My two closest friends at work have taken beatings worse than I, both of whom have been avid worker advocates.  The workers response to the beatings was tepid enough that it didn't matter in the end.  Now, they pretty much are on their own.

It is nobody's fault.  We also must remember the other lesson we learned.  You get what you get.  I should have been watching the reality television shows instead of deriding them.  I was stupid and didn't keep up.  One day you're up, the next day you're off the island.  The world is not a hippie commune.  It is Donald Trump Land.  I thought he was funny, a goof.  I was wrong.

Fortunately, I did pay attention to some other things as I grew up.  There is always Meursault, the protagonist of Camus's "The Stranger."  There are lessons to be learned there.

I have friends who are not like me, who like me but have argued with me and derided me for years for all my hippie ideals.  They are mostly very successful business men now with great holdings and lives of leisure.  I could not have done what they did, of course.  We all have our talents.  But they were not wrong.  Nope, they live good and happy lives that mimic the ideals of The Tea Party's America.  They are solid.

Memories are short, especially where favors are concerned.  "What have you done for me today," is no joke.  The old woman who saved the snake from the mob of children beating it to death, who took it home and brought it back to life--she was silly.  You can't blame a snake for being a snake and there is no profit in doing otherwise.  The crowd is always the crowd, and to idealize it is romantic, and we all know the future of that.

Q is trying to help me understand all of this, and thusly is the best friend I could have.  Do not let your guard down, he tells me.  I will make you suffer.

Viscous attacks are probably the best lessons one can teach.

*     *     *     *     *     

The world is full o' complainers. An' the fact is, nothin' comes with a guarantee. Now I don't care if you're the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can all go wrong. Now go on ahead, y'know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, 'n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else... that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an' down here... you're on your own.  (Opening lines to "Blood Simple")