Fear & Loathing on Furlough (Part 2)

Fear & Loathing on Furlough (Part 2)

I’m furloughed again, this time a single day off to steel the profits of the ailing philo-industrial complex that controls words and information.
It’s the straw that stirs the drink, as Reggie Jackson was for the Bronx Bombers.
As a grunt humping a police beat in the Rust Belt, these unpaid days off are frustrating because there’s work I could be doing instead of sitting here typing up internet treatises.
I’m spewing invective in my mind as I think about the corporate and government institutions I wish we the people would revolt against: that would be a movement I could get behind.
I enjoy railing against corporate megalomania and institutional slavery: the twin banes of the post-9/11, post-industrial Brave New World.
We’re pawns in a chess game and no one’s playing by the rules, which they keep re-writing.
I thought it was check mate, but an eighteen-month stale mate turned into a victory somehow. I don’t think anyone’s considered how ‘we the people’ feel just about now.
We’re overloaded with invective and lamenting the loss of personal dignity during this time of lingering hardship: times are tight, and the smiles are few.
Dignity’s an important ideal and the unemployment, the rising costs and frustrating debts and spiraling-out-of-control financial problems; each strike blows at a person’s sense of dignity.
But without it, we wouldn’t hold our heads high and keep on, keepin’ on, to quote the master, Dylan.
As captured pawns in the game, all we can do is look on in horror as the chaos unfolds.
Add in furlough days which give people time to think about things, and the result is this kind of treatise. Pointless writing that fills the hours and takes up space on silicon-valley servers.