Many years ago, when I was still living in Mid-Nowhere, I was a crony capitalist. I did not think of myself as such, but it's what I was. I bought a failing bookstore because I liked books, and I thought that if I tweaked the business model, it could make money. I didn't even know the term 'business model', but in retrospect, that's what I thought. Enter the cronyism. A reasonable bank would not have lent me the money I needed to make my foolish purchase, but I had family connections at the bank. For a while all went well. I was the sole proprietor and sole employee, and I worked hard. Early in the morning, I was cleaning my windows and rearranging the displays. Late at night I was doing the books and taking out the trash. Enter more cronyism. There's a college even in Mid-Nowhere and most of my customers were from that august institution. One day the head of the History Department asked me if I would like an MA in history. He had an assistantship open but didn't like any of the applicants. Would I like to apply? I said that I had to work. He said he had a solution. I could hire his wife. Her salary would be just a bit less than the assistantship and I would get an MA in the deal. So, I became an employer.
Having even one employee is a lot more work than doing all the work oneself. To make matters worse, the professor in charge of my thesis said that she could only find time to work with me if I hired her son. The wife of the department head was a great employee. The son of my supervising professor couldn't even take out the garbage. But for a while the business was growing and I had a few other employees from time to time. Also from time to time a little man named Mr. Green, who reminded me of no one so much as a shorter Sam Lowry from Brazil, would come by with form 27b-6, and I would give him a cup of coffee while we computed the payroll tax I owed the Great State, and I would write him a check until the next time he arrived.
Alas, the Bible page-thin margin dwindled to nothing during the recession that came with the Carter administration. I ended up selling the bookstore to a wealthy woman who could use the debt as a tax offset, giving the books to libraries, and moved to the Big City to try to find work to support my growing family and pay my bills. The economy seemed to improve dramatically when Mr. Carter retired from the presidency and went into volunteer carpentry.. It was a bit of a rocky transition, from entrepreneur to employee, and I worked two jobs for a while, sending my then-wife to law school and eventually even getting--did I mention that I am a slow learner?--another Masters and most of a Doctorate, myself.
But there was one particularly rocky moment, one Sunday morning at about 2:00 am, when there was a very loud knock on the door accompanied by two policemen yelling POLICE! Silly me. I never thought about shooting at them. In fact, I didn't even have a gun. They handcuffed me and put me in the back of a Chevrolet with a grill dividing the passenger seat from the command station, and with no door handles in the back seat. I was finger-printed and mug-shotted for the offense of fleeing across state lines to avoid taxes. Without Mr. Green, I had forgotten form 27b-6. I think I was the only sober person in the cell, which was made entirely of stainless steel, but not in a Mies van der Rohe kinda way. One baloney sandwich later, I was out on bond. The affair was actually quite easy to settle, especially because it seemed that the reason I had been arrested in the middle of the night instead of having been sent a bill was that someone in the County Clerk's office had a grudge left from high school.
Fast forward a few years and a few lifetimes, and I found myself at the edge of the country where all my friends drink chai lattes made with almond milk. We were told that science was going to end after the 2016 election, that Richard Feyman would no longer have money for chalk, and that we should take to the street carrying signs saying 'hooray for our side'. Now, I had taken to the streets with signs when I was even younger and more delusional than when I had thought I could. afford both to own a bookstore and buy books. But I 'liked' the Facebook Page from The March for Science. Shucks. Those were the days when I still thought that 'most trusted news source' might imply 'a reliable news source'.
The March for Science came and went. Science did not die nor get defunded, as I just ascertained by a bit of diligent Googling. That is, I thought The March for Science had come and gone, until last night. All of a sudden it was back with a call to march in protest of the Kentucky Grand Jury's presentation of the evidence in Breonna Taylor's death. I made the error of suggesting that sleeping with a drug dealer might not be the best way to assure a long and happy life. One would have thought I had killed Santa Claus.
One of the things I found most amusing about this excerpt of the things I was called for suggesting that the Kentucky Attorney General might be more reliable than the propaganda of BLM is that I have often been critical of Trunp's foreign policy because I think it strengthens Russia. (Not that he listens to me any more than Mr. Obama listened to me when I suggested that bombing weddings and funerals is not a good way to win the hearts and minds of the people.) But, the outflow of vitriol made me a bit more curious about 'March for Science', so I looked at their website.
Surprise surprise surprise. Lots of feel-good buzz words. Lots of claims that opposition to what they are advocating is a conspiracy. But despite their nod to 'evidence based' public policies, they are calling for protests--mostly peaceful, I'm sure, because that's the only kind newspeak allows--against a public policy based on evidence. Odd, perhaps, that there is no explanation of how they conclude what 'The Science' is, or about the scientific method. Just a wonderful neo-puritanism of the sort so popular amongst folks in what I only semi-humorously call The Third Great Awakening. I was, I confess, a bit amused when many of my friends who marched 'for science' in 2017 had no real regard for science in their daily lives unless they thought it agreed with their prejudices and fears. One of them sleeps with crystals to channel more chi. But I had thought that they were probably had good intentions. One must always remember where good intentions most often lead.
I should have just shot the two policemen who came to arrest me. I could have been a folk hero by now.
Welcome to Brazil. Please keep your form 27b-6 with you at all times.
No comments:
Post a Comment