First Kick I Took Was When I Hit The Ground

It's been a pretty long time since I've been a self-recognized drain on the gross domestic product. It feels pretty natural coming back to it though, I must say, seeing as I was, as a very young person, nourished on the teat of the the Welfare State. For those of us who grew up on food stamps in the 1980s, this not only assured that you didn't grow up with rickets or pellagra or any of the other malnourishment-related maladies but it also ensured you got yourself an early push into political self-awareness and self-identification. There were hundreds of people with easy access to facetime with television cameras lined up to let you know that YOU, defenseless child living in conditions that couldn't possibly be of your choosing, were at the root of something sinister, undermining and cancerous nestled menacingly against the heart of our otherwise pure and good FULLY CAPITALIST society: human empathy.

That's right, it was understood in the 1980s that open-heartedness was the fastest way to get heartworms. Arms opened in embrace of your fellow person predicated only on their shared qualities of personhood? Invitation to a knife in the chest. Kindness was softness and softness was for suckers. Suckers were the ones the heroes identified, primed and then exploited for all the value that could be extricated. And that extrication was the duty of every contributing member of society, by which of course I mean men. Not just any men though, the manliest version of men who ever manned. A version of manliness so definitely self-assured, non-defensive and un-fragile, it was impervious even to satire. Satire was for wimps and New York homosexuals, at least that's what the REAL MEN heard, they wouldn't know for sure, because there was ZERO OVERLAP in cultural spheres between the alpha-butch and the sissies and their feelings. Any attempt to satirize was immediately adopted in earnest as a mantra. Real men don't eat quiche. Greed is good. The president was literally a cowboy from a TV western. The lines were clear, and any wavering would not be abided. Stay the course, even if the results are a genocide by pandemic.

But then Magic Johnson got HIV and well, OK, maybe we should start thinking about it as a medical issue now that it can happen to one of us. And then Bill Clinton became president and solved the problem of "welfare queens" less by mitigating the socio-economic conditions that cause and exacerbate a systemic and morally indefensible disproportionate apportionment of resources in a system that requires an exploitable underclass to sustain itself, and more by joining in the kicking. This of course ushered in the golden age where we lived free from want and nobody ever blamed poor people for anything ever again.

Which comes as a HUGE RELIEF to me as I, just today, find myself for the first time in almost 20 years, entirely unemployed. To be fair, I haven't had to go into the office for six months due to the highly successful and in-no-way-problematic Deferred Resignation Program for federal employees. I've been getting paid my full salary to stay home and talk to bot-monitored HR text chat channels in the new hellscape of employment-seeking, which is a pretty interesting way for a government to combat fraud, waste and abuse. I think the strategy is to psych out fraud, waste and abuse by leaning into it so hard, they become frightened and confused and can only run away. Shocking the system, kind of like the way vaccines work, but societally instead of biologically. If we believed in that kind of quackery anymore, which of course we don't.

The best news is that even though I'm definitely a freeloader now, I'm freeloading off my spouse now that I'm married again, more than the government as yet. Or at least I will be. I'm waiting on a pretty decent payout from the vacation leave I accumulated but didn't use, so I can "contribute" with that for the next few months. And I do have a second-round job interview next Tuesday. The job is in El Segundo near LAX though. For those of you who aren't familiar with Southern California, anything El Segundo/Inglewood in the LAX sort of area is at minimum 30 minutes away from itself. Now factor in the fact that I live two counties, three freeways and one mightily earnest but almost practically unusable network of public transit options away and Google maps tells me to expect a one-to-three hour commute each way.

Needs must, I guess. But even if the public transit worked, I wouldn't be allowed to take it since real men drive. Trucks usually. With those naked lady reclining silhouette mudflaps and also a set of disturbingly realistic faux testicles hanging from the trailer hitch. You know, things men like. But then, I've already bought an electric car, so maybe that ship has sailed.