The 21st century is an interesting age. Our plasticine America is now a nation of robber barons wont to stomp all over the rights of those not fortunate enough to either be born into money or too moral to stab everyone they meet in the belly. The rich and crazy are given more money and freedoms by the politicos that the poor joe schmoes elect. To be right and sane in this country requires an annual income of no less than $250k. Poverty will soon be outlawed, and the justice system will no doubt lump penalties of prison on top of the existing pain and embarrassment of going weeks eating only peanut butter, or sitting pitifully on the street, holding your teeth in your hands as the world slides by. In this country, we value only one thing; the game and its winners.
All men are pigs, we are taught, and should be stuck the same way. To the winners of the sticking game we award crowns, freedom, money, and the losers and the meek get stomped down, stapled to driftwood and tossed into the ocean, to fester and be picked at by gulls. Pigs know that to be filth is to be compassionate. After all, the stains of compassion, empathy and pity on the soul of a murderous thief are far harder to get out than the blood stains on their wingtips and three pieces. It is far more convenient to let the system do the stomping, and avoid the internal staining altogether by deriding the losers as far less than human. Or worse yet, deny their existence altogether.
I crawl into adulthood an impoverished, carless, nearly lifeless shell of what I was a few years ago. I have lost nearly all my possessions, have no income and am now in the very lowest of tax brackets. I am a student, and yet this country still has no mercy. Filth deserves nothing better than to starve, and the only clean color is green. Day by day, I grudgingly change my compassionate ways out of sheer survival impulse. The man said “fuck or be fucked;” an adage as true as any other, but one that is hard to swallow. Another man said “in a nation of swine, all pigs are upward-mobile.” Well, in a nation of pigs, all men eventually end up smelling like bacon. Or shit.