Bad American

Today’s Contemporary Americana are two letters which reveal quite a bit about the souls of those writing them.

First up:

Don’t punish productivity or reward sloth

Robert Reich’s suggestions in “Fresh out of ways to raise cash” (Monday, Opinion) is a classic version of socialistic income redistribution (tax and punish the most productive and coddle the least productive), which always drives the economy down.

One thing I agree with is the need to improve education for children and families in lower- and moderate-income communities. If you are going to redistribute wealth through a higher earned-income tax credit, then make it contingent on education and job training success for all members of the family.

If a family is too dysfunctional for the children to be educable and the parents to be productive, consider placing them in some form of institutional living where health, education, training and discipline are imposed. Expensive, and a form of social engineering, yes; but far better than just throwing money at the less-educated and less-productive members of society.

Dick Rowley, Aurora

Well how nice for Mr. “I clawed my way to the top why can’t these other punks?” Rowley to sit high and mighty in judgment from his lofty perch in Aurora.

You wonder how fascism will work out in America? No problem, just look at the Dick Rowleys of the world. They’d love to see those worthless ‘lower income’ type people herded into concentration camps where “discipline” would be “imposed.” Perhaps waterboarding recalcitrant campers would be part of the curriculum? Perhaps if Mr. Rowley has a relative that needs a summer job, they could don a nifty black and silver uniform and go to work in one of these camps “imposing” some “discipline.”

Close order drill at 4 a.m. would certainly teach these ‘losers’ of capitalism some industriousness, nicht wahr?

You know you can’t argue with a conservative since all they see are ME ME ME and all of the rest of the people not in their social class are undeserving drains on their precious tax dollars which they so grudgingly part with - unless of course, like Allison, it’s to kill brown skinned people in faraway foreign lands of which they know nothing.

But rarely do we get to see the inner darkness that lies at the heart of so much of conservatism - in this case, advocating a system much like ones established by Nazi Germany at Dachau in 1933. Remember Dachau didn’t start out as an extermination camp but one for those maladjusted members of society who were, in one form or another, a drain on proper Germans. These included trade unionists, homosexuals, liberal troublemakers, socialists and those deemed in one form or another to be anti-social. They were brutalized and then released back into society as a ‘lesson’ for others to learn from.

Of course, who would be the ones to determine which members of society would need such ‘institutional’ treatment? Ah, there’s the rub! You’d need another (gasp!) government bureaucracy to conduct house to house inventories and determine which people ‘deserve’ to live in proper American society and which ones should be sent to the camps.

Hmmm, perhaps such a system could be outsourced! There we go! We’ll get more foreigners on work visas to come in an work for $1.50 an hour and put a bounty of $50 a head on every person selected for the camps! Now THERE’S a FREE MARKET solution, eh?

Oh its going to be such a fun America when people like Mr. Rowley get the government they deserve! But fair warning Dick! If suddenly, some misfortune should befall you, say, like a $1 million heart surgery and you suddenly cannot ‘work’ anymore and your monetary reserves are exhausted, someday those nice men in the black uniforms might just be coming for YOU!

Letter Two!

After reading “Hairstyle gets kindergartner suspended” (Wednesday), my immediate thought was: Therein lies today’s problem.

It is not with the kids; it is with the parent who is teaching total disrespect for the rules. That 6-year-old has no clue about hairstyles, but Mom surely knows how to buck the system, and the child gets the punishment. There is truly something drastically wrong here. What is the point, Mom?

Maryjane Maitland, Strongsville

Maryjane of Strongsville (oooh, another nice white upper class community - see a pattern?) meet Dick of Aurora. You two actually have a lot in common (other than probably voting a straight GOP ticket) but you may not realize it!

After all, both of you have a visceral hatred for those who have the audacity to BREAK THE RULES and BUCK THE SYSTEM!

Never mind who made the rules and under what circumstances and whether any of those rules are discriminatory or unfair or nonsensical in some way they are RULES and the must be ENFORCED.

Yes, therein lies today’s problem Maryjane. But Dick has a solution! Mother and son could BOTH be sent to a ‘re-education camp’ where discipline and proper respect for the rules could be ‘imposed.’

You can bet after a few weeks of breaking rocks, mom would understand that THIS society is not going to tolerate any free-thinking. And her little child will see mom paying the price for his ‘anti-social’ haircut while he is indoctrinated into the Pavlovian operant conditioning methodology so loved by the civil authorities in the movie A Clockwork Orange.

Yessir, we’ll whip all these non-conformists into line! Rules are meant to be obeyed without question. No matter what the rules are! You say the tax on tea is unfair and you’re going to dump the tea in Boston Harbor as some kind of ‘civil disobedience?’ Well, we’ve got a nice little camp for you! Good King George is merely enforcing Acts of Parliament that were dutifully enacted under the SYSTEM that was set up! Who are you to argue with the rules!

And people wonder why I’m so cynical about the future of this country.