It Can't Happen To ME!

The prophesied Smirkin' Jerk

The virus, long underground, first became noticeable with savage Enron. Pensions built up into the hundreds of thousands were forcibly invested into the belly of the beast who'd taken over their company. Only a piddling few thousand remained in the aftermath. The money had vanished, gone with the wind, no recourse possible. End your golden years in the night watchman's cold, sucker.

But instead of outrage, the road map to funny money had been laid out for trusted tricksters. Swindle first, stash the cash second, play innocent later. Then live happily ever after. Gambling fever was on! How to get the suckers to part with their cash? Give everyone credit! Mortgage brokers get commissions they never have to return. Cha-ching! Prices rise making every mortgage look good, reselling them leveraged at 30 to 1 (meaning one dollar makes - or loses - thirty). Make your killing on the way up - someone else will be holding the bag on the way down!

The Great Recession - and don't kid yourself, it has not and will not end - compared to Enron is the same as an atom bomb to a firecracker. Now the victims numbered in the tens of millions, blindsided just like the Enron retirees. No recourse, feeble short-term lifelines, and ultimately left to drown. The voiceless were outraged, the voiced - not so much. In greed we must trust!

The lucky ones die. The unlucky ones

earn minimum wage at "The Gap"

Each day like Jews hauled off to concentration camps the slave class grows. Those outside the camps pass by in silent horror, never speaking a word lest they be next. No one wants to hear the stories of those buried alive inside; of how the social contract has been torn to shreds, of honesty returned with dishonesty; of a failed system without future. Fear shut the eyes, ears and mouths of the yet-to-be sacrificed which, in the end, guaranteed them to be sacrificed.

As proud and twisted as any Soviet gulag, the educated and degreed were shuffled into coal mines of mindless labor. Bolshevik billionaires laughed as fools still trusting the system languished in furnaces of doom. Slogans of ages long dead were trumpeted as if still relevant. Souls bought pennies-on-the-dollar shouted affirmation of the hopeless myth of prosperity promised. Dysfunctional children strained to claim happiness in retail rot, part-time prisons, and cages to be cleaned day after day until death. It was the worst of times - with the worst yet to come.

*****

But what about Her, safe in her mountain mansion over the bay? Sure She had money (her husband's money anyway) but that's not why she had been spared. The money was merely a byproduct of Her superior morality. And sure, he was a banker - but an honest banker: that meant taking the bank's ill-gotten profits was OK. They lived deep inside the system yet were convinced they were above it. How wonderful to be blessed by both the gods on earth and in Heaven! For the longest while they'd refused to fully embrace their divinity but finally one horror story too many passed across the headlines, snapping their minds.

"God has spared us for the good we know we do. Praise be to God!"

"God", of course, translated to mean a monetary idol. This was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream: moral money; to safely watch as others are herded to their doom. One expresses sympathy and perhaps even a twinkling of satisfied outrage over the plight of the helpless - but then one takes a sip of fine California wine and all is well again. They believed themselves as Moses on the mountaintop, beloved, and in communion with God. Their praise was overflowing and insufferable, but like every soul who believes to have "figured it out" they were immediately in the wrong.

In the hidden connections that bind us to every living thing and across the universe - connections that can be known but not understood - in came to the couple's life that which they had wished, as unstoppable as a breached airplane depressurizing at 30,000 feet, for in their spiritual arrogance they had opened their lives as exactly that. At this point the bank president took hold of their fate right in their oh-so-scenic living room.

"From now on I want blow jobs - from the both of you. First from your bitch wife while you watch, Joe-boy, then by you as your wife slides your head back and forth on my lusty shaft. You can refuse, of course, but you'll be blacklisted in the industry and we'll sue for back bonuses, taking everything. You've seen us do it before - without saying a word, naturally. You were right in thinking we'd not fire you - but didn't you remember we own you? You want to play Jesus while serving we the greedy, that's fine. But you'll do it with a dick in your mouth."

Everything lost, trapped without recourse, dirty money drowning. What price the good life in a world more desolate by the day? This they must ask themselves - and having to face it as opposed to theorize about it put things in an entirely different lie. The idea of working as wage slaves to the end of their days seemed horrific beyond compare. That was completely out of the question to reside in a living death of perpetual agony. But should a Jew give a Nazi blow jobs to be saved from the death camps? This wasn't supposed to happen to us!

Even murder crossed their minds but they soon realized they faced a hydra, that always another would take the place of the evil head they killed. Where do you go? What do you do? Why doesn't somebody DO something! The world is insane and out of control. Has nobody eyes to see or ears to hear? It was if they'd been trapped in a soundproof glass booth, pounding unheard to be let out as the air vanished, seen by all who passed by but helped by none. Is this what it's like to be laid off? Does honest service count for nothing? Where is the final profit in that?

Yes, they can keep going to their thousand-dollar-a-donation charity balls, hobnobbing with the "elites", but only with cum on their faces. Or they could hide in their mansion, imagining the whispers of why they dare not share their faces; the world closing in from within. Or they could be cast into the American gulag, toiling at the mercy of a world they knew not to be trusted, the clamp of poverty squeezing them ever downward. Or like so many who entered their fifties who'd been cast out: suicide, future revoked.

Shattered, they first fell into grief, then anger, then despair, then in frustration tearing into one another - all the while the puppet-master bank president laughing at their predicament (which mirrored his own ill-fated life). Finally the fog cleared with eyes half-dead: "If we must live in hell it may as well be hell in luxury." This answer was known to those around them before it had been known to them. Among the evil overlords this process was known as "Education Time" - always announced with a raping grin.

And so began the "new abnormal", of attending events in cum-faced sheepishness, unable to stay away; to living with mockery behind their backs; to even their pathetic attempt to save face in claiming to be "clever enough" to survive well. Like Ramses of old, they took refuge in the material, to proclaim: "Look upon our wealth, ye Mighty, and despair." They devolved to despise the poor and less well-off for "not doing what it takes to succeed." They went to their graves covered in cum, guilt and shame; eulogized and praised effusively by their rapists; dirt covering the coffins in seeming contempt.

*********

CODA: At the pearly gates she raged against her Maker. "You fucking bastard traitor! What did I ever do to deserve that? I tried to be honest my entire life. I objectively praised You whenever convenient and what do You do? Hang me out to dry with no fucking way out! Jesus damn Christ! You have to give people a chance - something. You can't have the whole world die on a cross. It's absolute insanity! It's beyond the pale! I can't help who I am. I can't live like a dog. You ask too much!"

God was busy playing "Call To Duty" (in God-mode) but still managed an answer. "I never expected you to live like a dog. That was never the plan. You are a delicate flower who needs to be carefully tended in a greenhouse. I understand that: I made you with great joy."

"Ok...well, then, what the fuck!!?? I felt compelled to live that dream, that I'd die otherwise." A sudden nagging started to disturb her.

"You remember that boy in college who dreamed of being a writer?"

Him she'd not forgotten a day in her life. The nagging got worse. "Yes, but he ended up a bum. He never could have provided for me. Sure, I wished more than anything to be with him but how could I? You can't just do what you want in life. You have to be practical. And besides, You just said You understood my practical needs."

"Yes, that boy descended into bitter unpaid blogging, never amounting to anything. But had you done what you wanted - had you been honest about what you wanted - by your side he'd have written a best seller making you rich beyond your dreams awash in moral money - many times over, actually, of the ill-gotten gains for which you did strive with such great pains. You were your own Judas, choosing the world over yourself - and in that there is no hope for anyone. Bitch."