Mitt, sweetie, you were right. I loved losing my job for America.
I did, my love, because I knew I was doing the right thing, in giving my boost to the rational allocation of capital. When your Staples closed all the musty stationery stores in every small town for miles around, the savings from salaries and benefits killed there almost offset the prodigious fuel costs of getting to your big box, where crappy merchandise could be repurchased every couple of years, and we would not be distracted by good fountain pens, desk accessories, monogramming services, to say nothing of greetings from family shopkeepers we'd known since school.
So it was rational, and more than right that you should be so boastful of how rich this made you, to extinguish intangibles we paid too much for, to sell tangibles at massive margins. I was an engraver. I moved to West Virginia and got a job collecting nails from abandoned barns, of organic farms polluted out of existence, uncompetitive with steroid agribusiness. What it doesn't pay, I don't need, because we have no stores. We don't have cell service either, because your oligopolies reason there aren't enough of us. But we hear word, that you know about jobs. So maybe we should plan to move again?
Please don't let them say, dear Mitt, that you were nasty to scoff at me for not being born in Bloomfield Hills, for practicing my engraving instead of buying an MBA, and for not using it to gouge my fair share from thousands and thousands of stupid families like mine. You have never been nasty, dear Mitt; your fortune has made us proud, kept us warm to see it flaunted on the stage of public life, as a model for all to marvel at in pondering your genius. It extends far beyond the orderly consoli-dation of wealth, dear Mitt, to the rational uprooting of families, the efficient emptying of towns, eliminat-ing impediments to accumulation by eradicating obligation. May we offer you a day off?
I did, my love, because I knew I was doing the right thing, in giving my boost to the rational allocation of capital. When your Staples closed all the musty stationery stores in every small town for miles around, the savings from salaries and benefits killed there almost offset the prodigious fuel costs of getting to your big box, where crappy merchandise could be repurchased every couple of years, and we would not be distracted by good fountain pens, desk accessories, monogramming services, to say nothing of greetings from family shopkeepers we'd known since school.
So it was rational, and more than right that you should be so boastful of how rich this made you, to extinguish intangibles we paid too much for, to sell tangibles at massive margins. I was an engraver. I moved to West Virginia and got a job collecting nails from abandoned barns, of organic farms polluted out of existence, uncompetitive with steroid agribusiness. What it doesn't pay, I don't need, because we have no stores. We don't have cell service either, because your oligopolies reason there aren't enough of us. But we hear word, that you know about jobs. So maybe we should plan to move again? 
Please don't let them say, dear Mitt, that you were nasty to scoff at me for not being born in Bloomfield Hills, for practicing my engraving instead of buying an MBA, and for not using it to gouge my fair share from thousands and thousands of stupid families like mine. You have never been nasty, dear Mitt; your fortune has made us proud, kept us warm to see it flaunted on the stage of public life, as a model for all to marvel at in pondering your genius. It extends far beyond the orderly consoli-dation of wealth, dear Mitt, to the rational uprooting of families, the efficient emptying of towns, eliminat-ing impediments to accumulation by eradicating obligation. May we offer you a day off?
me thinks you must be a Democrat !?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteOh, Lucien, I've been christened once before, and I don't think I could bear another. :)
ReplyDeleteMy friend the psychoanalyst told me that she had been assumed a follower of every party in Norway when election time.
ReplyDeleteHopefully the assumptions were made by more than one patient:)
The great gift of that discipline, and of Polonius, too. But I take your point, Linnea, and I suppose, turn it upside down. :) It does rather make one wonder, now that you mention it, how two masters of believing nothing will find it possible to 'engage' each other in this coming contest for leadership of the last Western power, except with bilateral jealousy. The pet rock will envy the challenger his contradictions, the challenger will marvel at the rock's hollowness, both contestants seeking to bleed the other from within. It could be the election with the lowest turnout (our word for voter participation) in the modern era.
ReplyDeleteBut now you make Norway sound delicious for a new reason - the existence of any party to favour.. :)
Well, Norway is the land of political coalitions - and not efficient ones, but then, politics are never efficient. I'm so glad I'm not a politician. It is a tad bit embarrassing, but I tend not to read too many newspapers, as the doings of politicians just make me want to move into the deep forest and never come out again. I did see something about your forthcoming election. It was quite depressing. Best of luck!
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