Insanity

Once, I was somebody. I wasn't anyone special. I never won a Super Bowl or anything glorious. That was then, before the world went insane. I was just a nondescript shift leader at a local TransAmerican Motors auto plant. I had a wife and two kids. We had two cars and owned our home. It wasn't a mansion, but it was ours. We even had a black lab mutt named Smokey. We were about as average of a family as you could find. Those were wonderful days, although I did not realize it at the time. The plant closed a few years back. Down-sizing or out-sourcing or globalizing, or one of those things that Wall Street loves so much. That is when the insanity began. Wall Street has always been insane, but this is when it spread from them to the general American population. The closure was supposedly great, as it was going to be part of their return to profitability. The New American Economy was going to be created from the ashes of the collapse.

With our savings depleted, the unemployment not enough to cover the bills, and the mortgage in a situation that the lunatics call underwater my wife had to take a job at the local Super*Wall. It didn't pay jack, but it helped bridge the gap somewhat. My union medical benefits ran out, and it became a matter of don't get sick.

The insanity spread like a new plague through the country. The unemployment ran out before I could find anything that made more than I was getting. No one was hiring. One by one, the lunatics had saved the New American Economy by shuttering the factories and doing their Global-Down-Sourcing or whatever they called their insane ramblings. We lost the house, and the only apartment we could afford would not let Smokey move in with us. The only job I was able to find, a third shift leader the Jack's Burgers franchise paid much less than I got from unemployment, which was a fraction of what I made building cars.

The clearest sign that the insanity had permeated the near entirety of the American Populace was the next election. Both of the candidates supported different versions of the Global-Down-Sourcing movement. They both held up my old company of TransAmerican Motors as a shining example of the success of their beloved New American Economy. They both held up the profits the investors had rolling in after the plants were closed as the sign of economic health.

Cults of personality enveloped both men. Supporters of each called the other everything in the book not stopping at the Neo-Hitler or even the Anti-Christ. They both seemed infected by the insanity, as their words were not all that different, despite their supporters claims that the other was evil personified. Through the din if bullshit and recriminations, only one voice seemed unaffected by the insanity plague. It was a man who would become my hero, Russ Becker.

Once the election was over, Russ set out to expose the lies and hypocrisy of the new president. He was the one who called attention to the new President's nefarious plan to subjugate the American People and force them to follow his whims. He started every show with an impassioned plea that it not be his last, and that his dissent was the only thing keeping the country from becoming nothing more than a mass of slaves. He called on the viewers, especially those on the police forces or in the military to protect him from the President's plan to silence all enemies.

I followed Russ's advice to the word. I would not allow my kids to listen to anything the new President said. The President had found a way to infuse his speeches with hypnotic subliminal messages that would instantly brainwash any children who heard it. They would accept their coming slavery like lambs being led to the slaughter. I was never a political person before I started listening to Russ on the radio and watching him on television. Once I understood his continued warnings, I became an activist. I would protest against anything and everything the President wanted to accomplish. I had once defended America as part of the United States Marine Corps, and I was damned and determined to do so once again. The President may be the commander-in-chief, I had never disrespected the office in my life, nor did I dream I ever would, but this President was out to destroy America. I was not going to let that happen as long as I had breath in my body.

I was helpless as my wife did not listen to me and became infected by the insanity. She hung on the charismatic President's every word. She took to denouncing Russ every chance she got. She would repeatedly tell me that I needed to "wake up and get off of my 'Russ is God' kick." She told me that if I would just listen to the President, I would understand that his proposals were for everyone's good. I could not listen to him, because I would not let myself become brainwashed as she had. She would not let up about the greatness of his proposals. He was going to provide everybody with medical insurance. He was going to bring security and peace along with universal prosperity through the New American Economy. What Russ pointed out that she was not understanding was that the cost for all these wonderful things was to be enslaved to serve his whims.

Didn't these people see the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Palpatine promised safety and security through the creation of the empire? That was the President's goal, promise this utopia, but at the cost of freedom.

Life deteriorated further when I discovered that my wife was letting the kids be brainwashed. She would not only tell them how great the President and his proposals were, but she would actually allow them to watch his speeches on television. Russ once said that the purpose of the brainwashing was to ensure that the children would turn on anyone who opposed the President. My family was being turned against me, and something had to be done. I just did not know what.

The critical moment came late in the first year of the President's administration. Russ Becker was doing a series of shows promoting his amazingly insightful book, The New American Slavery. Both in his tome and in his shows, he was adamant that the President had to be stopped "by any means necessary." The President was derelict in his duties outlined in the oath of office to "support and defend the constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic." Russ also made a very strong case that the President was, in fact, a domestic enemy of the constitution. With that statement, he handed me my mission, he said "all members of the military should arrest the President for treason. He is an enemy of the constitution, as well as an enemy of America." The culmination of the years of seeing the insanity build around me was crystallized in that moment. I was one of the few sane ones left, and I had to act whilst there was still time.

Fortune was on my side. The President was speaking in my area that very night. I repeated the oath I had taken mere months after graduating from high school, this time with my hand on the Bible that had been passed down through my family for many generations. I had pledged those many years ago to protect this country from all enemies foreign and domestic, and I was not going to turn my back on her in her time of die need. My dress uniform from my days in the Marine Corps still fit.

If I could have that Bible in here, I would swear on it that I had no intention of harming the President that night. He was to become a prisoner of the state, charged with treason and tried in the Supreme Court as set forth in the constitution. If I had wanted him dead, I would have actually brought weapons. I was a sniper in the Corps, I could have picked him off from 1000 yards easy. I wanted him tried for his crimes against humanity.

That night, I arrived at the hall where he was speaking. By virtue of my uniform, I was ushered to the front of the room. They wanted to give the illusion that he was not a traitor and what better way to do it than with men in uniform. As he passed, I called out to him that I was placing him under citizen's arrest for treason. The next thing I know, I was being tackled to the ground and cuffed. My next coherent memories involve waking up in this room.They called me insane and stuck me in this wretched place. Somehow, they expect the drugs and the pale green walls to make me sane like them. I am the sane one. I really am, it is society who has forsaken sanity in the name of security and providence.

I have not submit to their insanity. I resist. I do not take the pills they give me. My resistance has cost me everything. My wife divorced me after I was put in here. I can't say that I blame her, she does have to protect herself from being put in the position to kill me because I am an enemy of the state. Who am I kidding, she has fallen so far into their insanity, that it was probably shame that caused her to leave me. She would kill me to please her President. For a while, mom brought my kids here to see me, but I could see their shame. They have also fallen into the insanity. Last time I saw mom, she was wearing a shirt supporting the President's reelection, as if to mock me as the only sane man left.

As I write this memoir, I am reminded of the novel Nineteen-Eighty Four by George Orwell. It was the goal of Big Brother's minions to 'perfect' the thought criminals before they killed them. That is what they are doing with me. This room is my personal room 101. They are only letting me live long enough to infect me with their insanity. I only have one form of protest left. I cannot let them perfect me. I must be their failure.

If there is truly a God, this memoir will get in the hands of Russ Becker, so he will know that others have not fallen into the hands of the lunatics. Perhaps he will be able to read this on the air and inspire a resistance moment. Sadly, I am sure this will only find its way into the nearest incinerator.

Once, I was somebody. I wasn't anybody special. I never won a Super Bowl or anything glamorous That was then, before the wold went insane.