I was waiting between production runs the other night at my graveyard shift, minimum wage, benefitless, part-time job at 3:00 a.m. I looked out across the patiently waiting machines. Lights blinked in standby and the machines hummed like a vibrating electric line. I pondered about how our current Wisconsin society has now become, more than ever, a slowly emerging specter of former Soviet culture. The process was incremental of course.
In past decades, the ubiquitous governmental and administrative oversight of every aspect of our daily toils often filtered in and out of our lives like a flatus. Yet, in better times we put up with it. The apparition hovered in the background. Now that the new norm of economic desperation is upon us, where few of us have jobs with dignity, or jobs at all, the new creepy Soviet-esque tangled web of banal bureaucracy and ubiquitous punitive rules is exposed like the framework of a building whose facade has fallen.
The once mighty industrial and agricultural Wisconsin (it's on our flag) has been replaced with a culture of payday loan shacks and bill collectors; worse yet, an Orwellian-esque economy of progressively placing citizens in a criminal justice footing has emerged. Much of the tangled Web of tyranny is facilitated by simply attacking what we need to do most in our lives to get by - our necessary mobility, and the natural trends of a reproductive society. A whole layer of citizenry has been slung into a lower cast system by ticketing and fining them until they lose their driver licenses. It's easy prey. It's a soft target. Most of us need to get around. Illinois and other states have placed cameras at intersections and sent out thousands of tickets via automation. Apparently people are ticketed for inching out to see if the intersections are clear for a turn. Snap - the picture makes it look like you are running the stoplight. You will receive a perennial busy signal if you call the complaint number. Wisconsin is never far behind.
On the family front, in a new norm culture of families with unmarried guardians with "the kids," multiple step parents, and multiple step siblings, the rubric has lent itself as a boon for social services. And to be fair, I have known a guy about my age for years who has actually married all of his many liaisons. But we have all lost track of the many children and step children. Bring children into the world with multiple partners and make no mistake, "the state" could, and will, permanently insert itself in your life to make sure you pay. And of course, the state will skim some funds out of the process - kind of like a dope dealer taking a cut off the top.
The criminal justice system extends itself to get its prisoners hired at what jobs are left. Parolees and work release inmates will be favored over veterans, law abiding people, and older workers. Employers (those that are still left) get cheap, delivered-to-the-doorstep labor; the state pays for their health care; the state gets a baby sitter. The rest of us be damned.
Ever try to start a business? The township, city, county, state, and federal administrators will suck you financially dry with fees paper work, inspections, and review boards long before you get your business signage up. Then once up, they will tell you the sign does not comply with "code."
Don't let your kid get caught bringing a plastic knife or a nail clipper to school, or said kid will get kicked out. Don't use a cell phone in town while you drive; wear your seat belt or you are a malcontent and you will...be punished. Some cities now dig through your garbage to make sure you are not a recycle deviant. God forbid don't get caught smoking in the wrong place.
I actually feel like I should call 911 as to get permission to urinate in my own toilet. At least I still have a house and a toilet - probably not for long though in this economy. I can always go back and live in the old Chevy Corsica again.
Those are just a few obvious examples. Us rabble have been sucked dry. Every government agency, school board, city service department, and fee driven entity is piling on increases until our noses bleed.
It is no longer fun...yes I use the word "fun," to live in Wisconsin, or apparently America for that matter. We have become the Second World state (impoverished totalitarian-esque nation with nukes) so many of us served in the military during the Cold War to prevent us...from becoming. We are beginning to imitate the very regimes we used to despise. We have taken pages out of China's and the old Soviet Union's play books on how to destroy a populace and break their spirits.
Beyond the nanny atmosphere at large, and the administrative over lording, then there is the more serious and disturbing evolution regarding the militarization of the police at large. I suppose it is only natural in a society with two perpetual wars - Afghanistan and Iraq. Around 125 Wisconsin military people have died in those two wars, now nearing 10 years and eight years respectively. But it started long before "9/11". Wisconsin has kept Army clad police to a low roar, but none-the-less, the genie is out of the bottle. The rubric of cops donning Army fatigues and assault weapons is so common now, we have been conditioned to ignore it. But, this is not Iraq or Israel or Turkey; this is middle America. When I see Army geared police, in the back of my mind I go back to Iraq; whose door is just about to be kicked in - whose "papers" are about to be checked?
It's no wonder politicians are retiring around the state and the nation faster than you can say, "Great Recession," and, "incremental repression." Some apparently realize the contrived economic and repression hell they have been party to has been a canard exposed. To add comedy to the tragedy, some egg heads out East recently suggested the Great Recession actually ended in early 2009.
Sinking back to reality at the job, the machines begin to spin for the next production run. Is this a lame version of "A Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich Bob Keith"? It's not really Soviet because they...at least, actually pretended to give the workers benefits. Here in Wisconsin they don't even pretend anymore. Perhaps it is a new type of techno-fascism, but no one is actually dragged outside, beaten, and disappeared from time to time like in Saddam's Iraq. No, it is a more nuanced sinister. The good jobs went to China; the old benefits were left in the ocean on the way over there. And we...we are left to our own inner torment in this new norm economic hell. We are left to turn on ourselves. And always with the punitive variable dangling in the background, a large sliding scale of social enforcement, from recycle fines to possibly having our doors mistakenly kicked in by some militarized law enforcement agency.
And in the mean time - just to finish off a citizen's spirit - Wisconsin's economy, for all practical purposes, has...collapsed. I can't speak for the rest of the country; regular folks - not fuzzy heads out East - say the whole country is on the precipice of economic depression; but, does the rest of the county even matter now? And to stick one last knife in our stomachs, gas prices make it hard to move about - something long necessary to a huge nation's viability. The only thing missing is the...road checkpoints.
Like so many good things where Wisconsin has led the way for the country at large, paradoxically it now blazes a template trail for the "New Soviet."
The former Soviet Union leader Khrushchev innuendo was right after all: to paraphrase; we Americans will have dug ourselves a hole we "can not" get out of long before anyone else will undo our way of life - without nary a shot being fired.
I love Big Brother.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
Marine Corporal Joshua Mark Schmitz, 21, Loyal, Wisconsin, died on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was in the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Corporal Schmitz was killed during combat operations. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Schmitz was the second person from Loyal killed in Iraq. Army National Guard Staff Sergeant Todd Olson was killed December 26, 2004 in Samarra, Iraq. Loyal is a small town of around 1300 near Marshfield, Wisconsin near the center of the state. Also, December 2006 was a particularly hard month for Wisconsin as Schmitz was the fourth Wisconsin military service person to die that month. The paper went on to say Josh played on Loyal's high school football team all four years. Josh joined the Marines shortly after he graduated in 2003 from Loyal High School; he was on a second tour in Iraq. The Journal Sentinel went on to mention Josh was remembered as a Green Bay Packers fan, for having a sense of humor, having curly hair, and he liked to play drums. He played drums in a band that played at the annual fair in Marshfield and at weddings. He also was a drummer in his high school band. Schmitz was said to have had a problem with his feet that could have prevented him from getting in the Marines, but he kept working at it and finally got in. The Marshfield News Herald via the Clark County Internet Library Project mentioned Josh was due to come home from Iraq in just six weeks and complete his enlistment in September of 2006. He hoped to go to college and possibly start his own business. The publication also mentioned he sang in the choir his senior year; and, he was a linebacker on the football team. It went on to say Josh was the second-oldest child in his family. Wisconsin 2007 Senate Joint Resolution 13 noted Joshua Schmitz was born January 16, 1985, in Marshfield, Wisconsin. The Resolution added he had been "an all−conference football player, model student, and generous volunteer." At the time of his death Joshua Schmitz was survived by his parents Mark and Kelly Schmitz; his siblings, Angela Colby, Stephanie Schmitz, Justin Schmitz, Brandon Schmitz, and Nick Schmitz: and his grandparents, Ken and Bonnie Gilles, and Marlin and Virginia Schmitz. Corporal Joshua Schmitz was the 67th Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
98,171 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,733 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,428 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1321 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
823 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,967 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,530 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
102 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
23 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
144 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf; and, icasualties.org.
