Unable to Rejoice

I am a disability rights advocate, activist, agit prop thespian cum blogger and on my good days I say that the congressman who hates the poor, who despises them because they are a drag, who wishes them ill because he has absorbed the trans-toxic American mythos of Puritanism ergo thinks the poor don’t work hard enough hence deserve ignominious and inhumane characterizations in the body politic–that congressman (as I say, on my good days) I imagine will not win.

On the good days I tell myself that the congressman (or senator) who loathes the poor (but not poverty itself) will become a fossil like slave holders or witch hunters.

It’s a state of mind, the good days. As artificial as cheap perfumes. And like fake Chanel it doesn’t last long. For most elected politicians on capitol hill are avid haters of the poor. They snicker to themselves when they hear that 130 American military bases are toxic superfund sites. They snicker as the veterans struggle for rehabilitation and adequate medical care. They certainly snicker at the prospect that we need a health care overhaul to assure that the poor can be treated in our nation’s clinics and hospitals so that they too might practice preventative medicine.

So the good days are the first to flee.

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood because its snowing in Iowa City and my furnace is broken. We need a circuit board and we can’t get it til Monday. It’s going to be 20 degrees tonight and there’s already snow sticking to the lawn. Maybe if it was a beautiful, mild autumn day I’d still be lingering in the prosperous imaginative state wherein I imagine the demise of the Scrooges who would step on the hands of children or steal pennies from the blind if they thought it would get them re-elected.

The Scrooges are in both parties. They’re mostly little corporation tee shirt wearing fascists with shiny shoes.

So I’m in a lousy mood without my furnace. I think I’ll go and do what Ted Kennedy used to do when he needed cheering up and have a bowl of New England clam chowder.

Hooray for the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the airline executives! Hooray for the toxic generals and Raytheon.

S.K.

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto