What will happen when the final final rationalization for coded solipsism is absorbed by the American body politic? If Kurt Vonnegut was here he’d say that giant lamprey eels will eat Indianapolis, but let’s be serious, Mid-American gas and electric has already done that. When people speak in self-serving metaphors about other people’s losses then we have the Paul Ryan plan and the Obama “chained cpi” and other forms of heartlessness tricked out in board room codes. This is not ok. How feeble that protest sounds. But how true it remains. We now talk about letting the poor fend for themselves by suggesting they are a drag on American growth. In fact social programs allow the most vulnerable to participate in the miserable buying and selling that has taken the place of civic life. Stop supporting food stamps, medicaid, medicare, social security disability, WIC, special education, rehabilitation programs for people with disabilities–(its a long list of targets in the coded solipsism industry) then, in turn, you shut down ten thousand shops and drugstores, mini-malls, Walmarts, not to mention of course, putting people in the streets.
In New York the other day I was reminiscing with a friend about the state of Grand Central Station in the 1970’s when the place was run down and filled with homeless people. Remember? That’s the Ryan plan. Forget Vonnegut’s eel.
I just felt like writing these words. They remind me that I’m not a heartless man.
Planet of the Blind 