Pity, if you will, we hawgs of gumment...having to satisfy you increasingly ravenous mobs with leaner and thinner cutlets of pork. We got the actual peace, more or less, with the extenuations of a shadow-war, lineaments of a booming economy, less crime and longer life than ever before... 'til there's only one status left to promise...

Immortality!

People been chasing the big "I" since this fusty German perfessor, the name of Faust, cut his devil's deal, but forgot to include the youthfulness rider. So justifiable paranoia abounds. "We all live now as if we were working for some vast, national life-insurance company," is columnist Ellen Goodman's take on matters.

"People are desperately trying to establish a sense of control by self-denial," agrees Manhattan headshrinker Mari Terzaghi

Now control... ergo, dominion... gets most simply imposed in the name of the children. Ice cream trucks prohibited from neighborhoods, due to a fear of kids getting run over by the drunk drivers, litigation compelling manufacturers to childproof everything from guns to pillboxes of arthritis medicine. And the missing and abducted kids mania shows no sign of abating, even now that terrified li'l rugrats as grew up seeing faces on milk cartons have rugrats of their own!

Al Regnery of the Justice Department, while under Ed Meese, once stated that two million children annually turned up "missing and exploited", the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has been running only slightly less alarmist numbers... in the million-and-a-half area, more recently. So the Continental Insurance Company's kidnap and abduction policies for about six hundred... "less than two dollars a day"... are a zippy item, and Coastwise, their competitor, even has worked out deals with private and some public school districts that allows its agents in to pitch to the kiddies themselves.

Now, those of you as who are of an age remember: back in the 50's and early 60's, schools sold dismemberment insurance policies in classrooms on the basis of thousand dollar settlements for both arms or both legs, five hundred for one, two hundred for a hand and ear, etcetera. Kids got to pick and choose... it was a vanished ritual of autumn, like burning leaves and the sandlot football... I'm not sure whether the intent was to stimulate creative thinking in morbid little minds, or morbid thinking in creative ones, but this Chinese menu of mutilation conditioning did its job. After some years as teenagers and beyond, where most forgot to worry about strangers with meat cleavers waiting to lop off limbs and earlobes, some sort of residual paranoia began kicking 'round the time folks elected Reagan, discovered AIDS and went off the nose candy long enough to really listen to disco.

Up popped the Reaper, wiggling his scythe, and we swooned like blushing, Victorian heroines. The "lite" years are upon us now... consumers demanding low-calorie beer and soda and Aunt Jemima Lite pancake syrup, paying ten to thirty percent more for the "lite" stuff, as mostly got that way by companies adding water.

"There is no end to the list of things we should and shouldn't do," conservative columnist Guy Wright observed, "and no shortage of people who would like to have a law to make us do what they think is best."

Fighting Entropy's like pulling up poison ivy by the roots. Vines overlap each another... kudzus of squeamishness, immortality, instantaneity... if we could go under the ground with telescopes, might see architectures of contempt as hold most people unnecessary, just a few so hyper-valuable as they're shorting corporation and nation if they work less than ninety hours the week. They don't have the time to bring up families so who will?... the people as society's already tossed out as losers!

Should gumment poke its nose in? And under what criteria are some favored with others held back?... sadly, it's often the entitlements. Meaning those as have the most defects get to be most favored to balance the scales. "Like it or not, fellows, the class war is over," wrote Don Kaul, out'n the merged Chicago paper on the occasion of the renaming of the "estate tax" to "death tax". "The rich guys won." And, apparently now, the opposite of rich... as require special rules and reparations... are not the poor, nor the black, not even the middle-class, but the stupid.

Try running any farm by the stupid, serving up wormy corn to sickly, mad cattle... breeding runts to runts... and you'd fast go out of business. But, in gumment, telling people they ought not breed (and probably do not deserve to eat) is frowned upon. It offends! Not enough to change the system so people will get the educations as enable them to do fair work for a fair wage (and not see their jobs flown off to China), but the Squeamish will be proud to tell you we'll all have to be held back, so as those who don't measure up don't get their feelings hurt. And if you don't snap to attention at the whine of the Squeamish, you're probably anti-victim... a racist, sexist, a gay basher or... worst of all, you're against those as are doing things for the children!

Old people with arthritis ought to be grateful for having to rip the caps off arthritis medicine with hacksaws because some way, somewhere, some kid might break in and steal the bottle. Students should be doing back-over flips now that racist, patriarchal abominations as math and English have been pulled out of most state-supported universities like a bad molar. "Professors should have less freedom of expression than writers and artists," gloats Barbara Johnson of Yale, "because professors are supposed to be creating a better community." (emphasis added)

Growled Mr. Nietzsche, famous enemy of victim culture more than a century back: "the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun."

Not necessarily to make common cause with motel preachers of the Christian Coalition, let alone Mr. Bush, Mr. Lieberman and other poison ivies as seek election on platforms of tweaking of moral decay, but the spirits of many Americans are bleached out; diluted, pitiful things these days. All of us, somewheres, started out tribal creatures... roasting enemies and drinking their blood (as got ritualized, over time, into religion). The upside was that, at least, these rituals made men from boys, women from girls. No institutionalization of a perpetually adolescent consumer-class, as pursue victim status aggressively as Neanderthals hunted berries and raccoons.

Up in Tacoma, this teenage (and pre-teenage) wolfpack beat a pedestrian to death because the were "bored," alleges columnist Michelle Malkin... a relative of one of the accused coming forward to complain "that the city didn't offer enough recreational activities."

Our legal-psychiatric complex rewards folks with too much or little self-esteem, clumsy burglars, and cuckoo criminals... as that elephant trainer from Knoxville who beat the system by claiming that, as his quadruple murder was committed by only one of his multiple personalities, it would be unfair to jail or execute the rest of himselves! No wonder victims feel compelled to enlist in the ghost army of "closure" as reconstitutes them into haunted, hollow-eyed stalkers... like that lady up in Rochester hiding in bushes by the house of the driver who killed her son for two years, waiting for him to violate probation by driving and, after finally catching him in the act, crowed: "I think it's the beginning of closure.

"Some people would probably think it was morbid, but I just don't think he had that remorse that most of us would have had."

Now for those as care, that driver wasn't drunk: he said the kid darted out on a bicycle in front of his car. I'll leave to God whether he's lying or not. But, as fewer and fewer believe in God, and more and more in the technology... especially that as records, surveils, detects and psychoanalyzes... we have the makings of a society in which there are neither accidents nor intent. And, being as there's too many people with nothing productive to do (and a tendency to imitate the sociopathic and/or vigilante characters as populate the mass media), some say we can afford a culture obsessed with seeking closure by hunting someone down and exacting payment... not always the responsible culprit, of course, but somebody... just as all those nine-eleven victims and survivors (and their attorneys) are still trying to bring rationality to the acts of madmen by suing the airlines, ticket agencies and box-cutter manufacturers. Deep pockets, ripped off, make fine blinders, with which to bind the wrists and blind the vision of Lady Justice.

We place closure on a pedestal, then cringe when the wrong people take sanctuary in its grimy embrace. "He was found guilty," said the mother of Tim McVeigh. "I had my cry, I went home and got on with my life." The moralists in media had a collective hissy-fit... "elemental evil happened," Leonard Pitts reflected, and then descended into heresy as would've got him fired, were he like that substitute teacher who told her class that there was no Santa Claus. "There is no such thing as 'closure'."

"A murder is a murder is a murder," Alabam Governor Don Siegelman answered his critics, as dared speak up against the saintliness of victims and holiness of closure. "It doesn't matter if they were killed by a knife, a gun or a car." Then, over the line, Georgia's Legislature one-upped Don by mandating death for their drunken drivers, as law's now working its way upwards towards Junior's Court. Meanwhile the Sandusky Strangler, thanks to his celebrity lawyers, faces... at worst... a short stay in a comfy psychiatric hospital.

My father, the Senator was insufficiently Squeamish for modern times, but did have a law degree, and did tell me that, while murders almost always involve some sort of killing, killings are not necessarily murders (except as when public officials become personally involved).

Few can claim entitlement privileges lofty as those in high government office but, thanks to bounty-hunting attorneys and so-called "non-profit" lobbies as stir round the people's grief for profit, we can find all kinds of victims as deem themselves entitled to be paid by somebody else. We'd have seen less of this had America paid more attention, not only to the usual liberal suspects in the 60's and 70's, but former Reagan labor undersecretary Dennis Whitfield, as would warn anybody who cared to listen that "...the nation is bound to become poorer unless government, business and labor agree now to educate those without basic skills, make employment more hospitable for working mothers and retrain workers who lose their jobs." We didn't care to listen.

Our mistake!

Entitlement politics bubble up to the surface of the swamp as proxy for real economic advancement. Most entitlement operates by the envy, so there's little market for the laid off steelworkers, hungry children and pregnant waitresses deserted by their husbands to market stuff on their clothing like the ballplayers and corporate rockstars. Maybe some smart-behind Madison Avenue dude will counterprogram... pay a few crack whores or folks with AIDS or that disgusting, flesh eating virus to wear t-shirts and paper hats advertising the competition's ice cream or cola, but the supply of victims is large, demand pretty scrawny and, anyway, like that lady at the LA mentally ill program people didn't give money to complains: "We're not cute!"

Corporations, especially as give money to politicians, are cute as kittens, at least in the eyes of Washington. We make it a crime not to consume consumables as car insurance, allow virtual monopolies to the oilies, dot-commies and such, make the phone and cable companies, Internesters and such as fly round like bats out of a bum magician's hat awhile before settling back into rough beasts as MicroTime^TM and TurnerSoft^TM. Washington kisses up to the ranchers and miners as use public land for pennies, if that, and shovels export-import subsidies at those as who run their facilities off to Upper Ougadougadoo. Drunk "victims" lie down on public highways and railroad tracks, mentally ill folk sue their neighbors for complaining about their screaming at God all night (or, in the interests of reciprocity, Hindus and Muslims suing government for letting Taco Tree serve beef or pork burritos). Biker in Wisconsin even sued his tattoo parlor for stitching "VIOLINS" onto his biceps instead of "VIOLENCE"... which I just might go along with, to the extent of a few hundred bucks to burn it off and some Black Jack for the pain... except that his lawyer included the state health department as a contributing negligee.

Now take this case down in the shared-liability state of Florida... please! This 13-year old, as had been suspended for throwing water-balloons, stole a gun from a neighbor, went back to school and blew his teacher away. The teacher's widow sued, of course, and the jury awarded her $24 million. Half that was charged against the school board, 45% against the neighbor who'd failed to prevent his gun from being stolen and the gun distributor was hit with 5% liability (or $1.2 million). You mean not 1% of the culpability, wondered Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, "...can be attributed to the shooter?"

Even old union guys in baggy suits and ties with naked broads, talking "dese and dose" talk have gone Squeamish... I've had labor clowns up to the office in my time, and all they wanted to talk about was Krugerrands. I ask this guy in a rug and rusting Gore button, "what about the bill as allows private malls to establish their own justice system with courts, jails and private judges (as don't even need law degrees) and, of course, extraterritorial exemption from the OSHA?" Sucker's clueless! I'd think he'd at least wonder about organizing all those rent-a-cops with guns. Meanwhile, mall sovereignty, theme-park and covenant-community lawyers are defending their entitlements to slap 12 year old shoplifters into private, adult prisons and bill the county for their keep.

Reminds me of Nelson Algren (a famous dead guy from Chicago, as wrote that book about junkies, turned into the movie with Frank Sinatra screaming in his closet) quoting some judge, as may or not have existed, saying, more or less, about the sorry procession of bums, hypes and grifters as appeared before him every day: "they won't work, and you can't shoot them..." (or maybe it was gas or hang 'em... this was in those days before lethal injection allowed high criminals to exeunt like unwanted dogs instead of the evil human scum as they were and remain), "... so what the hell do you do with 'em?"

In the interests of cultural integrity, we keep thousands of minority children in Dickensian institutions or abusive, sometimes downright homicidal homes, rather than face down the Squeamish as deny that poverty, race and culture have anything to do with so many more black and brown babies growing up with bad parents or none at all. Toss out so many Squeamish goodies like Mardi Gras beads and what you'll wind up with is copycats. Gay people clamor they're entitled to the same brownie points as minorities... whipping up one of those delicious strange bedfellow situations (no implications intended) of that black group joining right wing homophobes like Congressman Billy Ray Dean, who thundered on the floor that extending Federal hate crime legislation to include Matthew Shepard, that gay student crucified in Wyoming, would dishonor the suffering of victims of lynchings (as practiced in the district Billy's family's represented, one way or another, since the War of Northern Aggression).

Then watch the line begin forming!... if the confederates and gay boys get theirs, why not the fat lady who sued this movie theatre for a couple mil because her seat was so tight but settled for, as I heard, a mere five hundred thou? The Muslim at the same multiplex... as refused to remove a turban as was suspected of containing explosives. That other fat guy persecuted by being allowed to exercise his Constitutional right to eat Big Macs and blimp up? Why not the boy who shot his gun off at school because his attention deficit disorder was a "disability" (and his algebra teacher had raided the nurse's office, stealing all of the school's Ritalin)? Crazy people have rights to self-determination, so let 'em out the crazyhouses to push ladies off subway platforms and sleep on the sidewalks in December, as God and Darwin both intended, and choose our artists, athletes and underwear models by lottery, so nobody gets their feelings hurt.

One Squeamish dance critic for the New Yorker declares she can't review "someone I feel sorry for, or hopeless about."

Animals deserve legal rights too, in the estimation of two-legged "advocates" like Anne Sterling, whose pet peeve is the slander of mallards as serial rapists, because rape... by definition... can only stem from "human patriarchy".

Vegetables? Don't slander spinach or disparage limp asparagus in Maryland... that State Senate put its anti-defamation law on the books after Oprah's Texas beef beef.

"The existence of victims is an indictment of the system and validates the liberal desire for 'change'," pronounced conservative Jeffrey Hart, gleeful for having discovered Eugene McCarthy's contemptuous dismissal of LBJ's agenda... "to make ignorance, mental retardation, ill health, and even ugliness illegal."

"Unpredictability is often a sign of life," Hart added "and I enjoy it whenever I see it." So, no doubt, he'll appreciate the conclusions of Reagan's labor undersecretary Whitfield, as mentioned above:

"We are quickly headed down the path of a two-class society. That's what the Revolutionary War was about and also what the Civil War was about."

But those conflicts, bloody and perilous as they were, were waged over noble and legitimate ideals; even those as were held by the losing factions and so, probably justifiably, vanished into history. Entitlement politics is a scuffle among derelicts over a bottle of Mad Dog someone inevitably knocks over and spills during the tumult... its end is drunken sleep, whereas the strength of humanity results from busy, noisy history. Europe groaned under wars, plagues and invasions but, as a result, their will and physical immunity was steeled so as to overcome the vast populations of the Americas who, had circumstances been otherwise, would certainly have grasped the opportunity to occupy and colonize (and, say the perfessors, eat) the Old World with equal zest.

As is common among Squeamish, as feel an entitlement to run other people's lives, some of the most fanatical Immortalists are Immoralists whose own bodies rebelled against youthful excess and the pause as did more than refresh. Many of these now haunt twelve step groups and victim lobbies... people would as see opportunities to take their victimization and use it as a means of obtaining attention that, otherwise, would never accrue to aging, burned-out scolds.

Not to mention all those alcoholics and burglars and alcoholic burglars who slip and fall, or the recovery vampires who feed on them... even shopaholic retreats as let you pay by credit card, or them as treat compulsive dancers, sleepers, or the sex addicts who join "S-Anon" and so assuage their Squeamishness. Smelling opportunity, the SADD... as upheld the honored tradition of staging bloody accidents to frighten prom night celebrants... recently changed its last two words from "drunk drivers" to "destructive decisions", thereby enlarging its turf by a factor nearing infinity. "If you don't have an addiction to talk about you're almost out of luck!" says Dr. G. Alan Marlatt, of the Addictive Behavior Research Center in Seattle.

"Heroes despise Death," concluded the politically incorrect Oswald Spengler, "saints despise Life."

Any fool knows meat and eggs, refined sugar and spraycan cheese are bad. Very bad. Chinese food's poison... the MSG in it could kill a horse, and the French food... which consists of horses... is bad because of all the creamy, artery plugging sauces spread out across ol' Secretariat. The anthropologists in London say eating tasty, high-protein food... beginning about two million years ago... gave Homo Erectus more fuel for bigger brains with which to exploit the world and each other, according to the Squeamish, so: "If something tastes really good, it is probably bad," Mike Royko wrote, medically and ethically. "And if something tastes really dull, it is probably good." And then he died, proving his point.

Of course there's every bit as much quackery in medicine as in cuisine or waterfowl law. For every simple, inexpensive pill stalled twenty years in the FDA pipeline so that people have to go onto the black market, there's some loophole humbuggery like the Brown Fat clinics, as suction the usual bad old yellow out and inject replacement brown adipose tissue as comes out of genetically tampered-with rats. Now you might say it's difficult to suck fat out of fat rats to inject into people and you'd be right... that's why the procedure's so expensive. My ex sent me a bill for the process... every time I get the bill for her Retin-A treatments, I can't help but think of all those thin, efficient clinicians in their white coats as I used to see, driving her up to Lexington, hard at work in their rubberized basements full of little kids from Trinidad and Thailand, whose eyes they pluck and mash into rejuvenation creams.

If elected President, I'll make Congress bite that bullet on the public health. Either we dump all our sex and dope laws down the john and flush twice (enacting Pittacine "aggravation" statutes to dampen real crime and setting up jackass camps in forests and deserts so derelicts won't clog our cities any more than they do so now) or get consistent and get serious about making Americans immortal (whether they wish to be or not) by making possession and/or consumption of alcohol, tobacco, meat and refined sugar a crime. Won't it be fun to see all them ol' tobacco politicians rolling around in dirt with Rottweilers ripping their European suits to tatters, loose Winstons bouncing from their Yosemite Sam boxers as ATF agents Rodney 'em with the grandkids crying and neighbors looking on? Makes me feel so damn Amurkan I could set off fireworks (though I'm afraid those'll have to go on the dada list too!)

Probably, as I have stated before, issues of dominion still exist... America being a Christian nation and one tenet of Augustinian Christianity being that suffering greases the path to Heaven for both victims and their victimizers. "When you quit exercising," evangelist Jack LaLanne simply warns, "the devil will get you!"

Dangerous habits, we agree, had their place in an America where the frontier was wild, skies were blue, bears numerous and opportunities for involuntary exercise round every corner. All changed, now. Look at all these pools without diving boards... part of a "risk-averse streak" Dave Boldt of the Philadelphia Inquirer fumfered, as has turned us "into a nation of weenies." And not only are we not going up to Mars, NASA is grounding astronauts like Hoot Gibson and Davy Walker for stunt flying, motorcycle ridin' and skiing off-duty. Henry Fairlie, comparing the Apollo and Challenger disasters, determined "the idea that our individual lives and the nation's life can and should be risk-free has grown to be an obsession... threatening to create an unbuoyant and uninventive society."

"Health is not a solution to death," Jon Carroll said when asked the perennial Socratic riddle: paper or plastic? "The real problem is that there are too many organisms on the planet. The real solution is to kill a lot of them and prevent most of the rest from procreating."

"Congress," said George Will, on one of those blue-moon occasions of getting his ducks in a row, however slanted, "cannot legislate useful attitudes." However slathered in useful intentions, guaranteed to bring about better communities, entitlements are like ducks... walk like them, quack like them, even buy their insurance... but, no matter what the Ms. Sterling contends, I aim to keep them far, far the hell away from my brother's little girls!