literature

The Future of the Discontentless

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Literature Text

Welcome to a country where nothing ever happens. 

There used to be bombings and shootings and poisonings and massacres. There used to be tragedies every day, but the people knew what they wanted. They wanted to be free and they wanted their government to protect them. The real problem was not what the people wanted to have, but how the government planned to give the people what they wanted, when what they wanted was an oxymoronic need to feel safe.

People wanted the right to bear arms, but people without guns didn’t want those who owned them, to use them. The NRA fought a losing battle; they pointed at the Constitution like it meant something, pointed at the criminals blaming them for the worlds problems…But criminals weren’t the ones marching into schools and nobody could afford to shine a light on mental health or how easy it was for those with psychological illnesses and radical ideas to gain access to weapons, children, and public spaces with large crowds… So the government gave everyone guns. The government gave everyone guns and made bullets illegal. Everyone had the right to bear arms. Nobody had the right to use them.

Next, we needed a solution to the War on Terror. People wanted the war to end and they wanted terrorist wiped off the map. International travel and immigration were halted with the exception of those who worked in international trading and sales. Nobody got in and nobody got out. Foreigners who also happened to be citizens were rounded up and the country divided down the middle. Immigrants got half the country, those born here for generations back got the other half, and anchor babies landed somewhere in the middle. With the lack of new immigrants, the nation knew one day, the great divide would fade and there’d just be Americans again.

People were only allowed to congregate in groups of fifteen to limit the devastation should an attack occur; and citizens’ movements were tracked by little GPS devices implanted in between their shoulder blades. Those who would not agree to an implant were sterilized and sent to concentration camps… Now terrorists had either agreed to be tracked and could be found almost immediately, or they were already imprisoned for crimes they hadn’t committed yet. Terror would die out. It wasn’t given a choice. Soon everyone would be the same whether they liked it or not.

Next came healthcare. Not mental health care, of course not, that would be asking too much. Everybody was entitled to affordable healthcare. They even had cures for Diabetes, HIV/Aids, and cancer, not that anyone had access. You had a right to painkillers and antibiotics and insulin to treat the illnesses you might have, because treatments were now affordable. No one had the right to a cure. The cure was for those who could afford it and by the time the government sorted through the job market crisis, no one would ever afford anything except those who were already rich.

See, there weren’t enough jobs, and everybody wanted jobs so they could all have a little money, but nobody wanted to share their money. Therefore, instead of sharing money, people with jobs shared theirs with those who were unemployed. So people who used to get a paycheck got half a paycheck or a third or a fourth, because they now only had to work a quarter as much.

Luckily, without mental health care those with mental problems often didn’t seek health care, and some of those died out. Unluckily, others reproduced and the numbers fluctuated until the crazy outnumbered the sane; it was good news for the sane because the crazy couldn’t hold onto jobs. The crazy didn’t want jobs, but they couldn’t afford housing and the government demanded all people have housing. Therefore, the homeless and the crazy, which were more frequently one in the same, were given tents if they didn’t have one already. The tents were then deemed property and therefore taxable. However, the homeless couldn’t pay taxes, the ones who wanted work were given government jobs and the ones who didn’t want work were allowed to live in the concentration camps with the terrorists.

Then came the idea of censorship. No one wanted censorship but no one wanted to see something they didn’t want to see especially when they didn’t want to see it. Therefore, a law passed that you could read, view, listen to anything you wanted inside your own home, but outside your home you were not allowed to read, view, listen or speak about anything at all. This led to more people staying home and minding their own business and less people wandering about willynilly causing unwanted chaos.

With the inevitable shifting of power, from the sane yet politically manipulative to the insane but politically mute, a man with dissociative identity disorder took the White House. The war between Republican and Democrats, Liberal and Conservatives was at an end. President Jackson Whitman was a Republican, President Alexis Boar was a Democrat, President LouAnn was a Liberal, President Morgan Grey was Conservative, President Allen Garcia was a Moderate, and President Orlov Altukhov thought he was a Russian cosmonaut… It was just our luck that all these magnificent people happened to live in the same body. The body of a Mexican American Muslim -- and if racism hadn’t been deemed an act of terrorism, and racists cast out with the terrorists-- some people might have found the idea of a Mexican American Muslim vaguely upsetting.

Unwelcome to America. A nation free of the bravely discontent, where nothing ever changes, under Gods of your personal preference.
This is what happens when I write angry. I make no apologies.
Based off a writing prompt to write a pessimistic view of the future. I don't remember who supplied the prompt.
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