Yet to Come

[Lefty]

Something the HH6 found - thought it should be shared.

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Yet to Come

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to
her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered.
Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday
football game between Detroit and Washington . Ever since the
government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle
football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the
rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to
be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the
thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type
of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American
Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden
foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat
pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. And ever since the government
officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of
Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically
brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its
luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of
government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even
weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since
Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all
thermostats-which were monitored and controlled by the electric company-be
kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely
tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the
family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had
used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had
many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned
when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was
forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded
she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's
resources are limited," explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke
with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was
entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car
last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of
2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines-for everyone but
government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too
far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere
between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston
made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion.
No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon
after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely
aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a
cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added
"inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step
ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such
probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about
anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made
it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny,"
even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls,
train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine.
Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a
Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the
law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible," said the
Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one
for years. We should learn from their example," she added.

Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well
with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him.
Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at
any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had
occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was
all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was
the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the
bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were "just
around the corner," but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude
that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't
help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a
cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control
Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of
another human being. Winston paid the $5000 fine, which might have been
considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless
as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal
government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This
time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%,
but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before
remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He
felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know
what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises
to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston,
like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could
change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so
people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while
there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense
began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough
is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.
Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

[Slowpoke]

I'm afraid that this is a lot closer than many folks realize.

[rgrwest]

Ecellent Post, I just cut and pasted it for emailing purposes. One of my 25,000 alotted for the month.