The Future

[Mr VJP]

Winston, come into the dining room,  its time to eat, Julia yelled

to her husband.

 

In a minute, honey, its 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 thermostatswhich 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 life-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 RHCs resources are limited, explained the

government bureaucrat  Winston spoke with on the phone. Your mother

received all the    benefits to which she was entitled.  Im 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, Winstons 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.  Winstons own  body had grown accustomed to such probing

ever since the government  expanded their scope to just about anywhere

a crowd gathered, via  the 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 Courts eldest  member, Elena Kagan. Europe has had laws

like this one for  years.  We should learn from their example, she

added.

 

Winstons 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 $5,000 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 so all might

realize 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 2009, when all the  real

nonsense began.  Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if  wed just

said enough is enough when we had the chance, he  thought.

Maybe so, Winston.  Maybe  so.

[fasteddie]

It's a long read but very interesting ........

[Caveman]

Interesting read

[nyantler]

Now that was creative... good read

[jasons75]

Good read....... And the sad fact is this could become reality....

[bpb]

You want to know what the future holds for us? Look at the Reservations~ government set them up and runs them.

[ny hunter]

That is a bit scarey to say the least.

[2BRKnot2B]

You want to know what the future holds for us? Look at the Reservations~ government set them up and runs them.

You might also look into UN Agenda 21, UN H.A.B.I.T.A.T. I & II. The purpose is to get all persons into city aras, taken from, or nudged into them from the rural & suburban areas so they can be better controlled. Don;t be so foolish as to think that a DemoncRATick (evil, blood sucking, vermin) senate might approve such one day in the future. If, that is, they haven't used $7 a gallon gas to nudge us there first.