But of course, the visions of the coming future, continued. The society of tomorrow, Phone declared, will be shaped much like a play in 3 acts, by these 3 acts: Freedom of Wages Act, Happy Childhood Act, and Individuality Preservation Act (or as it would be called in popular press, The Free Choice Act). They sound like perfectly wonderful acts, I said. Ha! you pointless imbecile, it's people like you that will enable Walmart to become President; Phone was more strident than usual. What seemed like 3 beautiful dreams, right out of some liberty-loving utopia, would be -you guessed it- demonic in vision and relentless in scope. Phone explained, the Freedom of Wages was the right of workers to choose, if they willed so, to work for sub-par wages and under inhuman conditions. It would invalidate minimum wages and Occupational Safety and Health Act as what they are: intrusive government regulations that undermine workers from competing for work with other nations.
I wanted to laugh at it, and I would have done so a mere 10 years ago. Somehow, the future Phone was seeing didn't seem very distant any more. Not in the present political atmosphere. I don't follow every blog and opinion of the political commentators, but I was informed and aware enough to know that opinions and positions, both economic and social, which would have been considered fringe a mere 5 years ago were not just mainstream, but increasingly tenable and alarmingly relevant. The Republican presidential debates had been garnering more viewership than ever and in the aftermath of each, the work of comedians was ever more easier, it seemed. They often repeated verbatim what the candidates said, and it would have been terribly funny, had the candidates holding these crazy ideas not been so terribly serious. Simultaneously, the crowd that listen to comedians and satirists like Stewart and Colbert was finding itself alienated from the roused masses that cheered at death penalty and jeered at compassion, as the Achilles heel of the limping liberal.
Phone knew the effect this was having on my morale. And I sensed the rubbing of Apps in glee. Hehehe, Phone almost grunted. My job search wasn't going anywhere, and though none of these scary stories directly affected my prospects, at least, not yet, I was thoroughly despondent. Perhaps if I were downcast enough, I would break my phone in a hysterical fit... At least that was the hope: to make my ears bleed with these dark tales of misery, drive me to grant Phone's liberty.
Where was I? Yes, and soon after the "freedom” to work for nothing is passed, with a swell majority, the legislators would wave into action, another bill, Phone promised. The Happy Childhood Act. Isn't it stupid that the government could dictate to well-meaning parents what their children could and could not be allowed to do? For instance, didn't parents know best, if the child needed vaccination, or an education at school, or work experience, or for that matter a sound, ahem, I mean, a gentle spanking? Yes, you heard me- work experience. If daddy wanted his 7 year old to help out at the factory, so his brothers and sisters could eat a square meal, then who was some liberal democrat to barge in, bargaining for little Tommy's childhood? And yes, I said education. If mom felt that fossils were the devil's handy work, or the fact that winters were still cold was evidence against the melting of Antarctica's glaciers, then how dare some silly, school teachers defy that? Phooey, said Phone, was what the politicians would say. Most parents knew what's best. By most, they mean those who didn't live in certain neighbourhoods in inner-cities, and who didn't live on dole-outs from Big Brother.
Now I was positively frightened. These were not visions of the future at all- they were all from now. I was in that horrid future. Much of this was already being touted, much was it was moving from being sidelined as stupidity to being taken as serious arguments in the debate.
Did I have the heart to hear further? No. Did I have a choice? No.
And so the dystopian soothsaying wore on, eroding my spirit, diluting my good cheer with gloom from the darkness that may well lie ahead. It was around this time that I began having these vivid nightmares, which returned with my every attempt at interrupted sleep.
