Posted on 01/14/2012 10:17:22 AM PST by Sen Jack S. Fogbound
"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 2014, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat 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 looks 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 life-saving medical treatment.
He had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt in trying to compete with the tax-subsidized RHC, and everyone was forced into the two-tiered government health care program, the higher tier being for legislators and bureaucrats.
And though he pleaded that 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 cars 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 the 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. "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 2016, 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 QE 13. 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 fellows 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 2010 when the government takeover began to accelerate with all the czars and presidential cadre and the many-tentacled health care bill tightened around us, and the full scale media and academe attacks on free enterprise had not been thrown into high gear. It might have all decelerated if only President Obama had not won re-election in 2012.
"Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.-
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
~~ James Madison ________________________________________
A mild look at our future is more like it.
68 degrees is balmy. We have ours set at 58-62. If I’m working in the kitchen, I turn it down to 58 to 60. If I’m reading, browsing FR or watching TV, it’s set at 60 to 62.
The trouble with a tale like this is that none of it is outlandish or far fetched. I'd go farther and say that the parents will not be allowed to keep their children. The State will have them. Once the parent smoked a cig the monitor that the children wear will detect it and they will be gone.
Winston and Julia married in 1984? Who knew?
She still makes him a sammich??
That is the most frightening thing I've ever read on Free Republic.
I can barely function if the temperature drops below 75. It's 74 in the house now and I have on sweats and a long-sleeve shirt.
Just to counter the calamitous cooling your bringing to the planet, I'm going to turn up the thermostat to 76!
It's the least I can do to save the planet from Trisham-made global cooling. Ha ha!
We set ours at 62. I’m sitting here with a fleece blanket over my knees and my nose buried in my turtleneck. It’s a beautiful day, a cloudless sky and the sun just came up at 9:45. The outdoor temperature is currently at 40 degrees - below.
All right, now that's the SECOND most frightening thing I've ever read on Free Republic!
Where do you live: Greenland? :^)
Omigosh! You had me laughing so hard! I had to share it with my husband.
We live in Alaska, in the hills above Fairbanks. It was indeed 40 below. Only about 27 below today. I drove to church this morning through thick ‘ice fog’ only to find out that our service had been cancelled. O-o-o-kay. Continue to march!
You are one tough cookie! I've heard about Fairbanks temps but I thought they had to be exaggerations.
Stay warm up there! And don't worry about me: It was 63 degrees yesterday here in NW Arizona! (And that's ABOVE zero).
Yikes.
Someone does a (very) convincing Orwell.
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