The Good Old Days

In response to the sudden and totally unexpected absence of farm workers to harvest Florida's abundant fruit and vegetable crops, legislators have proposed doing away with Child Labor Laws that were enacted in 1938, allowing children of all ages to earn a supplemental wage while enjoying the manifest benefits of fresh air and healthy exercise. It seems there are insufficient prisoners, immigrant farm workers and others at the disposal of the state to fill the gap brought on by the enlightened policies now in effect.

This makes perfect sense as the decision to disband the department of education will as well prepare our children for a lifetime of such labor and unquestioning obedience to the state. This, along with the many farsighted changes to our health and public safety, climate and occupational safety regulations means we are winding our way back to the good old days, and to be clear many believe it is none too soon.

But why stop here, when there are so many vaunted institutions that can be rehabilitated and made new in the Great America that is being fashioned. How about internment camps, pauper prisons, and mental health facilities complete with eugenic sterilization? It seems we cannot build internment facilities fast enough and not every 3rd world country is eager to act as our surrogate jailers. So let's put the kids to work building those facilities in their off hours after they come in from the fields. We'll need to since the construction industry too has suffered a sudden lack of workers willing to clamber on roofs, frame tall structures, or pour concrete, and the good news is that the kids will be learning a trade.

Public housing is a failed concept but we have vast tracts of public land where we can construct camps for the homeless as we cannot permit them to roam the streets freely. Better to ship them off where they can be out of sight and mind. Of course that will be a short term problem as the lack of food and health safety nets will soon reduce that population handily. The vision is becoming clearer day by day. At the present rate we'll transform our country to the America of the 1800's when things were just swell.

Perhaps you think I am jesting and my poor attempts at hyperbole are misguided. Or maybe you and I can agree that there were and are many things about our country which we need to address. Among the wealthiest countries in the world, America's health and education lag dismally behind, while more and more of us live life treading economic waters that threaten our daily existence. People are right to feel the need for change, but change to what and change how? That is the essence of our divide.

A precipitous dismantling of our institutions and laws, a flagrant disregard for the lessons of history and an accelerated shift of resources from those with the least to those with wealth have not and will not bring us to a better place, no matter how many press releases and self congratulatory platitudes the administration may issue. As I wrote the other day, it is time to cease deploring what is deplorable, and start building the kind of future we need and want for our children and our country.

Resistance from the powers that be and those not currently in power but who wish to be will not vanish. The point of maximum resistance always precedes the turning point to a new and better world. That is not to say it will be easy but it will be if we are resolved and if we can put aside the governors we have put on our imagination. We can live in a world where our people do not go homeless or hungry, where science and art, and learning are valued. We can, as many other countries do, educate, heal and protect our citizens without bankrupting our economy. But to do this we must agree that those are the priorities we wish to hold sacred. And then we must put people in office who will uphold those aims and hold them accountable.

Sounds far fetched right? Maybe it is, maybe a dream such as we had when this country was founded is just an unattainable illusion, or may be it is we who stopped dreaming of a just, peaceful and noble cause. Maybe it is we who have put our own necks in the yoke and allowed the dream to die, to be replaced by a vapid and illusory quest for a world that just wasn't the good old days.