Montana
seems to bring out the quirky side of folks as
recently happened with Christopher the trucker.
Apparently, Chris was in a squabble with upper
management, so he unhitched his refrigerated trailer
leaving 37,000 pounds of frozen chickens to fend for
themselves in the September heat at a Flying J west
of Missoula. The birds struggled valiantly, but
eventually succumbed to climate change and turned
the inside of the cargo trailer into a nasty,
necrotic, fowl soup. Health Department officials
discussed possible solutions, none of which were
particularly glamorous. Eventually, the mass of
rotten flesh was off-loaded into a pit at the
landfill; not the best day to be a loader operator
with a keen sense of smell, but someone had to do
it.
This incident reminded me of the time I performed a
necropsy on a cow which had already been dumped at
the rendering plant along with other decomposing
critter casualties. The stench of rotting flesh
stuck to my skin like paint and even though my exam
took less than a minute and I showered afterwards, I
oozed the aroma for days. Only my dog was happy to
see me that evening and thinking of her reaction
sparked today’s column.
Picture this: You are trailing a couple hundred
yearling steers through a mountain pasture when the
herd stumbles upon a rotting carcass. Each species
reacts in a very predictable fashion. The steers
will circle the dead critter and at a distance of
about six feet, they will stand with their noses to
the ground and stare at it determining if it is
good, bad or just different. Your horse will snort,
blow and shy sideways a full 50 feet before reaching
the bone pile. He recognizes the stench of death and
will run over anything to put distance between him
and it. Lastly, your cow dog will sprint to the
middle of the mass of maggots, drop a shoulder and
roll in it as giddy as can be. If there is doggie
aroma therapy, this is it, so let’s let him enjoy
himself while I appear to change subjects.
This is the silver anniversary of President
Johnson’s War on Poverty, a conflict carrying a
price tag of 22 trillion dollars; an amount three
times higher than the combined costs of all other
wars since 1776. With today’s poverty rate nearly
the same as it was in 1964 you would think the war
was lost, but it was a raging victory as 100 million
Americans are now dependent on government aid;
exactly as designed. More accurately, this was a War
FOR Poverty and it has morphed America into three
classes: Those enslaved by dependency, the producers
enslaved by debt and the ruling class enjoying raw,
unbridled power. Now I will make my point by
blending these three classes into my story of the
steers stumbling onto the rotting carcass.
The dead animal represents American liberty. It
wasn’t a lightning strike which killed her; Marxist
wealth redistribution infected her in the late 1800s
and ate her from the inside out. President Woodrow
Wilson’s progressive income tax was the first
clinical sign she was infected. FDR’s Social
Security and LBJ’s Great Society programs meant the
disease had gone septic. There were moments when
liberty looked like she might recover, such as when
President Clinton signed off on welfare-to-work, but
this temporary remission was recently rescinded by
President Obama. Liberty is dead.
The dependent class is represented by the curious
steers. They suspect the death of liberty is bad,
they just don’t know why. The producing class is the
horse. The stench of death barely touched their
nostrils before they knew things were wrong. In
fear, hopelessness and disgust, they ran away. This
leaves the ruling class; the dog who knew this would
be the perfect day for a roll in a rotting carcass
and they bask in the glory of their moment.
If you disagree, name a single progressive who
regrets destroying our great American experiment in
freedom. For the ruling class, the 22 trillion
dollars was the nominal cost of replacing liberty
with an intrusive, controlling government. Think
before you vote because it took over a century to
create this mess and like 37,000 pounds of rotting
chicken it won’t be cleaned up overnight.
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