Culture post (General Observations) Mindless Sappy Militarism Masquerading as Patriotism, “Private Sector” Bureaucracy, and “I see Police Officers”.

I don’t watch much Network TeeVee but I caught a show the other night that I have only seen about twice before. It is a show in which some down on their luck family has their house totally redone for free by some dream team of builders and designers.

The first time I saw this show it was about some disabled Iraq war vet getting his house totally redone for him to make it more wheelchair accessible. This time- it was another Vet of the Iraq war – who for no particular purpose wore his beret and uniform throughout the show (he was flown back from Iraq for the show). He had nothing but good things to say about the war and everyone simply agreed without saying how awesome he was for “protecting” and “serving” us in Iraq.

I gagged with horror throughout this sappy propaganda. This is actually rather common fare among our “liberal” networks and the war. Game shows routinely play up vets from the Iraq War. There is obvious government/military collaboration with these shows in providing them with party line vets and soldiers who parrot the usual garbage.

On another front- I have trouble sleeping. I have for years. So recently I thought if I can’t sleep for more than three hours at a time I might as well do something useful in the wee hours when everyone is sleeping. For years I have seen these ads for temp and part time work at a Boston Globe distribution center. The job would be to collate the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe early in the morning on Saturday- for 3 or 4 hours and it paid a respectable hourly wage- for basically mindless work. This job has a high turnover rate because it is only one day a week and at 2am in the morning. So I thought what the hell? I am not hurting for money exactly but I can’t watch the same HBO movies over and over again either every night. So I called the 800 number to arrange a time to go down and talk to a manager about the job.

Now I figured this would be a snap and pretty informal. Ooooooh wrong! Upon walking in I am handed a 5 or 6 page job application as if I were applying for a job with the FBI. Every possible thing about me they wanted to know- every past employer, all the schools I attended, my healthcare plan if any, my race, my criminal record going back 5 years . . . a sexual harassment policy form for me to sign, on and on and on.

Now I expected some sort of paper work so I could get paid- little more than my name. But for a job less than a half day’s work a week at 2AM, that is utterly mindless, with zero responsibility, in a friggin warehouse located in a dirty industrial park outside of Boston they want and expect me to fill out a form that literally would have taken me an hour?

I noticed that half of what they wanted on these forms was some government requirement. I sat there for a second- filled out my name and address and phone number and then went into the guy’s office who looked startled that I had “finished” so fast. I handed him the application and told him I had no intention of filling out all that crap for a part time meaningless drudge job and that if he was serious about hiring me- he could call me- turned and left.

Driving around I can’t help but notice the numbers of cops and their varieties. Town cops, state cops, city cops, MBTA cops, Sheriffs, and even the occasional black SUV with that blue federal license plate that almost certainly contains a fed cop from the many DC police type agencies. Oh- and in the sky- cop helicopters.

A friend of mine noted that every election politicians talk about “putting more cops on the streets” so that we are “safe”. That seems to be all Americans care about. Being “safe”. Will a politician ever ask the obvious question? How many cops is enough? Aren’t we drowning in cops in this country? And what is the number of cops on the street that will finally make us “safe”? Huh? Why not assign a cop for every three households in the country? Wouldn’t that make us “safe”?

Politics in this country is infantile and imbecilic.