On the third week of their tour, word came via telegraph that John Glatt and the Strike Committee had succeeded in establishing its most visionary law to date: the privatization of everything once managed by the Federal government. The armed forces had years before been replaced by private security contractors, but the new law, dubbed The Mind Your Own Business Act, continued in that rational, efficient tradition. Environmental protection, highway maintenance, air traffic control, the minting of currency: all sloughed off their old, diseased governmental skin and were born anew under private, for-profit exploitation. “Let the word go forth,” John Glatt announced. “From this day forward, the United States is a gated community. Visitors must announce themselves at the guard station, and trespassers will be prosecuted.”
The consequences of these new policies were quickly forthcoming. In a small town in Italy, a cobbler whose lifelong dream had been to emigrate to the U.S. decided to remain in his home town and pursue his cobbling there. In a large city in Algeria, a family of four who had saved for years to emigrate to the U.S. concluded that, with no more public amenities, services, entitlement payouts, emergency room medical care, or food stamps available in America, they’d be better off moving to Spain. An Indonesian grocer, disheartened at the news that America was no longer a place where the weak, the mediocre, the lazy, or the incompetent might thrive on the wealth extracted from the industrious and the successful, killed himself.
But a young man in Senegal, either in ignorance of the new laws or in defiance of them, went forward with his plan to move to America. When word of his arrival at JFK reached the citizens of Queens, N.Y., they covertly formed a “Citizens’ Strike Support Committee” and, by cover of night, burned down the airport. All that remained on the smoking site was a note reading, “We’re taking back this land and returning it to its original state.” Within a week of this event, ports, airports, and cross-border highway checkpoints all over the continental U.S. were ravaged by fire, explosives, or the concerted efforts of massed demonstrators. The instigators of these actions became folk heroes overnight. One broadcast on a shortwave radio frequency, “If they don’t get the message when we deny them the America of their dreams, they’ll get it when we deny them a way to enter our shores.” When airport or maritime unions protested these acts, John Glatt and the Strike Committee issued Communique No. 12, which outlawed collective bargaining in all corporations employing more than three persons. This, Dragnie thought, was the apotheosis of the highest American values: The rejection of collective action as being repugnant to the American ideal of self-sufficiency, and the defense of each corporation’s right to deal honestly and straightforwardly with each employee on an individual basis. This, she concluded as the Tagbord Special pulled into Sacramento, was the very essence and enactment of moral significance.
Chapter 7
The Scum of the Earth of the World
The meeting took place in a squalid, filthy room in the basement of the White Home in the nation’s capital. Formerly used as an office for the social secretary of the Head Person of the Government of the U.S., it had fallen into neglect over the past ten years as that office, once highly admired by men, was seen to be an empty shell devoid of meaning and significance, and important people from industry, agriculture, the arts, and the sciences no longer wished to be seen associating with its occupant. The nauseatingly mint green institutional paint was peeling from its unhappy walls. Several bulbs were missing from its harsh overhead array of disingenuous fluorescent lights, presenting the appearance of a series of dark gray bruises amid the glare. There were no windows. A scent of mold, dead things, and moral exhaustion permeated the air.
Present at the meeting were Mr. Jenkins, the Head Person of the U.S., and his usual coterie of experts and advisers: Philip Sissyburger, the effeminate and complacent Minister of Equality; Dr. Francis Tinklepants, the Chief Diplomat to Foreign Places, who was incapable of offering a direct answer to any question put to him; Professor Davis, the Secretary of Wisdom, who insisted that his conception of reality was superior to all others; and T.T. Mucklicker, who was an authority on what was known as Public Relations. They had assumed their seats along one side of the conference table and now watched as, under conditions of the highest security, four other men arrived: M. Jacques Beaucoup, of The People’s State Of The People Of France; Sir Lord Derek Blimey, of The People’s State Of The People Of Great Britain; Dr. Ivan Lubyanka, of The People’s State Of The People Of Russia; and Signore Giuseppe Tortellini, of The People’s State Of The People Of Italy.
The conference, which was to be held under conditions of absolute secrecy, began with an exchange of banalities, preliminary small-talk, and a shared sardonic admission that the clandestine nature of the event gave ample proof that its participants were moral weaklings and deserved the contempt of good, clean, rational men everywhere. Then the agenda was called. Mr. Jenkins began. “Everyone has been briefed, so you know our major concern. It’s this damn Strike. I don’t like it, I tell you! I don’t like it at all!”
“If I may, Monsieur Jenkins,” said M. Beaucoup. “It is liked by none of us. Having deceptively and self-servingly foisted collectivization upon our people, we are now discovering that, without a fantasy of one day escaping to a free America full of tolerance and opportunity, they have begun to believe that they should overthrow the People’s State and institute actual Capitalism! Sacre bleu, as we French say!”
“Quite so,” said Sir Lord Blimey. “It’s the same with us Brits in Britain. As career government workers, we found it in our narrow interest to expand the public sector as much as possible, resulting in a People’s State of the People which, as some wags have commented in their witty and ironic British manner, should more properly be called the People’s State of the Bureaucrats. We are happy to endure their sarcasm, and consider it a small price to pay for our large salaries, guaranteed job security, lavish expense accounts, and handsome pensions. In addition, we enjoy the kind of prestige among our fellow human beings that would be unknown to us were we to somehow find employment commensurate with our abilities in the private sector. But now that the U.S. has removed itself from the imagination of our people, there is widespread discontent and talk of re-instituting private enterprise! It is appalling, simply appalling.”
“Is John Glatt,” sneered Ivan Lubyanka. “He is crafty adversary. And wife. Also Mr. Hunk Rawbone and the Chilean talc merchant, De Soto. And Swedish pirate. Why you do not lock them up and throw away key?”
“Don’t blame me!” Mr. Jenkins cried. “I’m just the Head Person! I can’t help it! I have to do what I’m told. Moreover, I’m a weakling! I can’t assert even my own modest powers! I lack the inner strength that comes from consciously having integrity!”
“Be peaceful, my friend,” said Signor Tortellini. “We all want the same thing, in truth.”
“And what is that, gentlemen?” All conversation ceased as Professor Davis slowly removed the pipe from his mouth, puffed on it, filled it, and surveyed the men at whom he was looking. He was a repulsive fat slob with a shiny suit and a stain on his tie, the pattern of which was no longer in fashion. “Shall I tell you what it is that we all want? It is stability, security, and respect.”