A Mother Goose Moment

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It's not encouraging to read and watch the violence in Mexico on TV. The drug cartels seem to kill and plunder at will and the government appears helpless to stop them. Mexico is like a failed political state turning to anarchy as usual. I used to like to go there to visit. Now, violent warlords tell everybody what to do unopposed by the frightened politicians who have to look out for themselves personally in order to survive.

It seems possible that anarchy could happen here in the United States if the politicians on all levels can't find enough money in their budgets to pay the police force instead of laying them off. They don't hire new cops anymore.

Attrition has already diminished their numbers such that I can drive around in my car without seeing a cop for the whole time I'm out and about. The cops I do see appear busy and not interested in stopping anybody for misdemeanors. I still fasten my seatbelt out of my residual fear. It's probably just the calm before the storm. "Once a cop, always a cop."

Once upon a time I convinced my youthful self that the same people who become cops can as easily become robbers. Indeed they have if you watch the 6 o'clock news. It must be a terrible temptation to cross the line. If the State can't afford to pay them to be cops they might decide to become robbers. That doesn't bode well if a state of anarchy emerges.

I've heard that the civilian police forces are paramilitary outfits that can be as gung ho in their disciplinary outlook as their military cousins. The same dictums in the military that states that a busy warrior is a happy warrior implies that an employed cop is a happy cop. In my dotage I like happy cops mo' bettah.

Only a few years ago I remember complaining about how many cops there are here in this county. I compared the present number of people in the county employed by the justice departments to how few there were here when I was a boy growing up. It's a thousand percent growth rate.

It seems silly that I'm now concerned with there not being enough tax money to keep them happily employed. I don't think it would be too big a shock to my system if half the police forces were put outta work. I grew up with not many cops around. But, for people even ten years younger than me it could be a rude awakening. Boys will be boys. Aye, and thar's the rub...

Fewer cops mean that if I don't have a wreck I could drive until I'm ninety years old without getting a ticket. It'll be the cops with the most seniority who will survive a big layoff, and they'll be veterans at turning a blind eye to my age-related driving mistakes. Hell, that's practically a new reason for living.

My entire life seems to have been dedicated to getting by with offbeat behaviors that I ought not to perform if I had been nurturing a political career. I definitely have skeletons in my closet, galore! With my question to my self being: How could I have so easily settled for cheap thrills? It's like I never had no sense of class or culture. Everybody seems to be acutely aware of this in real time about me except por mio. Why am I always the last to know?

I'd like to be joking, but I'm not. My brother's four year old grandsons were brought over for a visit as they usually are when they're visiting their grandparents next door. The last time they were here one of them looked me sincerely in the face and asked me, "Uncle felix, why do you keep such a messy house?" I knew exactly which adults prompted his up-until-now-innocent curiosity.

I feel shame to be such an embarrassment to my own kinfolk. I even moved a couple of pieces of furniture upstairs in order to feel less contemptible in their jaundiced view of the world. That's exactly what people in general hate about me not cleaning up around myself properly. Even though I feel shame, I don't feel no blame. I know what I'm here for, and neatness just don't count in that penultimate pursuit.

I've lived such a self-deprived lifestyle that I feel lucky to have a private place to store my ratty belongings and get inside out of the weather. As sorry a life as I've lived it's more than I deserve, and yet the world wants to nag me to keep it looking tidy for their sake? What a downer to exist as depraved nemesis to my own families and their snooty friends and children. If they'll just wait until next year, I'm gonna change my inbred ways for damn sure.
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