Sunday thoughts

 Where I live it snowed in the night, and this morning a fresh blanket and deep silence lay over a monochrome world. It's a study in grays and whites, this world -- frosted tree branches reaching for a battlement sky -- and every other color in the palette has dried to a crust, its own day still a month or two off.

I don't know if this has made me more contemplative than usual. Maybe so.

What I do know is I'm not thinking this morning about Team USA beating Team Canada in a damn fine game of hockey last night ... or about some guy fresh out of ideas jumping over a car in the NBA slam dunk contest, something Blake Griffin did years ago ... or about the Daytona 500 trying to beat the rain down there in Florida this afternoon.

No, sir. I'm thinking about someone I know.

I won't tell you who she is, or even how I know her, but the other day she lost her dream job for no legitimate reason. A longtime elementary school teacher, she was a U.S. Park Service ranger out east. It was something she'd always wanted to be, and the only thing good you can say about the vandals who took it away from her is they didn't single her out. A whole lot of other rangers across America lost their dream jobs, too.

 According to the chief vandal and all his little cyberpunk vandals, see, they're government waste, fat to be trimmed and discarded so the chief vandal and the rest of the leisure class can help themselves to another superfluous tax cut. The other day, the chief vandal (with typically elitist disdain) dubbed them the "Parasite Class," and all true hard-working Americans should be glad they're gone.

They should be like the chief vandal, who celebrates like his team won the Super Bowl every time he gets to issue some civil service employee his or her walking papers.

This is because the chief vandal is the richest man in the world, and so doesn't have to concern himself with the little people. It's also because he's an asshole, although the latter too often seems naturally to follow the former.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about this person I know. I'm thinking about the park rangers at some of my favorite Civil War sites who also lost their jobs this week -- dedicated professionals who were worth every dime they made. And I'm thinking about another person I know who works for a different federal agency, and whose job therefore may be in the chief vandal's crosshairs, too.

I'd use the chief vandal's name, but you know who he is. Me, I just call him Apartheid Clyde because of his South African roots, and also the fact his family got rich on the backs of black labor back when Nelson Mandela was in prison.

Anyway, I'm thinking about Apartheid Clyde whooping it up over putting people like my friend out of work, and it makes me want to send his sorry ass back to Johannesburg in a leaky boat. The people he's turning cartwheels over firing, see, are human beings with spouses and children and mouths to feed, and mortgages to pay. They are not government "waste" or "fraud" or the beneficiaries of "corruption." Nor are they "parasites," for the love of god.

No, I'd sooner think that term applies to Apartheid Clyde, who gets fat off our tax dollars thanks to the millions in government contracts he rakes in. And over which he's now allowed to sit in judgment.

You want to talk fraud and corruption, let's start there.

In the meantime, I won't think about the chief vandal and the rest of the vandals, and all their unproven claims about the waste, fraud and corruption they're supposedly cleaning up. They never tell us how they're doing this, see, or even if what they consider waste, fraud and corruption are actually that. And so from here all it looks like they're doing is plumping up the nation's unemployment numbers.

Which brings us back to this person I know. 

Like the many others upon whose unemployment graves the chief vandal likes to dance, she in no way deserved such a vile little waltz. She in no way deserved to lose her dream job, and she for damn sure doesn't deserve to be slandered on top of it by the likes of Apartheid Clyde.

Who came to America to get rich. And who got rich, because, as we were all told in school, America is the land of opportunity.

Yeah, well. Not for everyone these days, it seems.