To Make a Long Story Short
Modified Anarchy
©2023 Elder Road Books
Originally drafted in 1985
Never published
YES, I DO CONSIDER MYSELF a prisoner. Even though I’m not currently in jail. They told me I’d be watched. One slip and they would put me away forever.
Soon after I started publishing letters, they summoned me to Washington where I refused to register as the representative of a foreign government. What government? Do they think I like the communists better than the capitalists? That I’d rather live in a monarchy? That the alternate universe I created for a work of fiction is real? They’re all the same—intolerable.
So, they said, “Then what political party are you?” That is as ridiculous a question as what government I represent. What difference is there between the parties? Who even put in the constitution that there was a two-party system? I read the document, but didn’t find that in it.
As John Adams, the second president of the United States, said: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
So, if I have to make a statement, it’s this: I’m a modified anarchist. As Wesley said, “All law is oppressive. The lack of law is a law in and of itself.” (The Book of Wesley, CCX, 209-210)
I just reached the point where the amount of oppression in our country exceeded what I could tolerate. One day I rebelled. The less law the better! Limit laws to things that allow people to live together and get rid of everything else. Stop trying to legislate morality. And that, in my opinion, eliminates the need for congress.
Mind you, congress is not the only lawmaker. I’ve had it with Fifth Avenue advertising agencies, as well. They are the ones who pass judgment on what I wear, what and where I eat, what kind of car I drive, and what I wipe my butt with.
Now get this: Somebody in a plush office on the 37th floor is spending his time analyzing how I choose toilet paper. It’s downright invasion of privacy. What business is it of theirs how I choose toilet paper?
So, I decided I was tired of being used by these bastards to line their pockets with silver. Now when I go to a store or shop for anything, I buy nothing for which I can sing the jingle. I don’t see the USA in a Chevrolet. I don’t eat food by Libby’s Libby’s Libby’s. If I can choose between something I’ve never heard of before and a brand advertised on television, I choose the one I never heard of. (I tried to update this, but the classic jingle has been replaced by the sonic identity—usually not more than five notes.)
When politicians started plastering the median of our boulevard with yard signs splashing their names in large letters, I put up my own sign. It simply said, “Vote for someone else!” If, on your ballot, you recognize the name from a yard sign, vote for someone else. Why vote for a litterbug?
One of the worst things ever invented was the credit card bill. It was bad enough to get a statement of all the stupid ways I wasted money in the past month; but they have gone one better. They send a whole envelope full of other advertisements of the stupid things I might have missed when I was in the store. And the amount of the advertisements is always right around the same as the amount due on the bill. That’s so you can never pay off the debt.
For a long time, I just dumped them all in a paper bag and threw them in the incinerator. Then, of course, they banned outside burning, and we had to pay for someone to come around once or twice a week and cart away all this trash we get in the mail. So, I decided that anything they sent me, I’d send back. They kindly included a postage-paid envelope for my check. I just staple all the advertisements that come, order blanks and all, to the check, write “no thank you” on them, and send them back.
I have even decided to write notes to the blank faces that receive my payment envelopes chock full of all the garbage they send me. I let them know the date of receipt of the bill and the date of payment as proof that I am not ‘over 30 days.’ I tell them when to send the next bill for fastest payment. I let them know what I think of the things they have sent me. And now I have begun enclosing order blanks for my books so they can order and pay me. (Of course, in 2023, no one gets a paper credit card bill. They simply have to wade through advertisements for anything they’ve already bought on Facebook or in email.
I’m certain, though, that if they finally come to take me away—hey hey—it will be over my income tax. There is always a way to pay less tax, and I am determined to find it. If not, the bastards are going to have to go through hell to collect. I heard once that a guy in China discovered that it took 32 days for a file to reach the top of the tax collector’s pile and that every time new correspondence came in, the file would be pulled and put at the bottom of the pile. So, he sent a letter to the revenue service every 31 days. He avoided paying taxes for over ten years.
My own method, I stumbled upon quite by accident. I was determined to find every possible means to legally keep from paying tax. So, I went to my local government center and got a copy of every tax form that is printed. I took them home and carefully filled out every one. When I had no numbers to put in the blanks, I wrote Not applicable on every line. I used the remainder of each form as a scratch pad for figuring and doodling as I filled out the next form in the pile.
No, I was not successful in evading income tax on my twelve thousand dollar income. And when I finished, I had a stack of tax forms three inches thick, with the 1040A short form buried among them, accurately computing my tax. So, I shoveled them all up into a box, paid the postage, and sent the whole lot to the IRS, along with an entire duplicate set of my receipts, cancelled checks, and pay stubs for the past year, so that if they had any questions, they could audit the entire file right there in their little offices.
Oh, and there’s another hint. Instead of using numerals as you fill in the form, write out the values like I did above: twelve thousand dollars. (Good luck doing that if you e-file!)
By law, they are required to retain for their files everything I send them for five years and to read and review the forms I send. I figure that in five years, I will take up at least one full file drawer at the IRS. Can you imagine a better way to cripple an agency than to have just a thousand taxpayers submit absolutely complete files to their branch offices? In five years, it couldn’t function. We would be rid of this ridiculous over-taxation.
And it is all legal. So, they will poke through my papers to find the one error I made in 1971 of reporting thirty-one cents too little income, and they will jail me for the rest of my life over the penny of tax I failed to pay, just to get me to stop talking.
That’s what they want, you know. They want us to stop talking, stop thinking, and blindly follow the power-builders. We’re kidding ourselves if we think we elect presidents and congressmen for our good. We elect our officials on the same basis as we buy our toilet paper: Because some advertising agent made us believe that our asses want paper that’s squeezably soft. Never mind if it does the job.
Who made toilet paper so important that untold millions of dollars are spent improving it, advertising it, researching it? I’ll tell you: The same people who ran Reagan’s presidential campaign. The same ones who tested RCA against Sony. The same people who put a tiger in your tank and gave you the Aviance Night. Yes, even the same people who made it impossible to buy a house without a person in a gold coat to hand you a pen. (Oh, come on! Update the references yourself. This was written in 1985!)
I’ll be damned if some power-hungry mongrel is going to get his hard-on by standing on my thumbs. That goes for government, the ad agencies, GM, and all the television news reporters who are so willing to pick up the standard of the common man in order to increase their ratings. If they wanted to know what I think, they could ask me. For God’s sake, don’t ask Mike Wallace. I once had a father-in-law who summed up Wallace’s philosophy. “Everbody’s a crook,” he said. Well, I rebelled against him, too, and at the last all he could do was shake his Bible at me and ‘thou-shalt-not’ himself to the wind. Worst part is, I miss the cantankerous old curmudgeon.
What I don’t miss is Morley Safer (or Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow) prying into the life of Santa Claus to show how he assaults children in department stores. I don’t miss Reaganomics, or Reagan for that matter. (Or Donald Trump or Joe Biden.) I sure as hell don’t miss the national deficit, and I didn’t miss the nuclear war that they all brought down on us—tomorrow.
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