Four trucks and seven males in hard hats appeared in front of my house yesterday and began drilling a hole in a very busy Boston Post Road. Nevermind that we do not need this road to get mail to and from Boston any longer; it's still a main local artery.
After a couple of hours of digging, looking into the hole together, then more hammering and more looking into an increasingly muddy hole, a funny thing happened. Brownish water began to spurt from the shower nozzles and faucets in our home, whether or not they were active. Shortly after that, there was no water at all. I questioned the head hard hat about this and was told that water would be off for several hours.
Now here comes the subversive part. I immediately informed my city DPW of this serious matter. I mentioned that these hole-hammering men had not given citizens any notice about a shut-off. I said that they probably just thought I was another rich, spoiled banker worried about his swimming pool, instead of an apparently unemployable, forcibly-retired grumbler like millions of others in the country. What if people in the neighborhood are ill, I said, will they have to suddenly get to the store somehow to buy drinking water?
A woman named Eleanor Militana wrote back to me almost immediately. She agreed with me that citizens had been wronged. She agreed that someone was at fault, and that the water company, working on contract, certainly could have had the decency and courtesy to inform citizens. She said that she would look into it in such a convincing manner that I believed her.
Fellow Citizens of the City and the Republic, we have a bigger problem than we thought. There really are subversives working in government, who, if we let them, will undermine our anger and frustration. If we allow people like Eleanor to thrive in government, there is no telling what kind of mayhem and disruption might occur! We must organize faster, otherwise government might actually do things like create a simple one page explanation of the secret Healthcare Plans. Can you imagine an SEC that actually catches the Bernies of the world, even if it is on the fifth try? We might even have Presidents and SecTreases who can get bankers to apologize for their corrupt and reckless behavior.
All over the country people are working themselves and being worked into a frenzy, mostly over the Healthcare Thing, but that's just an excuse. People are really ticked at government at all levels. People in Texas are scared to death of allowing their President to address their children in schools, because of his "socialist" message. New Yorkers wonder if having a State Emperor like the one in New York City would work better that having totally corrupt and/or incapable set of legislators and governors in Albany. Some wonder why we bother to even have something called Albany. Or Springfield, Ill. Or Sacramento. Etc.
On top of all that, we now have to worry about Eleanor Militana and others like her. If we are not careful, city and town governments might watch budgets more carefully and speak to citizens respectfully on a regular basis. This could spread rapidly, leading to high unemployment in the ranks of radio/TV chattering classes. Congress might begin to buy its own lunch! Presidents could think twice about spending trillions so others around the world could learn from our democracy how to get the Chinese to loan them trillions to spread their own ways. And so on.
There are subversives at work in government and they are reasonable, accountable, courteous. This is dangerous.
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