Mr Trashcan Calls for Show Trials…

Mr Trashcan really misses the old-style Russian Communists. Commies! One thing they were really good at was putting on those big, boisterous show trials. It was a form of theater as stylized and traditional as the Kabuki, and maybe it hinted at reality TV long before there was even, well, TV. You had your humiliated loser, some poor scapegoat caught up in some state dragnet, with the hollow-eyed look of someone whose treatment has been really bad, and who is just ready to get everything over with, long past expecting or even wanting justice. They never looked up the whole time, never made any eye contact, as some government stooge of a prosecutor harangued them, denounced them, offered them up to the viewing audience as weaklings, cowards, sub-human degenerates. The audience would put their hands up to their mouths, shake their heads, probably making little clucking noises with their tongues; they loved it. Continue reading

Healthcare 2

It’s a damn good thing Mr. Trashcan doesn’t need medical care. Oh, he gets the occasional spot of corrosion, not to mention stubborn stains and films, but he undergoes reincarnation before any of these things become more than an annoyance.
But if he did need medical care, he would be worried. After watching the so called health care reform legislation seep through congress like a toxic spill, he can see the handwriting on the wall. Our system of government not only can’t deal with this problem, it’s going to make it worse. Continue reading