The Creep (and Creeps) of Fascism.

I don't think fascism, or authoritarianism, of fick-the-little-guy-ism, when it fully descends with its soul-crushing weight will come wearing jackboots and carrying a riding crop.

I think when the last bits of humanity on earth are finally buried under a trillion tons of micro-plastic and press releases, it all will have happened like going bankrupt. Slowly, then all at once.

We won't even notice it's here. Though we're being assaulted by it every day.

Not just the trmpian evil.

Little insidious actions that everyone is in on.

A friend of mine worked for a holding company until April 1. Then he was let go. Then they offered to hire him back on April 15. He had to once again fill out 71-pages of forms and undergo once again, a background check.

They make you submit.

If I want to watch a clip of the Knicks' surprising comeback win over the Celtics, the Times' site, which I pay for, sends me to a twitter link. So I have to support elon mursk and his child-trafficking, anti-semitic, hate-filled bile to watch a three-point shot.

They make you complicit.

All of my clients pay me electronically. Usually after 60 days. When did making someone wait 16-percent of a year for work they've done become ok? When did it become ok for someone to be paid in May for work they did in January? 

One client, the world's 67th largest, tried to pay me only after making me wait 25-percent of a year. Though I could pay them 1.5-percent of my gross to get my money, my money, 30-days faster.

One holding company, the third-largest or maybe the most-recently disappeared, made me wait more the 33-percent of a year to be paid for work I was charged with doing (a pitch) over-night.

They make you squirm.

Getting paid electronically is easier for those paying you. It's not easier for the person (me) who did the work. The person who did the work has to wait longer for their money.

As your payment nears, you usually get an email that looks like this. 

The "system" has made it ok to try to get you to pay $90, in this case, to get my money. This is after I've already waited 60 days. You want to "mafioso me" to not delay payment any further.

They make you pay.

This is how a person--even a well-off person like me--gets creamed by the system. Every plutocrat is taking, taxing and schtupping. Every little guy is fikked.

125 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt, for all his hypocrisy, introduced the "Square Deal."

90 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt presented "The New Deal."

Back in 1950, Harry Truman presented something called "The Fair Deal."

Today from our politicians, busy profiting from their offices and the beneficences they grant themselves which include free healthcare and legal insider-trading, not to mention payment for "speaking," we get nothing but a "Raw Deal."

Everyone of us--from "self-check-out" to myriad dysfunctional government departments (that we pay for) to the pillaging of social security--which I've paid into since 1963--to the inadequacies of what's fantastically called "health care," (there's neither health nor care) everyone of us is being beaten.

Again, it ain't the jack-booted armies that will destroy us. It's companies like Mars--the fourth largest privately held company in the United States--who spend $2-million on lobbying--and who have the balls to sell individually-petro-chemical-wrapped Lifesavers. 

Or the giant cable companies who charge you monopoly rates to watch TV, then charge you again by dedicating 25-minutes/hour to commercials and promos.

Or every company in creation that makes you download an app just so you can pay your bill, only you can't find what the bill was for, since they hid it on the app.

Or all the times every day you have to click a box to tell some robot that you're not a robot.

Look at this from 2:10. Is this where we are.

We haven't just met the enemy.

We voted them in.

And we pay them to screw us.