Thomas Wictor

Soylent Green is one of my favorite movies. It takes place in 2022, eight years from now. When Charleton Heston brings fresh food to elderly Edward G. Robinson, for a few seconds Robinson is ecstatic, and then he breaks down and sobs, “How did we come to this?”

What he means is how did we turn into such a degraded society that briefly reclaiming the long-dead standards of yesteryear makes us over the moon with happiness?

I feel that way myself. Why are we now a society in which the negligent, preventable deaths of four Americans—including an ambassador—and the subsequent coverup are openly dismissed on television as having no importance?

“What difference does it make anymore?”

Is that the sort of government you want? The people are dead, so let’s not bother trying to identify, catch, and punish the killers?

Let’s ask a simple question: If a government makes it clear that it doesn’t care when its diplomatic compounds are attacked and its employees murdered, what do you think will happen? Will there be more attacks or fewer? How will we get people to work in the diplomatic corps when the government has declared open season on them?

“Every administration covers things up.”

Well, that makes it all right, then. Everybody’s doing it! We can’t fight what’s trending. People might think we’re old, not a smooth-faced youth like Bob Beckel. Why bother trying to maintain standards of behavior, especially when it comes to life-and-death issues?

Speaking of life-and-death issues, a celebrity died last year.

Yes, the famous star Richard Ramirez—the Night Stalker—died.

This is an informational list of celebrity deaths and not a celebration of anything other than their lives. RIP, famous people who died in 2013—you will be remembered.

Let’s celebrate Richard Ramirez’s life, why don’t we? He gouged out his victims’ eyes, raped children, murdered an elderly woman with a hammer, raped and sodomized women, and made survivors of his attacks swear allegiance to Satan. Sentenced to death on November 7, 1989, he died of natural causes twenty-four years later, after having gotten married in prison.

After we’re done celebrating the Night Stalker’s life, we can give our school administrators a pat on the back for doing such a great job.

He hopes to “clear his name” after being punished for doing nothing whatsoever. According to the inmates running this asylum masquerading as a school, a breakfast bar is as dangerous as loaded handgun.

Okay, tell you what: I’ll nibble a breakfast bar into the shape of a gun, and I’ll load my .357 magnum revolver with a single cartridge. Then I’ll ask you to choose which one we can use in a game of Russian roulette.

Searching for quotes I came across these gems from a noted intellectual.

Now, you’re free to support Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army death squads, which murdered not only Sunnis but also Shi’ites who committed the horrible crimes of not wearing the right clothes or putting photos of dancing women on their cell phones. Never mind that the mighty warriors of the Mahdi Army themselves drank beer, shot up with morphine and adrenaline, took ecstasy, and consumed hard-core pornography. It those are men you admire, who am I to judge you? But brainy quotes?

The resistance will be exclusively conducted by only one group. This new group will be defined soon by me.

The main reason for the armed resistance is the American military presence.

We have not forgotten the occupier. We remain a resistance.

Forget that the United Nations recognized all Iraqi elections held after 2003 as legitimate, and the Iraqi government specifically asked the US to remain in Iraq until the Iraqi security forces could defend the country. Forget that the Mahdi Army attacked and killed Iraqi security forces, forcing the government of Iraq to destroy the organization. And forget that Moqtada al-Sadr heroically resisted the occupier by gaining weight and losing teeth in Iran.

The question I have is how brainy are those quotes?

Our rejection of the occupier at heart is resistance.

By Jove, the man is a genius! That’s not gibberish at all. We must memorize his wisdom. He’s Iraq’s Samuel Johnson. Check it out.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

See? How does that Johnson quote stack up to Moqtada’s epigram? Make room for the new kid on the block, Dr. Sam.

Hey, lady! Why so proud?

A forty-two-year-old teacher gives a fifteen-year-old boy a lap dance in class while the other students egg them on. She simulates oral sex on him and grinds her buttocks on his crotch. In the classroom.

The middle-aged woman with graying hair told the boy, “I love you, baby. Happy birthday.” Twenty thousand people “like” the story. You can contact the author if you want.

“Yeah, hi! I just wanna say this story is cool! I like it when he slapped her ass! ‘Bye!”

There’s also a button labeled “Suggest a correction.”

We can correct the story with a time machine. Send me back to 1980.

I don’t even have to be eighteen again. If I arrive in 1980 at the age of fifty-one, and assuming I live to be seventy, that’ll bring me up to 1999, a good year to die.

Actually, I don’t want to go back to 1980. It doesn’t matter to me how retrograde our society becomes. I’m not going to swirl down the drain with all the other detritus. Tim and I were talking today about our deaths, and we both have the same view: The story isn’t over. I want to see what happens next. I’ve got a killer novel to write, and we’re moving out of the failed state of California just as soon as we can.

The future is what we make it.