Saturday, September 22, 2012

How It Feels To Have Crossed The Line, At Least For Me


So, since crossing that line this morning at the IRS office, I find that my mind has been racing all day.  I have no peace, I have no sense of security; I am racked by doubt and fear.  The road ahead suddenly looks dark and bleak when your ability to pay rent and bills and child support is suddenly taken away.

I wasn’t supposed to have my kids overnight tonight, but things worked out so that I did, and I’m so glad, because being alone tonight would have been torture.  Yet, being with them has been its own torture.  I can’t look at them enough, but it breaks my heart to look at them and think of how their worlds might be rocked in the near future.  I can’t hug them enough; this night passes away too quickly.  I don’t want it to end knowing that if I stay my course, I have ended a relatively happy and tranquil period in their lives.

My mind keeps imagining a slave who has decided to run away.  What must have been his thoughts as he said goodnight to his wife and kids the night of his departure, not able to tell them of his plan lest the master punish them for being complicit?  “I don’t have to do this.  I could stay and leave everything the way it is.  My wife and children depend on me.”  And then his mind would drift to the threats he lives under constantly – the threat of whippings, the threat of being shot, the threat of being hanged, the constant threat of a thousand humiliations big and small.  It’s the threats, the threats, the threats!  The threats themselves, even if not carried out, constantly stare at him and keep him “in his place.”  The threats, even if not carried out, are evil – their mere existence is evil.  They shouldn’t be there.  The only way to get out from beneath them is to leave.

The threats shouldn’t be there.  What an insane species we are to tolerate the evil and oppression that plagues us, that has plagued our kind since the remote past.  One day, a plantation owner on our east coast said out loud, “You know what we need around here?  Slave labor!”  And the guy standing next to him said, “Right!” instead of looking the man squarely in the eye and saying, “Shut your mouth, you freak!”  We’re so tolerant of bad ideas, ideas that thrive among us even when we know better, ideas that end up torturing and oppressing generations to come.

Having all the money you’ve worked for and live on taken from your bank account; facing prison time for not filing returns; being left to wonder where you’ll live now and how you’ll get by, how you’ll provide for your children with an empty gas tank and empty wallet.  These things should never have been connected in any way with going out to earn your living.  There should be not even the remotest connection to these pathetic, heartless possibilities.  Threats should not exist in connection to earning a living.

Going out and toiling for my living is all I have.  It’s all I have.  I wasn’t born into wealth; I arrived without the benefit of a silver spoon.  I’m as much a part of society as anyone else, and I don’t know anyone in society who thinks I should be so cruelly punished and kept from continuing to go out and make an honest living.  My not paying a tax on my earned income doesn’t burden society – my not working and forcing society to support me instead burdens society.  I want to continue working (a right I was born with, so I hear), but the law says I have to jump through hoops in order to do that, or else.  The threats, the threats, the threats!

So the voices compete for center stage in my mind: “I don’t have to do this!  I could put up the white flag of compliance and the levy will be lifted (the beatings will stop).”  “That’s what they want – it’s what they count on!”  “Compliance is so easy, defiance so risky.”
 
I feel hollow inside.  I feel drained after standing up for myself for only one day!  In my own country, the land of liberty, my right to pursue my own happiness is something I can do if I pay the government.  The idea that it’s an inalienable right somehow sounds Utopian, mythological, utterly false.  America is merely a parody of a “free country” and has been since the beginning, and we are insanely okay with it.  For most of us, singing the National Anthem and saying the Pledge once in a while gets us close enough.

The fact that I’ve actually traded security for freedom where earning a living is concerned shocks me, and makes my head spin.  We should enjoy both security and freedom abundantly as free human beings when it comes to working to sustain ourselves.

The threats – we have to see that they are there and they are real, and we need to learn to despise them.

I go to bed.  My pursuit of happiness seems so far away now, so unreal, so out of reach, so not mine.  I am sad and scared, and so disappointed in this American Experiment knowing that not only will I be punished for standing up for simple human dignity, but my children will feel the punishment as well.

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