Your Impoverished Life Explained

Goin' my way?

By Homeless T

What can we infer about the unemployed working man--jobless too long, and slipping through the cracks--the homeless man, deranged by the attrition of street life; and the new American generation of drug-addled illiterates? Why do they prefer eventually to disappear rather than be seen and recast--by former friends, remnants of family, and goal-driven acquaintances of long ago--as washed-up, soon-to-die things?

Society would seem to have painted a bull's-eye on these financial drop-outs, targeting them for its private derision and public prosecution by the alpha dog pack currently running the dominant social hierarchy. Dogs can be so territorial, and packs, terrifyingly vicious.

Who wouldn't want to disappear under such disadvantages? Yet the truth is that poor mutts like me, Freddy, maybe you, and Manuel Noriega all amount to the same naught in God's welkin eye. Individuals don’t count for much. It's the pack that counts in the world of the dog, and frequently, in the society of humans. The wiliest dogs rules and gets rich, but only temporarily (as measured in epochal time). Pedigree and training are much howled over presently (as once were religion and magic), but have they any absolute value? Dogs are dogs; and yes, every dog is promised its day, but can we count on that. I think so. Take heart, all you pound-bound mutts.

I'm da weener. You da schvein!

 

In 1938 Germany, sleek black Dobermans ascended to continental dominance. Shall we continue to kiss their stump-tailed hind quarters? No; such amputations have lost their luster, and possessors of the same lost their charter. Under their reign (not so very long ago), humanists, handicapped humans, Gypsies and Jews, homosexuals and intellectuals were all relieved of their assets and then conscripted to slave-labor or consigned to incineration by the mad-dog realpolitik of Nazism. The fair-haired child of Aryan pedigree was trained from puppyhood to feed on human flesh and then march right into the maw of the raw god, Dog War--he goddam maddog, eh? To bring pride back! To get even for being odd. To ensure purity of the blood, and secure room to live 1,000 years. 

Just because you were, are, or will be, struggling for a foothold on the scapegoated bottom rung of some dominant culture, don't feel that its society has no use for you. Quite the contrary: you are the dark matter to counterbalance the orbits of today's ever-revolving top dogs. Their truth bases itself situationally, so yours must be absolute. The big dogs declare with little fear of contradiction from those outside of their pack: We did what? Laid to waste how many? Caused how much suffering? Lies, lies, lies! We know better! Speak further at your own peril! And speaking historically, if nobody witnessed the heinous act and egregious thievery--then hell, it never happened.

It is only your downcast eyes and sensitive nose for foul play that perceived the rivulets of blood trickling out of their machine into the gutters. Even though your orbit may circle at ever-increasing distances from the brilliance of their society, and your mind reels from the ever-blunter cudgels invented to keep bottom dogs like us in our places, realize that life has given you an important job: to bring to light the fallacy of their self-proclaimed superiority. So by any and all means, sing your song of their Machiavellian practices; frolic and flit like a pixie among the abandoned infrastructures they have left to crumble; and do not hesitate to recite funny, dark facts about the brilliant class. One caveat: always be aware of to whom you speak and where you are. Open the wrong door just a crack, and they will all rush in to kill you.

It seems inconceivable that society's losers fuel its sunny winners, who appear effortlessly to command the sky--for the brief reign, until they erect programs of overkill for bottom dogs like us--for the benefit of their breed, their pack, and their fine blood lines. At such dire junctures, Nature bucks up the numbers, courage, and tenacity of us remaining outcasts. It’s a phenomenon inherent in our mongrel blood, and when Nature opens a fresh deck and deals the next hands in this continuing game, the luck of current top dogs begins to descend. As their higher orbits collapse and begin falling into the sun, the fickle tricksters formerly known as wealth and dominance may be spotted riding out of town, the spurs of their dear little boots kicking uselessly at the panicked creature it created, crying giddy up, giddy up dammit, I'm the one who makes the wheels move, don't you know?

Once the smoke clears and clearer thinking prevails, the shit-strewn truths of any dog-breed's temporary reign become visible. So buck up my impoverished, disenfranchised, and homeless friends! It may be that we as individuals were born at the wrong time in history. Just wait a few lifetimes, and justice will be done. In any case, one dog wins, another dog loses, but they all end up the same: dead dogs. Get what you can, flaunt your arcane knowledge, and just wait a couple of centuries.

To those of you presently awash in material affluence and virtuous feelings about yourselves, I offer advice seldom heeded: never forget that it is social deviance that underpins all progress, including development of something far greater than tawdry lucre: human grace. Treat your bedraggled packs of strays with respect. Things can be made better, and you as an individual may avoid the painful bite.

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