This one is going to be very difficult for me to explain in a way that you can understand. It really has to do with a psychological degeneracy that takes possession of individuals and whole societies when personal responsibility and personal reward are removed from the equation of survival of the fittest. To put it another way the goal of communism is for everyone to survive and for everyone to survive on equal terms. This defies the Darwinian law of survival of the fittest. Something very strange takes place under those social conditions whether in macro or micro societal circumstances. It is a sickness, a mental disorder wherein rationalism as we know it devolves into chaos. I think it can only be explained by exemplification.

I have had many jobs in my life (including pizza delivery). Most of those jobs were in the free market. Free market principles are instinctually understood by everyone. You do a good job, you work your way up and you succeed in life. If you fail as a business owner you go out of business. If you fail as an employee you’re out of a job. Basic survival of the fittest. These principles hold true universally in a free market. Even an honest dog walker can clean up in a capitalist system.

I have also worked in civil service jobs and in union jobs. The whole psychology was different there. Reality in those situations was so distorted that even today I have difficulty making sense of it. In each case I found that no one wanted to work, no one had to work and almost no one was working. Everyone was either protected by their union or by their civil service patron. Nothing what so ever was in place to encourage production or efficiency and most incredibly there was active promotion of inefficiency at every level of the bureaucracy.

I have to bore you, now, with a story from my life as a petty civil servant. If you will listen and believe what I’m about to tell you the insanity of turning health care over to government will become hideously clear. This is a true story. I experienced it.

It began when a friend of mine told me that he knew a politician who could get me a job with the county (Cook, IL). All I had to do was report downtown and say, “Yadda Schmootz sent me”. Which I did. So boom. Next thing I know I’m working in the divorce division of the county court system with four other people who got hired that day. We’re led around the room and shown at least a half million legal documents stacked all over the place that are waiting to be put in their case file jackets. A half million – easy! And we’re going to put them away.

Now I’d estimate that a thousand documents are filed in the divorce division of Cook County each day. I’m looking at 500,000 of them sitting on floors and shelves untouched for…how long? Two years? More? I don’t get it. How is this possible? These documents are required in the courtroom every time a case is called. How can the legal system operate this way? Why aren’t lawyers and judges demanding that the system be repaired. Why isn’t the media walking around here filming this outrage?

Well this is day one for me. I don’t know nothing and the best thing for me is to stay stupid if I want to keep this job. Which ain’t hard because I’m a really slow learner. But I’m observing all the time trying to figure this craziness out. Every day I’m seeing lawyers and law clerks standing in lines while petty clerks, my equals, are sitting around taking 20 breaks a day, chatting with one another or taking a smoke in Daley Plaza. You can almost hear the “customers” mooing as they plod from station to station doing their business under these abusive conditions. How do they stand it?

But my job right now is to put those documents away. Me and those four other people that is. So I put away 1993’s documents. Then I put away 1994. Then I put away 1995 and 1996. That takes me two months. When I get to 1997 there are the other four people trying to put away one year, 1997, which we aren’t even six months into yet! Am I pissed? What do you think? I don’t realize yet that I’ve entered another dimension and that I’ve already stepped in something really nasty.

Anyway, I decide to sit down and go though the motions of shuffling papers and trying to look busy. Pretty soon a supervisor comes over and asks me what I’m doing. I say that only 1997 is left to be filed away and four people are working on it so I’m getting these other papers ready to file. She says, “Get up and put those 97’s away!”

Meanwhile those other four mopes are being moved out of filing and given more responsible work. They’re going to be promoted! I’m in shock. What just happened?

For a couple more months I’m the only one filing documents. People appear to be snickering behind my back. Is it because they think I’m, “actin’ the show-off white man”? I don’t know what else it can be. Finally someone decides to clue me in. He says, “You’ve got to quit doing all that work. You’ve got to stop working altogether. As long as you’re working they are going to lay more work on you.” I don’t know what he means by this but I can’t believe what I’m hearing. He’s telling me that I’m can expect to get every dirty job no one else wants as long as I keep up with the demand. “And”, he says, “you will never get a raise in pay grade”. But he doesn’t tell me why. They never tell you why.

Pretty soon I get a new supervisor. Me, personally. I get my own supervisor. Seems I’ve been singled out as a trouble maker. Later I come to realize that this supervisor was put on me as a directive straight from the Chief Clerk of the Circuit Court. All I did was do the work of fifteen men and now I’m a problem. Why? Honestly, I don’t quite know the answer to this day. I guess it had to do with a lot of things that made me a boat rocker. My uppity white work ethic made me unpopular with my peers but why the managers?

Even though I’m doing more work than any five people in the office combined the managers are determined to find a way to fire me. And I know for a fact that the Chief Clerk and the Chief Judge have publicly, in the newspapers – Sun Times and Tribune – praised the divorce division for its remarkable improvement. Some managers were even promoted. So why did they want to get rid of me? This is one I can actually answer.

First, there was the pressure coming down from the chief clerk because I refused to work for the Democrat Party. That’s why she gave me my own supervisor. I wouldn’t knock on doors to get the vote out and I wouldn’t buy any tickets to fund raisers. What’s worse, any time someone approached me about The Party and my responsibility to it for being able to work in this town I let them know exactly how I felt about that. Loudly. This set a very bad example for the “in-line Democrats” in the office who were doing their Democrat duties. My disruptive notions of independence could be infectious. They could even spread county wide!

In their eyes my behavior was blatant dissent. Dissent is not allowed in tyrannies, and communism is always tyrannical. I’m not saying that Chicago and Cook County are communist. But they are partners in a one Party system that is tyrannical along the models of fascism and communism. My behavior was also impertinent. I had been defying my masters. I was proposing to be their equal. Call me Kinta Kunte. I was in for an ass whoopin’.

The above are elements that weave through the psychology of all sorts of tyrannies and social situations including communism. But the one that did me the most damage in my career as a clerk was the failure to comprehend the psychology of management in a tyrannical system of government. I had been working in free markets where the measure of success was gauged in terms of production, sales, customer service and profits. I failed to realize that none of these factors even exists in a government operation.

1. Nothing is produced by government…
2. Therefore government has nothing to sell…
3. Therefore there will be no customers to satisfy…
4. Therefore there will be no profits.

What, then, is the function of a government manager?

There are two:

1. To fulfill the needs of his patron. That patron will be a politician. To please him means getting him re-elected. Fulfilling his political obligations is the first function of a manager in politics.
2. The second function of a manager in politics is to monitor and protect the patronage system. That means keeping and promoting the underlings who best produce votes for the Party; and minimizing or dismissing underlings who do not produce votes or who threaten the order.

My manager finally told me straight out after I’d killed myself doing every dirty job they threw at me for seven years that no one gave a crap how much work I did. Either I got out there and did my job (my job?) or they would make my life a living hell. Well there was nothing in the world that was going to make me do that job. After three heart attacks I quit. And now there is no way I’ll ever be allowed to work in this town again.

And they want to talk about black listing in the 50’s!? These F’n Dems and libs want to talk about that?!

So today I’m begging people to let me pick up their dog’s s--t. Do you see a difference? I don’t.

But enough about me. My point is that if you give this mob the power of life and death over you…who in government do you think is going to give a s--t if you live or die?

They’re not calling it the Chicago way for nothing.