Friday, July 15, 2011

Presumption of Guilt


Today I was at work after a six month vacation courtesy of the State of Alabama unemployment insurance I've paid into these past forty years. It was marvelous. I learned to play rock piano, wrote some songs, made some videos, and I thank the rest of you who kept the ship going while I sat at home in my bathrobe. It's good to have a job again.

The strangest thing today was reading a military technical manual specification and seeing paragraphs that I authored twenty years ago. Very strange. It's not like being J.K. Rowling; it's like being the first person to type a smiley into an email message and later realizing it may have been the most long lasting typing I'd ever done. It shows we have to treat the least we do like the most we do and that we may wake up one day to find out our high school sweethearts haven't aged but we have. You never know.

But to get this job, for the first time, I had to submit to drug testing.

I know this is common and that the fact I've held the positions I've had and never done this is a little exceptional, but I never have had to piss in the little cup.

And I didn't like it one bit.

The results weren't in doubt. Despite rumors and innuendo, I'm real middle of the road. I didn't like it because I have to piss in a cup as a pre-condition of employment. I don't like it because that is humiliating. I live in a country of free men and women who find that because a raving looney ex-first lady who went to astrologers to arrange her husband's schedules decided we could all just say no but if there was any doubt she and her class of friends had the right to make us piss in cups.
I want to go piss on her husband's grave. I know, that's nasty, but it seems to me one reason we can't stand up to the lunatics who run our government today is because they've managed over the last three decades to humiliate us into pissing in cups to have jobs. They've convinced us we must be presumed guilty and then prove ourselves innocent or we don't deserve to have those jobs they are creating for us with the money we gave them in the form of tax cuts.

I don't like it. Not one bit. If you don't like it, if you don't like their refusal to pay their fair share, if you are tired of their presumptions of guilt on our parts while they rob us blind, do this: next time you have to go piss in the cup, save some of that and go piss on their lawn, their car, or maybe their graves.

We aren't guilty of anything except working too hard for too many hours for too few people. Are they guilty of anything? Well, presume they are guilty the same way they presume we are. Piss on them.

3 comments:

Sara Rodgers said...

Very well said Len, I totally agree. The presumed guilt issue has gotten worse with each passing day we lose our rights and our voices. When arrested you have to put money up in the form of bail, if that isn't presumed guilty what is? And you are absolutely right on about the reason for it, it is to break down any notion that we have any right to question authority in any situation. It is the nightmare they fought against in the 60's but until possibly recently it was a total waste of all those brilliant minds and hearty souls who stood their ground for the rights we are letting them rip out from under us. Rewrite the constitution is the latest totalitarianism answer by the GOP to get everything they want and screw the rest of America. The dems are just as bad...almost as bad. That just wreaks of treason to me. This country was founded on that document, how dare an imbecile like Mitch McConnell suggest such a thing? I say it is close to an all out revolution in this country if these current sloth don't go peacefully, let's just take them out. :p x

Oh, I like your music very much. x

Katie Marie said...

Cool Story. Being ordered to piss is humiliating, but for most working people it's just the beginning of a long list of degrading things we must agree to do in order to earn a living. Congrats on finding employment, may it pay your bills and leave a portion of your soul intact.

Courtney Ann said...

this is awesome. :)

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