“Experts” can agree on one thing. 2016 is a populous moment in America. But really, this just means that our proclivity to complain about problems has momentarily surpassed our delusion that American leaders are interested in solving them.
But this perennial problem has been compounded. After decades of mindless culture and plummeting collective intelligence, the nation has finally descended into a state somewhere in between degenerative brain disease and Stockholm syndrome. And, like an intoxicated Titania stumbling towards an unsuspecting Bottom, our country has now fastened its gaze on a motley crew of senile-lunatics and conmen that we call Presidential contenders. It’s all the farce of an Elizabethan drama, with none of the comedy.
Our collective delusions live on…
It would be one thing if this panoply of pusillanimous politicos had a single idea as insane as their hairstyles, but uniformly their proposals are the same microwaved earwax run through the anal-retentive strainers of every focus group this side of Jupiter. Want yet another round of tax cuts paired with entitlement expansions? How about more drone strikes? Oh – and get ready for a new round of health-care reforms, whether it’s Crazy Cruz-flavor, Hairbrained Hillary-style, or the patented “Yuge Trump” edition.
Frankly, it has been obvious to everyone with a neckline unbruised by their own sphincter that these endlessly propounded policies don’t work worth a hill of beans. Everyone has a different take on why, but for my two-cents, it is nothing less than political cowardice. Our leaders don’t really have the gumption to take on new ideas, so instead we get ever more grandiose versions of the same tired tripe. Surgical strikes not working? Let’s have carpet bombing! Don’t like Medicaid? Well, let’s expand it to everybody! Social security not solvent? Oh well, I guess that will have to be the next generation’s problem.
But there are indeed simpler solutions available to leaders with more robust constitutions. We don’t need confiscatory tax rates, we don’t need to slash regulations and entitlements, and we don’t need draconian new immigration policies.
We just need to ban birth control.
Or, at least ban birth control for people who make over $200,000 a year. For the rich, illegalize it all! Abortion, the pill, condoms, the sponge, it all must be sent into the cleansing fire of reform. Let the contraceptive-flames blaze ever higher!
Trust me. If you want a path to the golden unicorn-filled fields of true equality, if you want America to once again climb the silver-lined mountains of national greatness, this is the only way. It’s time to loose the latex from the laps of luxury and pry the pill from the palates previously occupied by silver spoons. Yes, that means you Koch Brothers! George Soros and Bill Clinton, don’t think I’m letting you off the hook!
Perhaps only for those of modest means…
But seriously, let’s take our nation’s problems head on. Do you want growth? Do you want generous and solvent entitlement programs? Do you want an unending era of American innovation and military dominance? Well then we need more young people and that means more children. And who better to have said children than those with the ample resources to raise a new generation? Heck, we already know from Tiger Woods and Amy Schumer that the copulation habits of the wealthy can hardly be contained. Take a bite out of their contraception cache and watch the progeny of the prosperous pour forth faster than cocaine from Lil Wayne’s duffle-bag unzipped at customs. I bet the economic boom on baby products alone will be a driving force in our economy within the month.
And that doesn’t begin to cover the cultural benefits. How many times have you heard about the impossibility of balancing work and family life? Well, this is because contemporary corporate culture is designed by billionaires who are uninterested in raising more than a single designer baby. But, those mindsets will be forever banished by my new policy. No more Sheryl Sandberg books labeling a 70-hour workweek “leaning in”, more new Sheryl Sandberg books about balancing the demands of corporate leadership with a family life that includes 5 kids. And need I mention the likely surge in demand for hyper-educated Mary-Poppins style super nannys? Employment crisis be gone!
But before I get carried away, I will admit that there are some drawbacks. I am certainly not looking forward to Kim Kardashian becoming the next Octomom (though I suspect she will name her new children East West, South West, Due West, Key West, Best West, and Kanye West West). The government would also need to implement extensive enforcement to keep the contraceptives out of the hands of mistresses and other unorthodox outlets. But I believe that this too might be overcome with zealous policing, improved paternity tests, and child support laws ramped up on steroids. In the end, philanderers like Bill Clinton may well have a bumper crop of bastards in tow; but they could always be put to work on Hillary’s campaign.She would appreciate the help at this point.
Sorry Richie, no rubbers for you.
But I can already hear the whining from the naysayers- “It’s not faaiirr….muh social justice!”
I will be blunt here. This policy IS justice, or at least as close to justice as a political proposal will get. In fact, banning contraception for the rich, is the only solution that stabs at the great hearts of modern hypocrisy. Hypocrisies that persist, no matter how our media tries to ignore them.
The first great hypocrisy is that our perennial efforts at redistribution – be they taxes, regulation, inflation, or confiscation – never really upset the position of the powerful. This is because our current elites do not depend on liquid assets. They store their privilege in social networks, education, and other intangibles not easily seized by authorities. Taking wealth – true wealth- away from the powerful is near impossible in our era of global capital, and privilege can only be undermined with the cooperation of the privileged themselves.
But what better way to voluntarily lighten the entitlement of our elites than afflicting them with their own fecundity? No birth control means bigger families and bigger families mean diminishing-returns on privilege. An Ivy League might accept one family member as legacy, but ten? Get ready to buy Yale a new football stadium, Daddy. And as 2-centuries of British comedy as well as the career of MC Hammer attest, nothing drains a bank account like a pack of perfidious poor relations. An endless supply of grasping grandchildren is enough to send even the most flush silicon valley billionaire running to his private chambers to count the family doubloons. If that isn’t poetic justice, then I don’t know what is.
Poor relations, the bane of privilege
And that brings me to the second great hypocrisy of our age. It is a fact that the poor never shared in the sexually-liberated utopia promised by the birth control pill. This has been obvious to anyone who’s perused the demographics of fatherlessness and suicide among America’s lower classes in the last 40 years. In fact, it has taken all the intellectual power of our academy to ignore that plain truth.
Effective birth control depends on lifestyle choices and upward mobility. In short, you need stability to effectively contracept and this is something that the poor have never had access to. Observe that not many rich people need Planned Parenthood and don’t expect Mark Zuckerberg’s daughter to ever be in danger of single-motherhood. The sexual revolution was a project of the privileged and -short of sterilization (reversible or otherwise)- there is really no way for poor people to participate.
But before my brief allusion to sterilizing the poor causes the followers of Peter Singer to spontaneously salivate, could I point out the last and possibly most delectable irony of my simple solution? It would -for once in human history- invert the pattern of wealthy people dictating to the poor, the structure of family life.
We’ve seen this a thousand times in the 20th century. Between the forced sterilizations of India, the one-child policy of China, and the recent campaign to shove birth control pills down the throats of Africans, elites have have never once tired of forcing their reproductive preferences on the impoverished. But perhaps it’s time to turn the tables. The wealthy can check their privilege, punt their progesterone pills, and ante up to a lifestyle where they’re no longer in complete control of their reproduction. It might be vindictive, but it certainly smells like fairness to me.
And don’t feel too bad for those rich people. Given the populist rage brewing across the globe, we might be doing them a favor. Who knows, this radical measure might be the only stopgap to a complete revolution, and, in condemning the wealthy to a life of caring for toddlers today, we might be sparing their necks from the guillotine tomorrow (though from my understanding this might only be a marginal improvement). Still, as their descendants multiply, those same scions might be at a loss for what to do with such a great number of children. A difficult question indeed. But if things ever get too confusing, I suppose they could always eat them.
The Distributist 