by Jarett Kobek
Being a flaming liberal was old-fashioned and almost totally discredited, because the national dialogue had been hijacked by an oligarchy of the ultra-wealthy. This oligarchy recognized that, in a reordering of society via governmental policies, it was their wealth which would be redistributed.
So they had thrown their resources behind corrupting the terms of the argument. The ideas of flaming liberals were verboten.
Instead, people were told to embrace intolerable bullshit like pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, which was a figure of speech that meant nothing.
People were told to embrace intolerable bullshit like Jeffersonian Democracy, which decentralized the importance of the Federal Government.
People loved talking about Jeffersonian Democracy. It was mentioned with an astounding frequency in the national dialogue, considering that it was a stupid fantasy about farmers.
WHAT PEOPLE DIDN’T LOVE talking about was the personal life of Thomas Jefferson, the man for whom Jeffersonian Democracy was named.
Jefferson was American’s third President. He had been one of its richest men. He was its greatest theoretical architect of freedom. He believed in self expression and freedom of speech.
He was also one of the twelve Presidents of the United States to own slaves, which is a larger figure than the number of Presidents who had beards.
EVEN AMONG THE ONE-FOURTH OF PRESIDENTS who owned slaves, Jefferson stood out.
After Thomas Jefferson’s wife died, Thomas Jefferson started venting his lust in his wife’s half-sister, Sally Hemmings.
Sally Hemmings had eumelanin in the stratum basale of her epidermis. Sally Hemming was Thomas Jefferson’s wife’s sister and she was Thomas Jefferson’s slave.
Sally Hemmings was Thomas Jefferson’s dead wife’s sister because Thomas Jefferson’s dead wife’s father enjoyed venting his lust in Sally Hemmings’s mother. Sally Hemmings’s mother was Thomas Jefferson’s dead wife’s father’s slave.
The venting of lust into slaves was also known as rape. So Thomas Jefferson was a rapist and Thomas Jefferson’s dead wife’s father was also a rapist.
If you were from California and the year was 2013, and you were discussing Thomas Jefferson’s sex life, you might say, “It’s, like, so ironic, because Thomas Jefferson was, like, totally a rapist who, you know, was raping a woman who, like, you know, herself was totally produced by a rape.”
You’d be wrong.
It wasn’t ironic that Thomas Jefferson raped a woman who was created by rape. It was coincidence that Thomas Jefferson raped a woman created by rape.
Well.
It was either coincidence or it was symptomatic of institutionalized racism that devalued the agency and individual rights of people based on their race and economic status.
You know, like, either one.
FOUR OTHER PRESIDENTS have been accused of raping children into their slaves. These Presidents were: George Washington, William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk and John Tyler.
A great number of rich White men had vented lust into their slaves, and a great number had produced children in their slaves, but very few had produced a body of written work about the necessity of human freedom.
Thomas Jefferson was the rare slave holder who enjoyed raping his property while writing declarations and essays and letters about the dignity of man.
He was enslaving people at home while crafting a philosophical system that advocated the spread of liberty throughout the world.
It was a hell of a time to be alive.
chapter eighteen
Christine was under pressure.
She had rented the same apartment since 1997.
The apartment was rent-controlled, which meant that her landlord could raise the rent by only a small yearly percentage. This percentage was set by the San Francisco Rent Board.
The highest increase had been 2.9%.
The lowest had been 0.1%.
Christine rented her apartment in 1997 at $1,000 a month.
With all the percentage increases, Christine at present was paying $1350 per month. By the halfway point of 2013, the median price of 1BRs in San Francisco was $2,800.
Rent control is a miracle.
CHRISTINE LIVED in an apartment complex with six units spread across two buildings. This rendered her a less likely candidate for eviction, thanks to technicalities in the laws that governed evictions. But it was still possible.
The most important of these laws was the Ellis Act.
The Ellis Act had been passed by the California State Legislature in 1986. It was a way for landlords to get out of the business of renting.
But laws are weird. They create loopholes and manufacture unexpected consequences.
An unexpected consequence of the Ellis Act was that it created market incentives for landlords to convert their properties into condo buildings or rip down pre-existing structures and erect new gargantuan buildings in their stead.
Created for one purpose, it had assumed another. It had become the de facto method of evicting the elderly and ethnic minorities.
The elderly and ethnic minorities were living in rent controlled apartments. They were taking up space that could be occupied by employees of Google.
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with Christine’s living situation is that all six units had been occupied for years. All of the apartments were rent controlled.
The landlord had inherited the buildings from his mother in the late 1970s. He didn’t have eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.
He tried to be a patient man, but every day the news media bombarded him with stories about the city’s rising rents. He couldn’t help but calculate how much money he would be making if his tenants paid the market rate.
He was losing tens of thousands of dollars a month.
CHRISTINE HAD STARTED DATING a new guy. He was named Bertrand. He was from Belgium and had no eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. Things were going well. Christine was in love.
But her rental situation was terrible.
Her landlord was considering using the Ellis Act. She knew this because Christine was the only tenant in the buildings with whom the landlord had a decent relationship.
He liked calling her up and complaining about how the property was ruining him.
When these telephone conversations began, Christine had not yet transitioned her outward conforming gender appearance. She’d been a woman living with the exterior appearance of a homosexual man.
At first she thought the landlord might be a closet case chasing a piece of strange, but years went by and he made no move or improper suggestion. Christine realized that the landlord just needed someone with whom he could talk about the buildings.
They became friends.
“Honey,” he said to her, “These buildings are murder! A girl like you knows from murder and isn’t this just the worst? You’re wonderful, you’re clean, but the others, they’re dogs! They pay so little. Do you know that Daria moved in when my mother was still alive? We’re talking 1973. My mother never raised the rent! I hate to do it but I’m going to have to get out of this rotten business.”
Daria was a woman without much eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. She had moved to San Francisco during the druggie heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
She had been in her twenties and believed that enlightenment came in the form of vinyl records and sugar cubes laced with LSD. Now Daria was a senior citizen. She was paying less than $500 a month for a two bedroom apartment.
“Don’t even start me on Rafael,” said the landlord. “He lives like a pig.”
This was true. Rafael really did live like a pig.
“Honey,” said the landlord. “I must sell these buildings or do something. I can’t keep letting myself be robbed by animals!”
“You don’t think I’m an animal, do you?” asked Christine.
“You’re a doll,” said the landlord. “You’re the only star in my life.”
IF CHRISTINE’S LANDLORD did evict her, there was no feasible way that she could stay in the city. Low interest rates, venture capitalists and the tech industry had removed her ability to remain in San Francisco.
Christine’s biggest concern was that she was trans, which meant that she was a woman born with male physiology.
San Francisco was just about the friendliest place in America for a transperson. And even San Francisco was pretty bad. You still got heckled and threatened. Sometimes you would be beaten. Sometimes you would be killed.
Anywhere else that Christine moved would increase the likelihood of her being heckled, threatened, beaten and killed.
The threat of an Ellis Act eviction was the literal threat of violence.
More than ever, she felt the need for prayer.
IN HIGH SCHOOL, Christine had gone through a Wicca phase.
Wicca was the name for a hodge-podge of beliefs centered on the idea that witchcraft retained validity in the modern world. Its practitioners thought that they could affect change through the use of spells and sorcery and invocations of pagan deities like Ba’al and Bast.
As with every religion, it was a comforting bit of nonsense that some people took too seriously.
Christine hadn’t really clicked with Wicca. Mostly, she’d used it as a way to have sex with awkward boys. She abandoned it after a few months.
Now that she’d developed the urge for prayer, she discovered a little splinter of Wicca was lodged in her heart.
She couldn’t see herself praying to Jesus or Allah or HaShem. Not even to Aten.
If she were going to pray, then her prayers must be pagan.
SHE HIT UPON THE IDEA when she was thinking about Google.
Google was a company that was transforming the city. Google was the company that had flooded the city with its buses. Christine was sure that if she did get evicted, one of Google’s employees would end up in her apartment. Google was the company sending Christine to an increased likelihood of violent death at the hands of bigots.
Christine realized the names of the new gods. She knew where to direct her prayers.
chapter nineteen
Adeline was tweeting. She was defending herself on Twitter. Her WaNks Index Score was 5.
She’d asked J. Karacehennem if he would read her tweets and see how they played. He refused.
“Twitter makes everyone sound like a whinging fifteen year old,” he said.
AT THE END of her first week on Twitter, Adeline had about three thousand followers and had involved herself in countless disjointed conversations and arguments.
“I’m rather settling into this Twitter thing, darling,” she said over the phone to Baby. “After all, I’ve seen so much of life and I’m what the pornographers call a mature woman. I’m a MILF and all these young things are asking for life advice.”
“People on the Internet are completely insane,” said Baby. “Don’t open yourself up too much.”
“Darling, haven’t you been tweeting since 2008?” asked Adeline. “Weren’t you an early bird?”
Baby’s WaNks Index Score was 1.31411317.
“That’s professional obligation. You can’t really write Science Fiction without being on Twitter. It’s a necessity. But if you look at my tweets, I almost never say anything. It’s usually just jokes or random thoughts.”
“How can you stand it? How can you tolerate all the pretense?”
“It’s just a job,” said Baby. “It’s how I go to work.”
AFTER ADELINE GRADUATED from Parsons, back in the early ‘90s, she had worked as a freelance illustrator. Then she transitioned into Trill and comic art.
She had never gone into an office. She had no idea that most people woke up every weekday morning and went to a place where they were disrespected and worked for people they hated. Adeline didn’t realize that when people went to their place of business, they put on a spiritual mask which hid their true selves and their actual opinions.
She’d never really had a job. There’d been two days when she clerked at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. That was back in 1984 and she’d taken the gig to prove a point.
She no longer remembered to whom.
ERIK WILLEMS had a Twitter account but he never tweeted. He used his account to read tweets written by people to whom he’d given money. His WaNks Index Score was 0.002.
When Adeline had asked him to critique her tweets, he said, “If you’re so concerned, you should hire a social media consultant.”
To which Adeline replied: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good tongue must be in want of the cupcake or the pastry.”
THE PEOPLE ON TWITTER were furious. Adeline couldn’t accustom herself to the anger.
They were outraged about sports figures.
They were outraged about politicians.
They were outraged about injustice.
They were outraged about world events in countries thousands of miles away with complex and impenetrable political systems.
They were outraged about comic books.
They were outraged about the privilege of others.
They were outraged about criminal cases.
They were outraged about poor people.
They were outraged about rich people.
They were outraged about the death of the middle class.
They were outraged about everything.
And no one would stop tweeting about television.
ADELINE HADN’T OWNED a television since 1992.
She’d suffered fifteen years hearing about how the Internet would transform American culture and open new avenues of expression.
But in the end, it was only more people talking about television.
BEFORE SHE STARTED using Twitter, Baby had been the major source of Adeline’s information about television. Baby watched everything.
He liked The Sopranos, which was a television show about rich criminals. He liked Arrested Development, which was about a rich family whose patriarch is arrested for corruption. He liked The Wire, which was about the criminal justice system violating people’s civil liberties. He liked The L Word, which was about rich lesbians in Los Angeles. He liked Six Feet Under, which was about the sex lives of rich morticians. He liked Mad Men, which was about rich advertising executives. He liked The Shield, which was about the criminal justice system violating people’s civil liberties. He liked Breaking Bad, which was about a poor teacher who becomes a rich drug dealer. He liked The Borgias, which was about a rich family of Spanish nobility during the Renaissance. He liked Oz, which was about the criminal justice system violating people’s civil liberties. He liked The Trip, which was about two rich guys eating in restaurants. He liked Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was about a rich television producer. He liked Dexter, which was about the criminal justice system violating people’s civil liberties. He liked Sex and the City, which was about rich socialites in New York City. He liked 24, which was about the criminal justice system violating people’s civil liberties. He liked Game of Thrones, which was about rich aristocracies in a quasi-medieval world. He liked Weeds, which was about a rich drug dealer who goes broke and ends up rich. He liked Californication, which was about a rich writer in Los Angeles. He liked How I Met Your Mother, which was about rich socialites in New York City. He liked Reno 911!, which was about the criminal justice system violating people’s civil liberties. He liked House of Cards, which was about rich politicians. He liked 30 Rock, which was about rich actors on television playing rich actors on television. He liked Sherlock, which was about a rich private detective violating people’s civil liberties.
Baby liked Girls, which was about four rich socialites in New York City. Each role was played by the daughter of real world socialites, the actresses’ parents having experienced success in the media and performing arts, thereby making the program the most perfect demonstration of the fact that, in the Twenty-First Century, America had abandoned its aversion to dynasties.
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Dynasties were the very thing that America’s Rapist-in-Chief, Thomas Jefferson, had decried in a letter to George Washington: “I did not apprehend this while I had American ideas only, but I confess what I have seen in Europe has brought me over to that opinion; & that tho’ the day may be at some distance, beyond the reach of our lives perhaps, yet it will certainly come, when a single fibre left of this institution, will produce an hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of our Governments from the best to the worst in the world.”
Baby hated Doctor Who.
DOCTOR WHO premiered on the BBC in 1963. The BBC was the British Broadcasting Company. The citizens of the United Kingdom paid for the BBC. It was nationalized television rendered as a service to the home nations.
Doctor Who was about an alien who traveled through time and space. The titular role of the Doctor had been played by many actors.
Because the Doctor was an alien, whenever an actor relinquished the role, the Doctor would suffer a fatal injury and then regenerate.
Regeneration was supercontained reincarnation. In the fictional context of Doctor Who, a regeneration meant that bright light would engulf the Doctor and then his body would change from one incarnation to another. His personality and face would be different. All of his memories were the same.
In the real world, regeneration meant the transition between actors was orchestrated with the dodgy special effects endemic to public television.
The one real constant in the various regenerations of the Doctor was that he always talked and acted like a British eccentric, thereby making Doctor Who, like Girls, a program about dynasties.
