Dec. 24, 2008 (World News Trust) -- Hello! It’s been a while and it is nice to be back.
This expatriate American now living in Malta visited the states recently and the news is not good. America seems like it is stumbling on several levels that are out of the control of the federal government that has led Americans and the rest of the civilized world by the hand into potential financial ruin.
With the collapsing of banks, financial institutions not lending, outright theft by the financial leaders of the Wall Street industry like Bernie Madoff, and executives who continue to plunder their company’s retirement and payroll funds, it can only be concluded that the average American who is not rich by any stretch of that word other than by their genetically lucky health is going to suffer for a long time. Not only is the average American staring into the face of recession that may soon become depression, but the dollars for which they work and the world used to respect and envy may be worthless soon, completely. With this crisis of faith, finance, economy, employment, and legitimacy within the American government, what does the average person in America have to look forward to? Up until Feb. 9, 2009 (and in a few places March 1, 2009) watching a television in rural places or anywhere for that matter with a simple antennae is possible, but after the aforementioned dates it is not.
As of February, in America, television will no longer be broadcast as it has been for the past 80-plus years. What that means to most of you folks reading this, as this is an online publishing, is merely that you will tune into your cable box you already own and keep watching from here on out. The problem is not with you, the savvy internet user who has technology at your finger tips -- no the problem is going to be for the average poor schmuck who does not live in the digital age. I’m talking about rural folk who are basically off the grid who either have no choice about their television signal because they live too far from urban “wired” areas, the elderly who just are allowing the future of everything to pass them by because they refuse to embrace new things like the internet or digital TV, non-english speaking immigrants who do not understand that TV will be off in the upcoming months because they can’t read the warnings on their sets, and the simple person who wrote in for their government voucher but forgot to use it and now has no choice but to spend what little money they have to get a device they do not even understand.
And what happens as dollars dry up and people cannot afford digital TV? Or even worse when the dollar is devalued to the point that it is worthless like German marks became during their pre-Hitler depression? Will the leaders of America just stand by and watch as as much as 10 percent of the total U,S. population loses the ability to see the boob tube? And is the U.S. Government that is now going broke going to honor the vouchers to pay people to get digital boxes? Sure money was allocated, but will it be taken away when folks do not turn the vouchers in for their rebates?
I know this seems trivial as watching television is more like the soma of the masses, and introducing digital boxes that can track every viewers TV choices is like something out of 1984, but there is a bigger picture here. The bigger picture I think about is that when the poor huddled masses of average American schmucks, now broke, unemployed, dismayed, and easily swayed, that are unable to figure out the simple TV problem they are having will be the same group of idiots easily swindled by Bush and Co., except this next time they will use this to form an even harder fascist regime to ensnarl America all because after everything falls apart the old ideas will be rejected and “new” leader will emerge with promises of “new” ideas. The bad part is this leader will be a more controlling fascist because there are no newer ideas other than democracy, and that person will be scarier than any the United States has ever had and, and the whole world will suffer as America falls.
At this point I am guessing many of you reading this feel as if what is being written here is so far off the mark, and you know I sincerely hope you are correct and that I’ll have to eat these words as a great mistake. I sure do hope I am wrong about all of the conjecture here. My only defense is that in 1999 when I screamed from rooftops about how electing George Bush would be equal to leading America to the brink of ruin before he left office, no one listened and I was called a fool. But like Dennis Hopper said to Christopher Walken in the film True Romance, "...and if that is true, well then am I a liar?”
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T.P. McWhorter was born Talbot Porter McWhorter in Jefferson City Missouri on July 23rd, 1941. He was born the fourth of seven children including two brothers and four sisters. McWhorter's father, Leopold, the first born son of Scottish immigrants, was a railroad man who travelled up and down Missouri train lines making repairs and handled upkeep for the lines throughout the state.
Leopold fought in WWI as a foot soldier for the United States from the beginning of the war to sometime in 1917. It was during that time he developed the skill of engineering to become a railroad technician. By the time T.P. was born, Leopold was not home much and McWhorter's mother mostly raised T.P. and rest of the the family and took care of their small farm. McWhorter's mother, Katerina, was born in the Ukraine and met Leopold after WWI in Philadelphia in 1925 when Leopold was working for the railroad there. Besides running the small farm where they raised a couple of cattle, chickens and some sheep for family food, Katerina worked as a washer woman who was brought the clothes of the local upper class residents of Jefferson City. She was well-loved around the town, and Leopold was the most respected train technician that ever worked on the line. Both died tragically during a weekend vacation when their climbing harness rope snapped while the two were shackled together on the sheer face of a small mountain in Colorado. They fell nearly a thousand feet before they hit the ground.
It was T.P.'s oldest sister, Griselda, who became the head of the family after news of the parents' demise reached the farm by telegram. T.P. was emotionally crushed at not being able to say goodbye to his mother whom he was always close to. He developed obsessive compulsive behavior including repetitive handwashing remeniscent of Howard Hughes, and the paranoid agoraphobic behavior that confined Jim Backus to his home for years. Writing became T.P.'s world where he lost himself in pages of unending fantasy. T.P.'s stories of imaginary worlds, characters that were riddled with obsessions and addictions, dominated the boy's life for seven years before he was forced from his home when Griselda sold the family farm out of selfishness to spend money on fancy clothes and shoes.
After the farm was sold, T.P. and his two brothers moved into a small house. His brothers supported him as he still remained an agoraphobic obsessive hand-washer, and soon developed other paranoid delusional behaviors that included a great fear of transforming into anything other than who he was already, which is symptomatic of the hand-washing compulsion, and also a hatred for odd numbers. It was only when his brother Utgrad came home drunk one night and fell asleep smoking and the house caught fire that snapped T.P. back to reality after he saved Utgrad and his other brother Remo from their imminent deaths. Like being splashed with water while in a daze, the fire was a wake-up call to T.P. and he immediately lost all of his compulsions as he embraced life to the fullest and became an adventurer, traveller, and writer. For the last several years, T.P. has been living on the island of Malta writing short stories and doing archeological digs trying to uncover the link between the Maltese people and the mythical island of Atlantis.