WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?

Motivated by the profound political commentary printed in the Paper of Record yesterday, I made some remarkable discoveries. Wondering exactly why I was expected to pay property taxes twice a year, I looked into it and found something truly shocking. The big check goes to something called “school taxes.” (Why haven’t people around here discovered such honest American practices as “homeschooling” and “giving your kid a miner’s helmet for his or her 10th birthday”?) As I informed city hall in an agitated phone call, I don’t even have kids, so why should I pay for someone else’s moochers? I was told that this was Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s America now, so I had no recourse. A look into my county taxes revealed something even more disturbing. Apparently, some of the money goes into a so-called “fire department” — but my house has never burned down! Even worse, the county apparently squanders money on snow removal services, and it’s not even supposed to snow today!

Moving away from my benevolent local overlords to the evil feds, the situation was even worse. I examined my pay stubs, and found that every two weeks I was paying a Social Security tax — and yet apparently I’m not even eligible for a pension yet! Even worse, money was withheld from my paycheck for federal income taxes, and yet deprived of the unimaginable luxury of SNAP benefits I haven’t even gotten an Obamaphone yet, let alone my free T-Bone steak and Cadillac vouchers. I was even informed by a helpful health insurance representative a nice man in a tricorn hat that the federal government wasn’t even authorized to collect an income tax.

So I went onto Facebook so share my outrage to my millions tens of avid followers.* And rather than the thousands of “likes” I expected as the post went viral, instead I got no likes and several comments about how I was clueless about basic facts of American governance and obscenely self-centered. What is happening to this country?

*Technically, I shared only some of this on Facebook, and the post got several likes and no angry comments. But this is creative-non fiction — these facts serve a greater truth. I learned that at the several Ivy League universities at which I finished at the top of my class.