One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

Instead of each individual paying for her own teacher and her own school, her own roads and her own sidewalks, her own books and her own wars, each individual pays taxes on her home, land, income, investments, and holdings, and that money goes to the government, and then the government buys one teacher and one school and one road and one sidewalk and one library, and everyone shares. The government hosts a war, and everyone just comes to that. This is called efficiency, and it means you cannot have your own war. You can only join someone else’s.

As I have said—and as should be obvious—stupid people need to read books in order to get smarter, but unfortunately people who like books are usually smart already, and stupid people do not read. Maybe this is tragic irony, or maybe cause and effect. I do not know.

That’s the whole point of children—they keep you grounded, but another way to say that is they weigh you down. Grandchildren are probably better, but it’s not like you can start with them so you have to lie.” “Lie?” “To your kids. If you let them know how much they wreck your life, your kids won’t make you any grandchildren.”

the revolution in “industrial revolution” is like the revolution in “American Revolution,” revolution like war. It remapped small towns and big cities and nations, destroyed communities, willfully refused to consider the long term in favor of immediate blood and power, and demanded the sacrifice of scores upon scores of soldiers for the glory of the men getting rich. It was the industrial revolution that conscripted towns like mine and consigned their citizens—us—to the bottom of every pile yet to come.

“Other artifacts of war go in museums. Why don’t punch clocks or conveyor belts or fake emergency exits? Why aren’t munitions factories and mill floors and chemical plants preserved the same way, like for tourists to wander around and have perspective on history and stuff?” Mrs. Shriver looks at me for too long before answering. “No one would pay to go in,” she says finally. “Plus, what would you sell at the gift shop?”

But it is true I look for bright sides, not because I am an optimist by disposition, not because I don’t know any better—I do—but because I am so slow. It takes me so long to do everything I do. And if you go slowly enough, every moment of the day becomes its own journey, either its own triumph, which you get to celebrate, or its own failure, which you get to move on from, by definition, in the very next moment. If you operate at speed, each word is not a victory, each swallowed piece of food or sip of water is not a conquest.

The metaphor is always David and Goliath. Goliath is big and strong and well funded. He’s made so much money, either off your suffering or off not giving a shit about your suffering, that he can buy whatever and whoever he needs to ensure that his profiting off your suffering remains allowed or at least overlooked,

I hate this metaphor. It’s offered all the time, but it’s apt as balloons at a funeral, suggesting, as it does, that if only you were more nimble or more right or more good, you would prevail. Suggesting, as it does, that you are destroyed not by other people’s shortsightedness, other people’s greed, or other people’s deciding you’re disposable, but by being yourself too slow, morally compromised, wicked, and weak. Goliath is not at fault in this story. Goliath is just a giant, following his giant nature, laid low by nothing more than a lucky shot. And David, David’s just a boy with a sling and a stone, kind of whiny and moralistic, a little bit of a pissant. In fact, I think it is a metaphor perpetuated by the Goliaths themselves.