The People's Cube - Political Satire

Automation and mechanization. Automation and mechanization are those dreaded words that we fight against daily in our collective struggle to usher in the much vaunted Progressive World of Next Tuesday™. Automation and mechanization is the scourge of the worker and the noble peasant. Automation and mechanization is the humming of textile mills that so disgusted Engel; the cruel oppression of the Verizon wireless call-center; or the heartless monotone of computerized customer service!

"Capitalist Progress", in essence, is the oppression of modernity that confines, binds, and drains the sweat and blood of the worker toiling in a Detroit auto manufacturer. "Capitalist Progress", is what is responsible for our current economic calamities and must be stopped at all cost. Until the devices and modes of automated production are smashed, we as the vanguard party of the worker -- the Democratic Party -- cannot turn around the Bush Economic Holocaust of 2008 (Bush is still responsible, mind you -- not President Obama)

How does automation work and how does it perpetuate the capitalist system of chronic unemployment, poverty, and world-wide human suffering? In order to answer this question we must turn to the forces of historical materialism in order to better understand the threat of automation, mechanization and its ugly cousin, modernization. Through historical materialism we see the tasks once performed by common plebs, slaves, and peasant-folk are all but made obsolete by the advent of animal-powered labor, mechanization and finally automation. We see such mechanization and automation with the rise of the horse-driven carriage; the electric fan; ATMs, and, perhaps most shockingly, the battery-powered dildo. All of these forms of mecahnization and automation have, as our beloved president has intelligently pointed out, made one's former profession -- their very livelihood -- unneeded, obsolete, and completely non-existent. Is it no wonder we are hovering at 9.1% unemployment today?

Back in the times of antiquity -- Rome, for example -- the rich and powerful, those who strived for social justice, like us Democrats, were carried about by immense teams of carrying specialists employed to carry their employer via litter. These carrying specialists, all of whom lacked any other skill, toiled daily to provide bread for their loved ones by performing the simple task of picking up, moving, and putting down the litter of their employer. Over time, however, the more stylish horse-drawn carriage was introduced, thus making the former carrier specialist, and their occupation, an outmoded and inefficient means of transport. The horse could pull more, move faster, and was much cheaper than the teams of carrying specialists. Sadly, the human toll on this advent of modernization is staggering -- nearly twenty million in Europe alone died since the only skill they had to offer was to pick up, move, and put down a personal litter.

The human tragedy in Europe was not exclusive and automation, and the death that it brings, has visited many souls the world over. Before the advent of the electric fan, scores of noble cooling technicians would be employed throughout much of the Middle East and Asia to cool down their employers. Trained in the delicate art of fanning, these cooling technicians would wave up and down in a gentle and repetitive fashion a palm or feathered plum in order to cool their employer. Life for both the cooling technician and the employer was enjoyable, mutual, and completely non-exploitive. Both benefited from the beauty and art of fanning; the pageantry of the cooling technician; and the relationship that between the cooling technician and the employer who paid a fair living-wage. Simply put, such an arrangement -- like the carrying specialist -- was a period of economic bliss, good work, and a comfortable standard of living. But like the carrier specialist the cooling technician too was replaced with the advent of automation -- in this case, the cold heartless metal of an electric fan.

Sex too has been ruined by technological automation and has all but decimated the living wages of noble sex workers with the advent of battery-operated dildos, pleasing plastic and rubber molds, and litanies of untold pornographic materials. Today sex workers find themselves up against stiff competition in the age of rugged individualistic self-gratification. Gone is the Golden Age of Prostitution where a simple trip overseas and a couple hundred U.S. dollars would keep brothels awash in life-sustaining monies and the capital needed to expand into newer and poorer markets. Gone are the days where alley-way sex workers of all genders, shapes, and sizes could be easily bought at a fair price. Sexting has all but replaced phone sex hotlines leaving millions unemployed and Big Dildo has all but wiped out male prostitution as aesthetically-challenged women turn to the much cheaper "battery-operated boyfriend" (known as BOB in some suburban locales) Through automation and modernization, not even the world's oldest profession is safe, which is perhaps the greatest untold tragedy of the "new economy".

President Obama was right when he blamed the ATMs as well as the airport kiosk for chronic American unemployment and economic hardship. A world without someone to carry me around on a litter; fan me down with cool palms; or pleasure me sexually at a rate is simply not the world I wish to be a part of. What is needed is a Worker's Economy based on the time-tested principles of the past: Keynesian economics, sex workers, and untold laborers willing to go back to school (on federal loans, of course) to re-learn needed trades like fanning, litter-moving and prostitution. We need to return to the Worker's Economy, comrades, and ensure that every American -- no matter how stupid -- is able to fan, feed, move, and screw me!

The advent of modern technologies, for which we blame Reagan and Bush, must be smashed to pieces. Smash those computers, toasters, and television sets! Throw out your dildos and automobiles and embrace the cherished institutions of prostitution and being eco-driven by a team of sweaty carrying specialist. Turn off the air conditioners and cool the Earth as you are cooled with fresh green palms by a cooling technician. Modernity and the curses of modernization must be undone for the people, the workers, and the children. What kind of world are we leaving our children and what kind of future will they inherit? Will the children inherit a future of ATMs, kiosk, and electric fans? Not on my watch, comrades. Not on my watch.

Chairman Meow Sergeyevich Kennedy-Punchenko is a celebrated author of thirty-nine books with his latest being I'm A Democrat, Get Me Out of Here: 100 Tips on Avoiding Stiff Sentences for Theft, Fraud, and Corruption as well as the former editor of Ditch Living & Collective Gardening and Vogue. He is between wives, has no children that he claims, and graduated from Harvard College.

Brilliant as always Comrade Chairman! I did see one minor correction that you may wish to make before final publication however. There was one no doubt inadvertent mention of a technology that also put millions out of work. You wrote: "Sexting has all but replaced phone sex hotlines leaving millions unemployed..." I could only note that a phone is also a technological device that obviated the need for the time honored messenger occupation. These messengers were also one of the first to be driven to extinction by the enslavement of animals such as messenger pigeons, to be finally driven out by technology.

Imagine how many more we can employ to send sex messages via real life messengers? This would also perhaps extend the pleasure time and reduce pre-mature ejaculation if the messages were sent the old, tried and true ways.

Not to even think of correcting you, Chairman, but I think possibly one of your interns may have mislabled one of your illustrations (and such fine illustrations, may I add). Illustration #3 appears to be tagged as "rowing specialists," when I am almost positive that this is a photograph of the power unit of the now obsolete Hildo Hydra Mark III.

Profound. Absolutely profound.

The Chairman's unique blend of sublime prose and class struggle grabs the reader in a clenched fist of righteous anger and hurls him against the bloody wall of History. It knocks the breath out of you. And, dialectically speaking, makes you want to jump up and run away.

These Capitalist employers don't fool me. Who in the Democrat Congress dropped the ball by making robots exempt from ObamaCare provisions?

Comrade Otis wrote:Profound. Absolutely profound.

The Chairman's unique blend of sublime prose and class struggle grabs the reader in a clenched fist of righteous anger and hurls him against the bloody wall of History. It knocks the breath out of you. And, dialectically speaking, makes you want to jump up and run away.

I have only my K-12 education and my degree from Harvard to thank for my rhetorical and ideological mastery, Comrade Otis. I am the pride of both Longinus and Marx. I am also their envy.

I am the Gorgias of my time. Yes, I also wanted to state that about myself.

Marshal Pupovich wrote:Brilliant as always Comrade Chairman! I did see one minor correction that you may wish to make before final publication however. There was one no doubt inadvertent mention of a technology that also put millions out of work. You wrote: "Sexting has all but replaced phone sex hotlines leaving millions unemployed..." I could only note that a phone is also a technological device that obviated the need for the time honored messenger occupation. These messengers were also one of the first to be driven to extinction by the enslavement of animals such as messenger pigeons, to be finally driven out by technology.

Imagine how many more we can employ to send sex messages via real life messengers? This would also perhaps extend the pleasure time and reduce pre-mature ejaculation if the messages were sent the old, tried and true ways.

You are correct as always, Marshal Pupovich. It was indeed the telephone that killed off the messenger and most especially decimated the seedy and highly sexual world of the singing telegram industry. We truly missed out with the loss of the singing telegram.

There is one class of worker that will never lack a job comrades, that profession being that of the Blooming Idiots™. No machine can match Comrades as I was reminded just today.

Actually, my progressive heart or what is left of one, was troubled for a moment when I read the headline "San Francisco Wants to Ban Goldfish to Prevent Their 'Inhumane Suffering.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06 ... suffering/

I mean who on earth wants to see goldfish suffer or be sent to some inhumane fish shelter? Then I remembered that a goldfish has an attention span of about 5 seconds, so they are really not that bothered by living in a jar. Just ask Comrade Brain in a Jar Betinov.,,,who does have a more extensive attention span.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about? I was distracted by a shiny moving object.

Comrade Clinton, however, did take sex back to an old level, and with Monica. She is not a labor-saving device although the cigar might be considered to be one. We must also assume that Comrade Clinton did have congress with Our Many Titted Empress, at least once, or perhaps he was canoodling with some other intern, who ran out of the room when our TE walked in, and our MTE sat on the wet spot.

What a sound that would have made. Which by the way, I am familiar with.

Why, comrades, do you think that the Turbo-hydramatic Hildo Mark 7, with three-phase power, is obsolete? We may be assured, despite our mooing about renewable energy which doesn't work when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, that we will have good energy, for there is no anger quite like that of our MTE when she's having a party with Janet Reno, Senator Mikulski, and I hope I spelled her name right. And when Rosie is there--my Stalin, if the power blips there is utter hell to pay.

As far as the singing telegram goes, we have the singing commercial. I listen to America Left on XM. I love Thom Hartmann. ("What's wrong with borrowing money? We pay it back to ourselves!") So refreshing to find another prog who is a flat-earther, never having heard of the Chinese or Japanese.

But soft! Doesn't Thom admire Chairman Mao? If not, he's not a Made Prog.

Anway, America Left can't sell all their commercials. Sometimes, to see what the enemy is doing, I go to Faux Noise, and the commercials all start with an explosion, subsonics, or a man barking, "This is a special message for anyone too stupid to turn me off now!"

This is the modern singing telegram.

Comrades, let us not be so hasty to through out the last 1,000 years of human and technology development. Some things are still enjoyable like finding Mcgyver-like solutions to problems. Why just last week both my motorcycle and my lawnmower broke down on the same day. The genius in me directed my above endeavor. What would you have done, buysome donkeys to eat the grass and ride to town?

Vilhelm, so that's where Jeff Foxworthy's lawnmower went.

The Chairman is correct.

Look at health care. The RethugliKKKans are trying to rollback Dear Leader's progressive plan in which every human can get the help they need. It used to be that all you needed to do was go to the barber for a little bloodletting and you were cured...but noooo...everything today involves a hospital, specialists, medicine and whatnot! And the end result? Proles live longer! More living proles mean less jobs!

Laika the Space Dog wrote:The Chairman is correct.

Look at health care. The RethugliKKKans are trying to rollback Dear Leader's progressive plan in which every human can get the help they need. It used to be that all you needed to do was go to the barber for a little bloodletting and you were cured...but noooo...everything today involves a hospital, specialists, medicine and whatnot! And the end result? Proles live longer! More living proles mean less jobs!

Yes! The Medical Industrial Complex and their life-saving technology and practices are to blame for our chronic unemployment. President Obama tried to save the unemployed by thinning out the herd of the employed by denying them life-saving medical procedures. What does the unemployed do in return? THEY GIVE THE HOUSE BACK TO THE REPUBLICANS! Outrageous! The Collective and its affiliated Organs needs to reassure the American people that Obamacare = Jobs for those not denied life-saving healthcare by the rationing boards.

As usual Chairman, you are right on top of the game! These rethuglicans claim they wish to cut the budget, Lenin knows why, yet they do everything they can to reverse Obama care which as pointed out, can only lead to more proles surviving to waste precious resources, cause seas to rise, and IQ scores to fall!

Most Equal Comrades, I think that we need more nuanced thought here. I'm all for good medical care. In fact I propose that all the doctors in Obamacare (save those for the Party Elite), be trained at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Science.

There are only two reasons for keeping a prole alive:

1. The work that it can do. Whether slogging in the beet fields, walking picket lines, intimidating non-union workers, or even, in advanced cases, giving advice on how to launder money from an underage bordello.

2. Voting correctly. And I'm not really sure that #2 is needed more than just once; for we have the excellent example of the Necro-Proxy voters. Once the name is on the rolls, then we don't need him any more.

I simply do not see why the hand-wringing over medical procedures for proles. Because once they can no longer lift that bale, and tow that barge, or cast that vote, they're completely useless and a soak. Get rid of them.

(BTW, I've been doing some computer programming. I'm registering voter A A. Then A B. Then A C. Then A D. By the time we get to AZZZZ BZZZZ we can get what we want, even in Texas.)

Father Prog Theocritus wrote:....There are only two reasons for keeping a prole alive:

1. The work that it can do. Whether slogging in the beet fields, walking picket lines, intimidating non-union workers, or even, in advanced cases, giving advice on how to launder money from an underage bordello.

2. Voting correctly. And I'm not really sure that #2 is needed more than just once; for we have the excellent example of the Necro-Proxy voters. Once the name is on the rolls, then we don't need him any more.

I simply do not see why the hand-wringing over medical procedures for proles. Because once they can no longer lift that bale, and tow that barge, or cast that vote, they're completely useless and a soak. Get rid of them.

Father Prog, of course you make good, progressive arguments to this discussion. However, I believe I can bring some closure. True, once proles can no longer do those tasks such as you suggest, they are no longer of use to the collective and can be reasonably expected to either "un-be™," or the state will be required to "retire" the prole on a permanent basis. (I think I am going to love my new term....un-be....it just sort of says it all doesn't it?) But Father Prog, you are talking about "long-term care." What we are looking at is the cost of capitalist progress on those proles that are beginning to make minor complaints for such things as broken bones, and amputatoins, and diseases short of the Final Prescription. In other words, while the prole is still capable of some useful work even if at a reduced rate.

BTW, have you noticed the return of yet another worthy elite? I don't know if you have discovered this yet, but I recently discovered that Comrade O'Brien has returned to the collective. As you can see at this link, it turns out that Comrade O'Brien lives in the very same small collective as your's truly! We even met not long back at the Whistle Stop Re-Education Center and Coffee Shop.