Mira Martin-Parker

A Modest Proposal

By Jonathan Swift

It’s time someone had the courage to this bring up. In this age of Me Too and Black Lives Matter members of the general public ought to be forced to come clean on this one as well. Society needs to offer citizens a dignified and efficient way out. I know it’s difficult to speak openly about this. The subject definitely forces us beyond our comfort zones. So the problem goes unaddressed. We all collectively pretend it will solve itself and go away. Meanwhile, the depressed, the sick, the unemployed, the mentally ill, the heavily in debt, those who simply cannot conform—all of them feeling like shit, in pain, suffering, so many wanting desperately to be bodily nonexistent so as to no longer burden themselves and others, wanting to no longer impose their personal imperfections and disorders onto a perfect and orderly people—are forced to carry on, spectacularly decomposing in public. Why shouldn’t they be offered an easy and efficient way out? It ought to be demanded as a human right. The perpetually unable to succeed are not happy, but happiness could easily be provided them. Society could make them happy if it chose to. But no, it chooses not to, even though it could very easily create a “Go and Die” lane, a specially marked traffic off ramp on a bridge or something where people could just cue up and disappear. It could all be handled professionally and painlessly. Dignified even. A matter of the highest honor: Do us all a favor, serve your people, go and die!

I know you’re cringing hearing this. Such talk is morally upsetting. Instead we prefer going around spouting platitudes about the inherent dignity of human life, blah blah blah. But the truth is, deep inside we all want all these folks gone. We would prefer not to have to kill them ourselves, but we definitely think they would be better off dead. I suspect only about 20 to 30% of people are worth socially sustaining. Those quick with technology, believing in corporate values, the go-along-to-get-along types. They do yoga and eat the right foods. They’re healthy, vote properly, get shots when told, and drive shiny new electric cars. They’re winners. They have high credit scores. They participate actively in the economy, and are busy solving the world’s problems by creating new and meaningful apps for food delivery services, pet comfort products, and transportation innovations like robotic cars.

The rest are pretty much losers getting in the way of our collective success. If it weren’t for government handouts, they probably would be dead. Governments are for losers. Governments send monthly loser checks to losers. Governments provide losers with libraries so losers can have places to sit during the day and use the bathroom for inappropriate purposes like bathing. They sleep in libraries and cause a ruckus in libraries and watch porn in libraries on the shared computers. Governments also provide losers with public transit systems so they can stink them up with their filthy homeless bodies and start fights and yell and just make themselves a general nuisance. Then the same loving government locks them up in prisons where they are rewarded with three hots and a cot.

Even the less spectacular losers are nuisances. These folks work as baristas, food servers, and dishwashers in restaurants. They also drive Ubers so and sleep in their cars in rest areas. They buy cheap commercial food products and litter the streets with environmentally unfriendly Styrofoam to-go packaging. They also cause restaurant checks to go up because of their loser “Fights-for-Fifteen.” They squat eternally in rent-controlled apartments, take out far too many government subsidized student loans, and hold highly unenlightened opinions on matters they’re entirely under-qualified to even think about let alone openly discuss and debate. They own guns, beat their wives, and flip out under pressure. They do cheap drugs like fent and crack, and leave paraphernalia all over the streets. They even get fucked up on the streets and overdose, compelling us good folks to rescue them when we’d actually prefer to let them die.

Unlike the socially productive and healthy go-alongs, society’s highly imperfect 80% loser class is an ugly mess desperately in need of a dignified manner of self-elimination. Since governments are created by losers for the benefit of losers, it’s the government’s responsibility to take on this task. The “Go and Die” lane is government’s final loser solution. Masses can drive up or walk up and check themselves in. Their cars and belongings can be sold/recycled, their bodies donated to science/turned into fertilizer. Perhaps a decent last meal eaten in front of a pleasant film could be offered. Then it’s off to sleep, like a beloved pet in its old age.

You must admit this is far more efficient and humane than our current practice of simply looking the other way and pretending not to see what we are collectively in fact doing. That is, killing ourselves off slowly. It’s certainly far more reasonable than permitting losers to continue imposing their privately made bad decisions on everyone else.

And anyway, who’s to stop us? The government? Ha!