Let this be a warning that communism is the last refuge of the unambitious and those fearful of a free trade society. When I was a rich kid in Great Neck North High School, I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. I hung out, got high and got into fights.
Figuring I didn’t fit in anywhere and that I wanted to become “meaningful”, I became simpatico with the dogmas of a liberal/socialist/communist following. I figured the government would come up with some way to support me. I was afraid of small business. I didn’t know how to compete.
In college I became an academic and a poet. Now there’s no way of really supporting yourself as a poet in a competitive commercial society.
So I remained a liberal/socialist/communist and hoped to suck on the teat of the nanny state. I thought the state would support me if I continued to write my poems. Despite its advertising, communism is taking not giving. I was impractical. I was hallucinating. I believed the world owed me a living when there was no market for poetry.
My last book of poetry was “Lane Changes” published by Four Way Books. It sold a couple of hundred copies. It was not a job. It was a love-fest, a hobby.
Liberalism/ socialism/ communism are solipsistic. I lived for myself and my writing. And I was jealous of rich people for being afraid to dig their hands into reality and sculpt the mud of prosperity.
I was a communist because I didn’t have the courage to confront the world. I was hiding behind political structuring. I was sensitive but useless.
At twenty-eight, I got a job in the insurance industry. I hated it at first but rapidly liked it when I became successful. I managed to become wealthy for the next eighteen years until I twisted a few rules and got arrested for tax evasion. My old immoral anti-capitalism once again caused me to fail. If I had respected Emersonian America I wouldn’t have failed. The foolish sheep at the trough of Occupy Wall Street should learn a lesson from me. The ethos of socialistic morals leads to failure. It follows them through their later endeavors, even after they wise up. Trying to eat a fair share of someone else’s pie leads to pie theft. Socialism is a joke. It brings tears and self-recrimination rather than laughter and joy.
