Frustrations were mounting across the nation as gargantuan tasks continued to be undertaken. Yet, there was a sense of accomplishment and relief in the work; people began to recognize that all they had to do was get through all this tragedy and life might get better for everyone.
Frustrations in the past were fruitless. Congress and the federal bureaucracies never accomplished anything worthwhile, The Bush administration had squandered its tenure on terror without addressing any other issues confounding the country. Most of the fifty U.S. states were experiencing fiscal deficits, political gridlock, and angry constituencies the federal government passed more responsibility onto the states without releasing resources. It seemed that most Americans were sending more and more of their money to the United States government, but only a trickle of it was returning to them in the form of services or assistance. The Bush administration's obsession with 'terrorism' had only escalated the dangers, and hundreds of billions of dollars were being poured down an engorged rat hole whose only benefactors were the greatest military-industrial complex on Earth. "We the people" were no longer seeing any tangible benefits from tax revenues that went to Washington. Even local municipalities were mired in mismanagement, scandal and ineptness.
Add to that the frustrations that practically every American citizen experienced in everyday life. Monumental traffic tie-ups were becoming an incredible cause of stress-related illnesses. Overloaded employees were finding themselves exhausted at the end of their work day with little to show for it. Shoppers' irritation levels were at an all-time high as you couldn't get waited on in stores; grocery mega-chains would have 31 check-out lanes, but only six of them would be open at a time. Trying to resolve a complaint with a phone company, a utility, or a customer service center based in India was becoming a hassle that most American simply refused to deal with any longer. Instead, they resigned themselves to just accepting their plight and paying for poor service. Nothing got done. It seemed the nation had been at a standstill since the turn of the century, and people had finally come to a defeatist attitude toward it all. Talking to automated voices or foreigners who couldn't even understand your complaint was commonplace - and big corporations were enjoying higher customer resolution factors. The dirty little secret was that - while they may have resolved more complaints - there were also magnitudes of unhappy customers who had simply given up trying to get their issues resolved. Numbers were skewed in virtually every industry, twisted to reveal the precisely preferred data. Polls were rigged simply by the way a question was worded. You could rate customer service on a scale of one to ten, but customer satisfaction surveys seldom afforded an opportunity to really express your disatisfactions.
In everything from politics to big business, the voter or the customer were abandoned in favor of strong polling numbers, record quarterly profits, or a better image. No one "at the top" cared about the people on the lower rungs of the ladders. It was all about money, power, influence, and status. But as more people managed to claw their way to that top rung, it was evident that eventually there had to be a breaking point. By 2008, the top rungs of the ladders were beginning to crack.
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. came along at a most appropriate time. An American Revolution was overdue....and by the time the 'Rebellion of '08' exploded on January 17, most common citizens were ready for a change.
Amid the wreckage of the January bombings, small businesses were thriving. Customer service was slowly beginning to really mean something again. Local political figures quickly understood their need to provide services and loyalties to their local constituencies. As one mayor in a small Missouri town asked, "Why should we send all our money to the federal government and see none of it come back to us?" What little remained of the Internal Revenue Service was an impotent shell; there was no way to enforce tax payments. The IRS had always been one of the government's most bloated, yet poorly managed, bureaucracies. Now it had no authority.
Homeland Security, even as far back as 2006, had been infiltrated with incompetence and scandal. U.S. border patrols had been beefed up on the Mexican border only to enhance the presence of corrupt officers who would gladly accept a handsome bribe in return for a safe escorted crossing. By the end of 2007, Homeland Security was a sinking ship adrift on a sea of corruption, incompetence and fraud. "All the President's Men" co-author Bob Woodward published a damning expose' on the Bush administration's deceitful reports and ugly public relations strategies which had conned the American people into believing that the war in Iraq was going much better than it really was; clandestine meetings with people like Henry Kissinger kept the 'war on terror' on track, all in the interests of greedy business interests and political maneuvering.
The American public was being lied to at every turn. From political pr to warm-and-fuzzy TV commercials depicting large conglomerates as good corporate citizens, it was all a cesspool of deception. Nothing was real anymore; truth failed to prevail; words like honesty and integrity were tossed around with such reckless abandon that no one paid any attention to their definitions. In 2005, a Vice-President of the United States had told a member of Congress - on the record - to "go fuck yourself" and no one even flinched. Mean-spiritedness crawled through society like a snake slithering in a swamp.
Mmebers of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. firmly believed that this moral decomposition had to be stopped in its tracks. They took it upon themselves to act - some would say in a most uncivilized manner. But, considering the incredulous depths of decay into which America had fallen, it was the only way. Politicians, lawyers, big business moguls, celebrity predators and filmakers, wealthy persons of dubious character, and all other undesireables had to be eliminated. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had achieved such an objective with the use of countless cell phones and home made bombs.
Once the nation recovered from the series of events that had transpired over the past three months, renewal could begin anew. Jil Adams, Bob Ryan, Ron Oetting, and Phil Baker lay on the beach contemplating the future of their country and consuming quantities of Brinley's Gold vanilla and coffee rums. Could America become a version of this ideallic West Indies island? St. Kitts was perhaps the most perfect place on Earth: little government interference; free and unencumbered lifestyles where the rich and the poor mingled without bias or bigotry; and a laid-back, relaxed way of watching the world go by without the constant clawing so many Americans chewed their way through almost every day of their adult life. Under the influence of the smooth, dark rums, the AROB Group (renamed since Adams joined them) began the formation of a new kind of social order for the United States of America. Life could be good....
Frustrations in the past were fruitless. Congress and the federal bureaucracies never accomplished anything worthwhile, The Bush administration had squandered its tenure on terror without addressing any other issues confounding the country. Most of the fifty U.S. states were experiencing fiscal deficits, political gridlock, and angry constituencies the federal government passed more responsibility onto the states without releasing resources. It seemed that most Americans were sending more and more of their money to the United States government, but only a trickle of it was returning to them in the form of services or assistance. The Bush administration's obsession with 'terrorism' had only escalated the dangers, and hundreds of billions of dollars were being poured down an engorged rat hole whose only benefactors were the greatest military-industrial complex on Earth. "We the people" were no longer seeing any tangible benefits from tax revenues that went to Washington. Even local municipalities were mired in mismanagement, scandal and ineptness.
Add to that the frustrations that practically every American citizen experienced in everyday life. Monumental traffic tie-ups were becoming an incredible cause of stress-related illnesses. Overloaded employees were finding themselves exhausted at the end of their work day with little to show for it. Shoppers' irritation levels were at an all-time high as you couldn't get waited on in stores; grocery mega-chains would have 31 check-out lanes, but only six of them would be open at a time. Trying to resolve a complaint with a phone company, a utility, or a customer service center based in India was becoming a hassle that most American simply refused to deal with any longer. Instead, they resigned themselves to just accepting their plight and paying for poor service. Nothing got done. It seemed the nation had been at a standstill since the turn of the century, and people had finally come to a defeatist attitude toward it all. Talking to automated voices or foreigners who couldn't even understand your complaint was commonplace - and big corporations were enjoying higher customer resolution factors. The dirty little secret was that - while they may have resolved more complaints - there were also magnitudes of unhappy customers who had simply given up trying to get their issues resolved. Numbers were skewed in virtually every industry, twisted to reveal the precisely preferred data. Polls were rigged simply by the way a question was worded. You could rate customer service on a scale of one to ten, but customer satisfaction surveys seldom afforded an opportunity to really express your disatisfactions.
In everything from politics to big business, the voter or the customer were abandoned in favor of strong polling numbers, record quarterly profits, or a better image. No one "at the top" cared about the people on the lower rungs of the ladders. It was all about money, power, influence, and status. But as more people managed to claw their way to that top rung, it was evident that eventually there had to be a breaking point. By 2008, the top rungs of the ladders were beginning to crack.
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. came along at a most appropriate time. An American Revolution was overdue....and by the time the 'Rebellion of '08' exploded on January 17, most common citizens were ready for a change.
Amid the wreckage of the January bombings, small businesses were thriving. Customer service was slowly beginning to really mean something again. Local political figures quickly understood their need to provide services and loyalties to their local constituencies. As one mayor in a small Missouri town asked, "Why should we send all our money to the federal government and see none of it come back to us?" What little remained of the Internal Revenue Service was an impotent shell; there was no way to enforce tax payments. The IRS had always been one of the government's most bloated, yet poorly managed, bureaucracies. Now it had no authority.
Homeland Security, even as far back as 2006, had been infiltrated with incompetence and scandal. U.S. border patrols had been beefed up on the Mexican border only to enhance the presence of corrupt officers who would gladly accept a handsome bribe in return for a safe escorted crossing. By the end of 2007, Homeland Security was a sinking ship adrift on a sea of corruption, incompetence and fraud. "All the President's Men" co-author Bob Woodward published a damning expose' on the Bush administration's deceitful reports and ugly public relations strategies which had conned the American people into believing that the war in Iraq was going much better than it really was; clandestine meetings with people like Henry Kissinger kept the 'war on terror' on track, all in the interests of greedy business interests and political maneuvering.
The American public was being lied to at every turn. From political pr to warm-and-fuzzy TV commercials depicting large conglomerates as good corporate citizens, it was all a cesspool of deception. Nothing was real anymore; truth failed to prevail; words like honesty and integrity were tossed around with such reckless abandon that no one paid any attention to their definitions. In 2005, a Vice-President of the United States had told a member of Congress - on the record - to "go fuck yourself" and no one even flinched. Mean-spiritedness crawled through society like a snake slithering in a swamp.
Mmebers of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. firmly believed that this moral decomposition had to be stopped in its tracks. They took it upon themselves to act - some would say in a most uncivilized manner. But, considering the incredulous depths of decay into which America had fallen, it was the only way. Politicians, lawyers, big business moguls, celebrity predators and filmakers, wealthy persons of dubious character, and all other undesireables had to be eliminated. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had achieved such an objective with the use of countless cell phones and home made bombs.
Once the nation recovered from the series of events that had transpired over the past three months, renewal could begin anew. Jil Adams, Bob Ryan, Ron Oetting, and Phil Baker lay on the beach contemplating the future of their country and consuming quantities of Brinley's Gold vanilla and coffee rums. Could America become a version of this ideallic West Indies island? St. Kitts was perhaps the most perfect place on Earth: little government interference; free and unencumbered lifestyles where the rich and the poor mingled without bias or bigotry; and a laid-back, relaxed way of watching the world go by without the constant clawing so many Americans chewed their way through almost every day of their adult life. Under the influence of the smooth, dark rums, the AROB Group (renamed since Adams joined them) began the formation of a new kind of social order for the United States of America. Life could be good....
posted by Bushwacker! at 7:17 AM
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