T is for Threats to the System

Recently, I was forced by circumstances to seek employment in another field.

The world has changed, and I have not been able to find employ in my prior field for some time. There were jobs in the new field, and few takers. All I had to do was take some training, and jump some educational and testing hurdles.

Being paranoid, I searched the internet for any evidence that my status as a ‘deadbeat dad’ would be held against me. Nothing. All systems go. So, I set to it. I would be able to earn real money again, make a difference in my children’s lives and my life in a financial way, rather than being a load on the system.

This was great.

I won scholarships and grants to help with my retooling, and just as I was about to start the educational part of my program, a letter from the state licensing board arrived – it was a long bureaucratic checklist letter, and way at the bottom was written in an additional item, which had a check next to it: words to the effect that ‘men with arrears are not eligible for licensing in this field’.

So I called and wrote and spoke to these folks. Sure, the law gives them the right to withhold my license, I said; but I am trying to work – this will enable me to pay! Unless someone is complaining, why would they withhold this license?

True, they said, they need a complainant. But how that works (they candidly told me) was if they found that someone was in arrears, they would send a letter to the local employer, and ask that they initiate a complaint.

Got that? They would solicit, would GENERATE the complaint. Think any employer is going to ignore a request like that from the state licensing board that holds all their licenses in their hands?

You would think it sounds insane, but you would be forgetting two things – one, that there are a lot of folks who earn money pursuing deadbeat dads – seizing their accounts, garnishing their wages, serving as their ‘collections/probation officer’, suing them, serving as judges in the slave courts, - and there is a lot of incentive in terms of grants and matching funds from the federal government for doing all this. It’s a whole industry.

And the men involved, well, they are the disposable pawns, the workers, the slaves in the system that make all of this possible.

If one were to find a way out, others would follow.

To quote words that E.W. Jackson Sr. wrote in a recent and unrelated article: “When a slave escaped from the plantation, it wasn't merely a case of one slave being a problem. That slave became a threat to the institution of slavery and to the master's way of life.”

It is necessary to keep us in, to keep the empire running. Not one slave must be allowed to escape.

Let this be a warning to men everywhere. The entrée to this empire of slavery is marriage. The exit is death.

This is why almost 15,000 men kill themselves each year to escape it.

This is why if a man commits suicide, the odds are he is a divorced man. Because for the oppressed slaves in a slave state, the only escape allowed is death.

My Best To You In Your Struggles

-M