Your Own, Personal Disastrophy
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Even if you don’t live in Iraq or New Orleans or Iowa, you too can experience the phenomenon of disaster capitalism. You don’t even have to lose your job (but losing your job ups the thrill). Yes, it’s that easy!
It goes something like this.
You discover that the money isn’t flowing in like it used to, but it’s flowing out like crazy for rent, utilities, $5 per gallon gas, health insurance, food, and toothpaste. After a check or two bounces and your credit card reaches its limit, you give notice to the rent manager, determined to find new job (this one is lousy and your boss is a bigot) and some sort of living arrangement.
You begin to circle notices in the want ads and search Craig’s List. You go to a scores of “open house” appointments and soon discover that there are hundreds of other people like you wandering around these dumps eying each other suspiciously, and you can see the stack of rental applications over there on the table where the property manager or owner sits gloating is at least an inch thick.
You fill out an application knowing that your credit isn’t the greatest. Sure enough, none of the managers or owners phone you back, and even if they did, how are you going to cough up the $50 for a background check? But even if you’d passed that and someone granted you the privilege of living under a roof, you’d still be paying nearly your entire paycheck (if you had one) every month for rent and car fuel, just to get by.
Your two weeks are up at your current apartment, so you get rid of as much of your crap as you can and find yourself driving around looking for some cheap fast food to quell the hunger pangs. You couch surf for awhile, but your friends and relatives finally give you the boot. You wind up in your car. Yes you. It’s 108 degrees. Your A/C is broken. There you are driving around on your last tank of gas looking for a place to park in the shade for a little shut-eye where the cops won’t harass you.
You find a place down by the river and settle back in your seat, trying to get your head together. Next thing you know there’s a knock on your roof. It’s a cop. You sit up. No, it’s five cops. For some reason you think about the “Impeach Bush” sticker on your bumper and wished you’d peeled it off. The cop asks you something and you answer. He asks you for some ID and car registration. Luckily you can provide both, but he keeps at it, asking you questions. It’s hot. You’re hungry. You ask him what you’ve done. He doesn’t like your attitude.
Next thing you know he tells you to get out of the car and put your hands on the roof. They’re frisking you, tying plastic cuffs around your wrist, and you’re taken to a squad car and whisked to some remote spot away from the city. That’s when the real fun begins. That’s when you’re taken to a holding cell by a swarm of cops dressed in black gear and wearing laytex gloves. You realize they’ve been watching “24″ and they’re probably fresh from training at Gitmo…
