QuadTalk
February 19, 2019
A capriciously disseminated newsletter written by a hemp-inspired quadriplegic jester who, like King Lear, impotently screams ineffective vitriol at the raging antediluvian squalls of societal indifference that violently smash the planet and callously destroy the things I love. I cry, defeated by a redoubtable sea of troubles as my siblings, whose pursuits of happiness do not coincide with the status quo, are mowed down by ignorant privilege while comfortably content indifference ignores the anguished cries of people's suffering simply because they don't look the same.
— SSTJazzVocalist

#Wheelchairistocracy #GroovicusMaximus @frangeladuo
Preamble

Welcome to QuadTalk. I am Rusty Taylor, a complete, level C-4 spinal cord injury who, for thirty-two years (and counting), has been unable to perform even the most rudimentary acts of daily living, and, as such, I am a victim of the nefarious for-profit healthcare system we, the citizens of the U.S.A., have callously ignored for too long. This will not be a media blitz of superfluity; I am a vitriolic antagonist against the status quo, so if you are naively looking for a feelgood story about a “poor li’l ol’ cripple boy” who done good against the odds, then I suggest you go find the Hallmark Channel and infuse your brain with enough endorphins to make you forget that separating children from their families is simply morally unconscionable or that a casual rapist majestically sits as Supreme Court judge. Otherwise, welcome...
Salutations
Sorry for the delay in writing; I have been a little anxious about our nation. I don’t imagine it comes to anyone’s surprise that I have no respect for Donald Trump. He’s a damn idiot, and I mean it literally. I am not trained as a person able to diagnose any mental anomaly; I am a jester, but I strongly believe that Donald J Trump is “a person affected by mental retardation,” which, according to my dictionary, is the definition of idiot .

Basically, I was worried that, as president of our disjointed nation, Trump was going to catalyze another governmental shutdown, and I feel awkward begging for money through my GoFundMe campaign because practically everybody is experiencing economic anxiety. Fact is that regardless of what happens to our nation, I will be taken care of or I will die. Can’t be much simpler.

My family will take care of me... always... and without fail, unless they all meet with fatal consequences, yet even if everyone in my family dies, I would be taken in by... well, I’m actually not sure what would happen, but, again, I will be taken care of or I will die. This is why I try to live more in the moment instead of anticipating failure. This is my dilemma: I, by the very nature of my paralysis, will be taken care of, but I need a lot of help, and I need it all the time, which, as I sit here typing this missive, begins to incinerate my rage... I am wearing out my family.

Am I worth it?

My mother takes care of me like no one else will. I imagine that most moms do, save Susan Smith or Mary Menendez. Unfortunately, last year, my mother broke her shoulder in the parking lot of Mellow Mushroom. This is when we needed to employ the assistance of hospice care. To do this, I had to be broke... physically and economically; otherwise, I would not qualify. It’s the modus operandi of the for-profit health care system that is my personal bane. It’s just the way it is, but my mom couldn’t help me and hospice was my best option at the time. Sadly, this necessity encouraged the more myopic members who make up my microcosmic universe to believe that I am a failure... I will not die with the most toys. That’s cool. I have had a really groovy life notwithstanding the time I was caught masturbating in the bathroom of my girlfriend’s parents’... by my girlfriend’s grandmother.

My mother is going blind. OK. It’s cataracts. She will schedule eye surgery in a couple weeks... one eye at a time but with a three-week recovery period for each orb. Family members will step in to help, but, again, I have to wonder if I am worth the fact that had it not been for my paralysis, both my father and my brother would have retired much more lucratively... had it not been for the outrageous medical costs for my quadriplegia. That makes me feel shitty. My mother and sister-in-law do not deserve this.

I love nurses. They are God’s (or metaphoric equivalent) special creations, and I am not talking exclusively about the people who get degrees in nursing; I am talking about anybody, woman, man, et al. who was born to serve others. Not sycophants, mind you; I am talking about those special people who see a miracle in every life and does everything in their power to preserve that life. They really are terrestrial angels. They simply love people. You can see it in their eyes that sparkle more intensely than an LED diamond. Grandmothers and mothers are the upper echelon but only semantically as a sign of respect for their fecundity. Point is that some of the most beautiful nurses are the ones who, if they happened upon a stranger in a wheelchair after he had experienced an unscheduled bowel movement would rather help clean up the feces than to simply walk away in a histrionically feigned attempt at ignorance. What can I say? Shit happens.

I have been a quadriplegic for thirty-two years. I’m going for the record; although, I have no way of knowing what that particular record is. Nor do I have any true desire to investigate it... on account of it is sooooo superfluous. However...

My high school coach played football for the Bear. If you’re anywhere near the southeast of the U.S., you know who the Bear is. If not, google it; he’s kind o’ a big thing down here in the Chattahoochee Valley. Even his antagonists respected him.

Anyway, my high school coach played with Kenny Stabler and double-dated with Joe Namath. Coach worked for a small Catholic school and had few winning seasons, but he is still a member of Columbus, Georgia’s Sports Hall of Fame. Unbeknownst to many of the young people he instructed, Coach’s brother Wayne broke his neck in a diving accident when he was 12 or 13. The point is that their mother took care of Wayne ‘til his death. I’m sure that he has the record, but their mother is the paragon nurse even though she never received a diploma; however, she is as much a nurse as Florence Nightingale. Again, nurses are terrestrial angels; unfortunately, the nurses sans diploma are treated nearly as badly as Mike Pence treats refugees.

OK. Maybe not that badly, but they are treated as subhuman by many. Serendipitously, the majority of CNAs who have helped me have been really wonderful people. Their mistreatment by society pisses me off. If I ever get a bunch of money, I am spoiling the hell out of the CNAs who wipe my ass and eliminate urine from my bladder.

I reckon that you, dear reader, might realize that I am slowly disenchanted with hospice, and before I am inundated with suggestions, I am sure that I will be disenchanted with any for-profit health care organization. I abhor paying for the upper echelon of the corporate model to afford superfluity while keeping its CNAs in poverty. My bills keep piling up and my family still does most of the work. Such is life. I do, however, admire, respect, and love my nurse and CNAs; I just wish that our nation had better health care services. As a quadriplegic who is unable to perform even the most rudimentary acts of daily living, I graduated from Mercer University and worked 16 years in the myopic milieu of corporate America, and all I have to show for it is soul-crushing debt.

My high school coach’s brother Wayne’s life was spent mostly in bed, but he broke his neck in the 60s; however, Wayne’s father was in the Army back when the government took care of veterans. [1] The main question I have now about my current paralysis is this: am I expected to merely lay in bed or may I pursue my dreams even when my dreams are to sing songs few people enjoy and write words very few read.

Peace Through Music

________________________

[1] Just for the record, I strongly approve of veteran’s getting paid outrageously for protecting our nation. They make it possible for me to rail against the current president with impunity.


I Am A Recovering Capitalist 


Our nation has been trying to establish a Democratic government since Ben Franklin was a tadpole, but it had to take baby steps. Originally, landowners were the only citizens, and although it was never explicitly stated, only rich white men could vote. After Barack Obama was elected, there was a misguided sense that racism had become passé. Remember? I was really hopin’ that I would not have had to traverse down the rhetorical path of racism, but it is still as glaringly overt as Brett Kavanaugh’s incompetence... or Mitch McConnell’s... or Matthew Whitiker’s... Antonin Scalia... Rick Scott... Paul Ryan... and many more who will soon be exposed as really ignorant white men after Robert Mueller concludes his investigation.  
 
The sad realization of all the irrational passion is just that... it is irrational . It gives a voice to querulous ideologies that differ from the zeitgeist of our nation. Very simply: The political arena is experiencing a major shift from the exclusive patriarchal influence that has exploited the male dominance of the last few millennia, internationally... although it is quickly morphing into inclusive matriarchal puissance. Just look at the diversity of the current House of Representatives compared to the achromatism of the Senate. The 2020 elections will bring the Baby Boomers’ influence to an abrupt end; AOC and her crew are waiting in the wings.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, or, more specifically, communication has become purposely more ambiguous. The GOP has been obfuscating its messaging since, at least, Nixon, made more aggressive by employing the Southern Strategy to egregiously exploit the emotionally agitated. The fact is that I, personally, am unable to convince a proud person that she is being taken advantage of even though it is as obvious as Trump’s buffoonery. Sadly, this pride associates her terrestrial status with an elitist air, or... her spiritual advisers promised her an eternity of idyllic existence within a perfect kingdom, or... she believes that manifest destiny has given her promised treasures because she is made in her god’s image, even while other humans (who are dissimilar than she... physically or philosophically) live lives much more encumbered by violence and inequitable wealth distribution.
 
The cards will soon be revealed, and the status quo is in danger. A much more progressive matriarchal political agenda will soon replace it. How that turns out remains to be seen, but humanity is predictable; the progressives will go too far until a more conservative mindset counteracts it and the swing of the pendulum reverses. Until then, the red MAGA hat-wearin’ yokel will be the butt of jokes to, hopefully, replace the southern redneck as America’s most parodied social group.

Yes, I am generalizing. Not all Trump supporters are overtly racist; although, they have had—as have I—access to privileges that others are not allowed. That, in and of itself, is not culpable, but to actually believe that one has achieved her successes exclusively because of her hard work and/or her moral superiority is unconscionable... and embarrassing. Let’s face it. Regardless of your intent, if you voted for Trump, you voted for separating children from their mothers, you voted to put a casual rapist on a bench of the Supreme Court, you voted to suppress Muslim people, you voted for a Neo-Nazi’s murder of 32-year-old Heather D, Heyer, and you voted for all the hate that has catalyzed since Trump’s inauguration.

The thing is that I don’t care. Really. We are all doing what we are supposed to be doing. My father’s maternal grandfather did not attend his granddaughter’s wedding because their offspring would have been innately mulatto. I am not sure if he was an active member of the KKK, but he felt very strongly that his believed European ancestry made him more ‘ merican than anybody else of African heritage, and this feigned superiority seeped down to me. If I were to abhor everyone in my life who is racist, my family tree would have one branch. I still love them; their lives might be judged... but not by me. I am a recovering Capitalist... and Catholic. I have been a member of two exclusive cults that gave me certain privileges not offered to everyone. The reason I can admit my early prejudices is that I do not have a wife or kids who could suffer negative social consequences by revealing my opposition to the status quo, which, shamefully, only quickened after I failed to achieve the American Dream... or it failed me as it has for too many under-served for centuries. 

I was the only white person in my eighth grade class in east Alabama where my best friend was named Willie. Not that it matters, but I have known that I have been privileged since I was young, and here’s an example with which I have recently come to terms: in eighth grade, my classmates, who were all black, wanted me to pursue a more amorous relationship with a white girl who was in 7th grade, but I was smitten with a girl named Judy who was in my 8th grade class. Unfortunately, juxtaposed against my classmates. I was always small and frail until my growth spurt in 11th grade, and Judy was tall and athletic... and pretty. I would’ve never had a chance... well, that’s what I thought. Point is that at the time, 1976-77, very, very few people in my microcosm, black or white, even considered the possibility that a white boy and a black girl could date... not even I considered it a viable option... well, that and my being unworthy.

Today’s youth do not see these limitations. This is why change is inevitable: New ideas usurp the old. The people who still believe that white folks are superior to everyone, by descanting concise and pointless apocryphal aphorisms, are dying out; youth is insidiously replacing sedentary yet flaccid impotence prone to ambiguity.

Fox Pravda was the most watched medium of kabuki theater disguised as news during the 90s and into the new millennia. Remember? And yet it is still as white as a polar bear’s dancing with an arctic rabbit during a snowstorm in Antarctica. Practically all of its female reporters are blonde, and nearly all the men are pasty white and corpulent. The organization slanted its extensive coverage of Benghazi; Uranium One; John Kerry’s Swift Boat smear campaign; Robert Mueller’s Russia Investigation; Harvey Weinstein; it promotes a pro-Republican, pro-Tea Party, and pro-Trump bias; it was the home of Meagan Kelly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Bill O’Reilly, and Rupert Murdoch; it denies climate change; it lauded the tragedies of Charlottesville, NC and Ferguson, MO; and Hillary Clinton’s sex crimes in the basement of a pizza joint. 

Sure it’s an incohesive list, but really? That word may be DJ Trump’s unintentional philosophy... if someone tells him what it means... and how it parallels his own incompetence as a human being... and...

The easily duped supporters of Trump hovers around 30% of the population, yet they are treated as if they were the majority. Fortunately, Fox Pravda’s viewership is dying out and is being replaced by a mass of humanity who have witnessed the nefarious results of austerity as espoused by rich white landowners who will now have to share the American Pie of Wealth Acquisition not just with a more racially diverse citizenry but one that includes all the formerly under-served population of God’s creatures.

Peace Through Music 
Shameless Solicitation

It’s time. I need money to pay for someone to help me because I’m wearing out my family. I’m hoping to solicit enough money to overpay someone to help me throughout the day and night for a weekend... or longer; my septuagenarian parents need a break. Please read my story, and if you can, donate a few bucks. If a bunch of folks give just a little, I can stay home; otherwise, I will consider going into a nursing home. I am tired of being a burden on my family. If you are unable to donate, your support will be just as appreciated. Thank you very much.

Read my story...
...or you can buy my CD of jazz Vocals

Abel 2's MISSION STATEMENT:

To enhance the Quality of Life of People with Disabilities and the Under-served by Creating Music and Arts opportunities for Employment and Enjoyment!