CSI: American Carnage (Friday, May 1, 2020)
NEW YORK CITY – Little Timmy, pup reporter, and the Professor’s small strike force sit in an empty Washington Square Park. Masked city workers are off to the side, digging a large pit. What appear to be six-foot-long vinyl duffel bags are stacked one on top of the other near the Fifth Avenue entrance to the park, and long lines of U-Haul trucks idle in the street, waiting to off load their cargo. Timmy says, I thought construction crews were not supposed to work during the shutdown. Boris, genial triple agent, looks over at the workers diligently digging, and says, Those are grave diggers. I know them well from life under Poohteen, and from before him, Uncle Joe. You see them in countryside around Moscva. Sarah, Timmy’s friend from the resistance pot luck, says, They are the Autocrat’s most favored employment sector. When asked about people being thrown out of work, he points to the Grave Diggers Union and says, Labor, we love you. Sarah falls silent. The Professor takes out his pipe, taps it on the cement wall of the fountain, and says, It should be no surprise they are digging the mass graves here in Washington Square. As he speaks, a U-Haul truck, packed with six-foot duffels, backs onto the sidewalk. Workers form a kind of conga line as they pass the bags from inside the truck, one to another, finally stacking them in a growing mountain beside the deepening pit. A pungent odor fills the air, like mouse shit. The Professor says, In the early days, that area over there was used as a potters field, a strangers ground. They kicked the free black farmers off the land and then buried them all there. Boris says, Did the farmers have to dig their own graves? That ees Poohteen’s favorite joke with his grave diggers. Sarah says, Yes, autocrats through the ages save money by having the victims dig for themselves. This autocrat is no different. He will not spend any money. He will not perform any labor. But his gambit is clear. It is celebrity nihilism. He has established an unwavering cult. But not everyone watches. So as the country collapses, as jobs are destroyed, as the bodies pile up, as the money flows into the pockets of the Autocrat and his circle, as the money for everyone else shrivels away, the Autocrat simply says he is doing a spectacular job. And he is. He is doing the job he set out to do. He laid out his plan years ago. He said back in the day that the country was broken and sick. But when the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster – that’s what is desired because then you’ll have riots; the people will demand that the country goes back to where it used to be when it was great. That’s what he said then. And that’s what he’s doing now. Mohammed, Timmy’s friend, says, Yes they are demanding the country reopen everywhere. Sarah says, Grave diggers don’t necessarily work with shovels. – Friday, May 1, 2020.