A MODEST PROPOSAL
For preventing the children of the Earth, from being a burden on the wealthy of this great nation, and for making them beneficial to the public.
With apologies to Dr. Jonathan Swift, 1729. His proposal to use Irish children as a meat supply was never adopted. It is to be hoped that modern sensibilities will now prevail.
It is a melancholy object to those, who survey this great nation, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and business doors crowded with beggars and the homeless, or the teeming masses with their incessant and irrational demands for food and education and work, or those who have left their own countries’ violence and decay, further crowding our fair land.
I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the nation, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children and adults useful members of the economy, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
A wall of bones.
We must have a wall, it is averred; but the expense and construction materials are debated, to a stalemate. Meanwhile, free materials accumulate, and show every indication of increasing in availability, to wit:
Skeletal remains are already available near our southern border; the previous owners died of starvation and dehydration; some cases of dehydration are a direct result of patriotic Americans destroying stores of water that might have prevented the deaths and, thus, the availability of these bones. More volunteers and agents on the border could ensure that any stores of water and food do not become available to these bone-bearers.
Immigrants are already concentrated in cages and camps, and they might readily be rendered useful in the same way, but gathering their bones would be even more efficient.
Of course, immigrants might provide insufficient feedstock for the wall. But Americans can, and will, provide:
Immediate nullification of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which nullification will result in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans in relatively short order.
Nullification of pollution controls will increase the number of deaths from particulate matter; currently, only about 70,000 Americans die per year from air pollution, but, by matching China's pollution, we might more fairly harvest a higher percentage of bones. Worldwide, about 5.5 million people die every year from air pollution, and we are not contributing our share. Increased pollution is needed.
Cutting the budgets for the National Institutes of Health, and research into cancer and heart disease and other major killers ought to be productive.
Massive cuts in nutritional support of adults, and, especially, of mothers and children will assure that we no longer “see the streets, the roads and business doors crowded with beggars and the homeless, or the teeming masses with their incessant and irrational demands for food and education and work…” and will provide further bones.
The availability of opioids, and widespread addiction supported by pharmaceutical companies should help; similarly, availability of guns, and failure of the Violence Against Women Act to expand protections will contribute somewhat.
War has typically resulted in the availability of prodigious numbers of bones. All too often, these bones lie about, useless, as in the killing fields of Cambodia. If we help to ensure that Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Iran get nuclear weapons, and we will likely have a host of bones available.
Readers who have visited ossuaries in Europe (Paris has the skeletal remains of 6 million people collected), or elsewhere will have witnessed this vast untapped resource. Those who have seen massive walls and lovely artwork constructed with shed antlers of elk (especially out in Wyoming) will appreciate the function and beauty possible with bony material.
We must build the wall out the bones of the dead and the soon to be dead, and must support policies that will expand this valuable resource. To those who object that bones might be too easily fractured, I will point out that fractured bones have sharp edges and spiky points, that can be arranged artfully to ward off trespassers.
There will, of course, be some downsides to executing this proposal. Dried bones along the border will be immediately useful, but recently dead, non-starved, non-dehydrated bodies will require some processing, and these procedures will produce offensive odors, but wealthy individuals and corporations can certainly use their recent tax breaks to locate further away from processing plants--which, by the way, will employ numerous people. Similarly, building and maintaining the wall will employ others. It is not just a wall; it is a jobs program!