Valueless Family Values

Dear George,

Last night, I was leaning against my boulder, mellowing on a bottle of Thunderbird ’04, and trying to come up with corporate state’s greatest contribution to civilization as we know it today. There have been so many, and it’s hard to remember them all when the brain is fogged.

Then it hit me right in the gonads—the state’s greatest contribution is its trashing of the family. It ranks right up there with the introduction of child labor.

Families are dangerous creations that could undermine the entire capitalist structure if left unchecked. The healthy family is a breeding ground for values that are detrimental to the public good, values like freedom, morality, caring for others, honesty and a sense of personal responsibility.

The corporate state has wisely checked this cancerous growth by equating family health with material well-being. Happiness is prosperity, even if it’s built on mountains of debt. Of course, everybody misses the irony that the efforts required to secure prosperity destroy the family because no family can prosper on a single income.

So we are blessed with a generation of latchkey children whose upbringing is contracted out to the family’s television set as both parents are out trying to scrape together enough to keep ahead of the credit card bills. And if this makes the kids hyper or out of control, there’s always Ritalin.

Trust me, George, there’s no chance of these kids developing anything that resembles values.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones