The Hunting Snow Tops Chickens Are coming Home to Roost

When Malcolm X said, “I think the chickens are coming home to roost,” when asked about the Kennedy assassination his comment when viral before there was a concept of viral and before anyone had even dreamed of a  Viral Twitter post.  Therse days I hear his phase used quite a bit as an esorteric sound bite for pundits.  For the purposes of this blog I am using the reference in regard to the notion that the original premise of my novel, Hunting Snow Tops, about the value America places on the lives of old people was misunderstood or ignored.  I think now, we are now seeing the manifestation of the harsher ideas in the novel becoming our reality!

Suddenly now, due to the Corona Virus, old people, and what is meant by being an old person, and who is an old person, has become a major topic of conversation.  Katherine Ellison,in her article, With The Novel Coronavirus, Suddenly At 60 We Are Now ‘Old,’ describes it as a “rude surprise” when people over sixty begin to be seen as “old!”  Not that surprisingly, in my novel Hunting Snow Tops I utilize the age fifty-nine as the cut off point for what politicans will come to term as the last year of being a “real person” in America.  On becoming sixty, in my novel, the government views the elderly as a taker or a beggar, as well as a threat to the economy, and their human value drops unless they can file finacials and prove financial security.

Louise Melling, in her article, The Nursing Home Crisis Shows How We Dismiss The Joys Of Old Age, arrives at the conclusion that somehow in the current landscape the values and priorities of the elderly are somehow demeaned and old people are becoming a statistic rather than a person.  Louise has her nose on something I was smelling back in the first Obama presidency when I thought about 2033 and the certain future surrounding social securtiy payments to the elderly.  When those SS payments run out and millions of elderly are penniless, living in tent cities, theiving and grifting just ot eat and get by, how will they be viewed by the American public?  How will the elderly be channeled when they become millions of aged people seen generally as best a nuisance, and at worst intolerable?

• Yes, it’s clear that the issue surrounding what to do with the old folks has moved from invisable to mainstream conversations and debate.  The premise in my novel, Hunting Snow Tops is that the government will issue bounties for the elderly to be paid by AGE bounty stations, (in my novel the intials stand for, American Gun Enthusiasts, AGE  Bounty Centers that will be set up across America in corners of our local police stations.  The bounty for a “Buck,” an old male, would run around $350.00 dollars and about $250.00 for a “Doe,” or an elderly female.

Does it seem that far fetched?  That the government would kill off the elderly to balance the budget.  Take a look at this article from World Digital, by Brendan Cole.  Brazil Government Aide Says COVID-19’s Toll On Elderly Will Reduce Pension Deficit As Country’s Outbreak Escalates.   Do you need a weathervane to see which way this wind is blowing?

It is obvious that once governments start weighing the value of their citizen’s livese against the value of having a strong economy it will become less a moral and more a political issue.  This is what I’m trying to get at in Hunting Snow Tops.  Once a country starts down the slippery slope of incorporating rhetoric regarding human life versus economy the battle is really already lost.  We’ve already seen this with Americans becoming dulled to mass shootings, even in schools, and the now that NRA can convince it’s members that Russia is their friend and the Democrats are their enemy, that guns should be carried everywhere, and that guns are the best way to solve problems–how far are we from the world I describe in, Hunting Snow Tops?