The Cancer Culture Read online

  I was fourteen, I really had no idea what I wanted to do, but I did want my dad. I wanted him to be there if I got married, had a child, or invented something really cool. As the weeks went on, I was starting to realize that he wouldn’t be there for any of that. He wouldn’t see me graduate from high school or accept my first job. The outside world seemed so trivial to me and I found myself retreating from it. Michael dealt with his grief in a different way. He turned his anger toward anyone and everything he felt perpetuated what he called the cancer culture.

  I thought Dad would have a talk with him about it, saying something like, “Be a calm voice in the raging storm,” but he did not, he was unusually supportive instead. Michael and he would stay up long hours discussing his articles and answering letters about cancer. Michael’s star was rising and the world was taking notice. He was even asked to do an interview with one of dad’s old colleagues who hosted his own show on Fox News.

  Mom took it the worst. She had known dad nearly all her life. They had been high school sweethearts. Dad was her rock, her anchor in troubled seas. Watching him melt away was tearing her apart inside. At 52 she had grown up under American Exceptionalism or the belief that everything America did was the best and for the right reasons. Cancer blew a hole in the hull of the vessel she called life and was now sinking. Everything she had ever been taught was a lie. Her son was being harassed for questioning the US policy on cancer, the government knowingly allows companies to poison us for profit and the health care system is more beholden to politics and beliefs than it is to science. She couldn’t wrap her head around all this. She felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her. If all these were lies, she asked herself how she could trust anything our government and our corporations are selling?

  The Cancer Culture

  Chapter 19

  Denver, 2008

  Two weeks later, my world stopped. The clock on the wall read 3:28 P.M. when I heard the wails and sobs coming from dad’s room. I ran down the hall desperately trying to remember whether I said goodbye in the morning.

  “Stop.” My brother closed the door behind him and put his hands up. “He’s gone.”

  “Let me in.” I tried to squeeze by.

  “No,” he screamed, “It’s not good.”

  “Let me in,” I screamed and clawed. “Mom!”

  “She’s cleaning him up.”

  Suddenly mom opened the door and collapsed to her knees. I dove into her arms and she hugged me. Michael joined in and we all wailed and cried.

  The Cancer Culture

  Chapter 20

  Denver, 2008

  The pounding surf breaks upon my heart and washes over my fragile soul. I tumble in the wash, struggling for the surface until finally I gasp for air. Smash… another wave dampens my hope and pulls me under, helpless and alone. Again and again unrelenting emotions crash down, drowning my reason and crushing my spirit. This is cancer, a tsunami barreling down on an unprepared and unsuspecting victim.

  I’m seventeen now and can look back at that time with a different perspective than I had three years ago. An experience like that changes a person, leaves an undeniable scar in your subconscious. I see cancer everywhere I go because I am aware. It’s hidden in ice-cream, hot dogs, and sugar. The mindless consumer continues to shovel poison into their mouths. I’ve seen toddlers sucking down soda and elementary kids so hyped up on sugar their eyes look like they may bulge out of their heads. What’s worse is the sham of an industry called health food that feeds on our fears and does little to change what we’re eating. In some cases exasperating the problem, like removing natural fat and replacing it with sugar, salt and chemicals.

  When did profit become more important than people? I feel like this may be the question that brings down what my parents thought was a great country. For me, this country has betrayed my trust, taken from me my innocence, and left me cynical. The Cancer culture isn’t just killing our people; it’s destroying the fabric of society itself.

  The End

  Cancer Culture

  ************************************************

  The Freedom Files

  Class 2

  University of California, Berkely, 2191

  I showed up to class early to make sure I got a good seat, but apparently I wasn’t the only one excited, because the auditorium was nearly filled, With a half an hour before class was supposed to start. Some of the younger people were already in a heated discussion about the story.

  “It’s sad that they have to use drugs to get their point across,” One of them said.

  Another fired back, “What you’re calling drugs is nothing more than a weed and the main ingredient in that green mush they serve us to prevent cancer.”

  A sliver-haired beauty popped her head out of the crowd and said, “That green mush is called Canniboid, named for the Cannabis plant that in the past was viewed as a drug and called marijuana. We obviously know better now, right?” She looked at the original commenter with a motherly stare.

  He put his head down and said under his breath, “Yeah, I guess so.”

  I made my way over to the silver-headed siren. “Hello, I’m Dax.” I stuck out my hand.”

  “Hello, I’m Abby.” She smiled warmly.

  “Is this seat taken?” I asked.

  “Oh, no…” She shook her head and grabbed her stuff that was piling over into the seat.

  “So did you get the chance to read the whole thing?” I asked, and then felt dumb as soon as it left my lips, of course she had.

  She didn’t seem to mind as she gave me the breakdown of her feelings about the book and how much it resonated with her. I was lost in her words and drawn in by her beauty. The time must have flown past us because before I could even respond we were standing up applauding the former President as she started the class.

  “Who can tell me which constitutional amendment we wrote after this book was used in the Continental Congress?”

  “The 28thamendment. Section one states that health care is a basic right for a developed nation and should be shielded from open market factors,” Abby said before anyone in the room could answer.

  “Excellent, Ms. Lennon.” She smiled at her and then asked, “Can you tell us why the cancer culture helped us come to that conclusion?”

  Abby sat up looked at me out of the corner of her eye and cracked a slight smile before answering, “Madam President. I think the story highlights what can happen when we allow profit to drive our decisions about healthcare.”

  “Yes. Now can anyone expand upon our decision as it pertains to the story?”

  A young man on the other side of the room was called on and explained how healthcare for profit led to inflated prices and limited access to those on the lower side of the economic scale. He insisted that the man who died of cancer did so because of his own ignorance and suggested that what had been known as the Conservative Brain disease made the whole country go mad.

  The President stopped him and explained how he was just perpetuating the propaganda the corporations used to separate us and conquer us. She explained how they first used the conservative machine against America, not by some brain disease but by simple conditioning. They found what the conservatives deeply cared about and they just attached their agenda to it. Every time some would mention Abortion, they would attach the government is killing babies mantra to it, implying that the government is evil. Outsourcing became a rallying call for fewer regulations and the abolition of taxation, by implying that corporations moved off shore because our government was trying to control them or take away their freedom. She went on to explain that the reality was far from the truth and to blame any single group was wrong. What the people failed to realize was that the government is the people.

  “Look in the mirror. That is the government.”

  She paused and the room fell silent as we thought about her words.Then she changed the subject. “Ha
s anyone here known anyone who has died of cancer?”

  No one said anything, but I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Mr. Dukain, please share your experience.”

  “My grandfather was one of the last known cases. I was seven at the time. He and a group of people refused to take the daily canniboid slush because they thought it was used to control their minds.” I chuckled a little at the absurdity of that statement. It was widely publicized that Canniboid was made of wormwood, turmeric, whole cannabis, pectin, and spirulena. The corporations of the world had started requiring the daily sludge because it completely prevents cancer from forming.

  “I assume you chuckled because you realize that Canniboid is a perfect example of the baby and the bathwater analogy,” she stated.

  I nodded.

  “OK, then, it’s safe to say that cancer as they knew it did not have to exist, yet it did, why? I’ll tell you why because sometimes the biggest questions are solved with simple solutions and simple solutions are often hard to control and profit from. Many of the solutions to the energy crises were found in the work of Nicola Tesla 150 years after he first wrote about them. I could go on and on. What we found was that in certain parts of the economy we just couldn’t allow open and free markets such as Health, Education, Defense, Prisons, Postal Services, Infrastructure. These are things that can’t be outsourced or privatized. This story helped introduce our newly elected officials to ideas that were different and flew in the face of their upbringing and education they had been exposed to during the corporate years. It also gave them a small glimpse of how easy it is to push people into radicalism and gave us a baseline for where we want our people to be.

  Can anyone tell me the three things we believe people need to feel content within society?”

  Someone two seats down was called on. “Autonomy, purpose and mastery,” the student responded.

  She smiled, and said, “I see you all know, so what do the words mean and why? Let’s start with Autonomy.”

  A girl in the back yelled out, “freedom,” but the young man in the front had a more precise response, saying, “It’s our desire to use the ability to reason and to make decisions on our own without being coerced.”

  “Yes,” the President said. “Immanuel Kant wrote, ‘Have courage to use your own reason! That is the motto of enlightenment.’ Make no mistake about it, we are attempting to build upon the age of Enlightenment and the work our founders did in perpetuating the best of what western philosophy has produced.”She paused and looked down at her notes then said. “Now ‘purpose,’ can someone tell me what we meant when we added ‘purpose’ to the second declaration?”

  I raised my hand, but someone behind me was called on.

  “The reason something exists,” he blurted out.

  “Yes. We found that Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant all wrestled with the question about the meaning of life. In the end, we used the word ‘purpose’ instead of ‘meaning’ to explain what we intrinsically want. Purpose was missing in the corporate cog model and it was replaced with duty and survival. People want to feel like they are a part of something important that will go beyond their day to day grind. The jobs in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century lost creativity and purpose. Duty and survival became the only reason for a job. In this destructive circular model, the employee or wage slave needs to make money because they need to pay for the right to live. Unfortunately duty and survival do not mean purpose and the populous therefore always felt oppressed. Sadly the ruling class also started an all-out attack on the professions that inherently had purpose in them, like police officers and teachers, subsequently destroying those professions. This was one of the determining factors in our living wage argument and our favoring tax incentives for small businesses, but we’ll get into that after we read Corporate Control and discuss the expansion of the antitrust laws. The idea is that we wanted to help foster and develop a climate of purpose where small business and small farms could take over the void the corporations left. Now, can anyone tell me what ‘mastery’ means and why it’s important? The president asked.

  I responded, “Mastery is the knowledge and skill that allows you to make, use, or understand a subject very well or have complete control of something. Why is it important? Because we are creatures of habit, and for most of human existence we survived by becoming masters of a skill that we either used directly in acts like hunting or we used them indirectly by trading or selling our skill in order to gain sustenance,” I said after she called on me.

  “Exactly, and just like ‘purpose,’ ‘mastery’ was lost in this age. They couldn’t keep up with the rapidly changing environment and corporations forgot about their workers’ well-being for short-sighted gains. People were unhappy, angry, and frustrated, and that is when the corporatists struck, driving a deep wedge into the country which ultimately led to the corporate takeover. We used this story and the principles of autonomy, purpose, and mastery when we wrote all of the protective amendments as they have come to be called, including Health, Education, Defense, Police, Corrections, the Postal Service and Infrastructure. It was with this understanding that these professions and departments also be rewarded be paid well, so that they need not worry about money. We showered them with praise, for it is they who nurture and defend our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We also made it clear that the pursuit of happiness as we interpreted it, is the drive for autonomy, purpose and mastery.”

  The class hung on her words as if she controlled our involuntary bodily functions like breathing and our heart rhythms.

  She looked at her watch, and said, “With that I’ll have to cut class short today, because I have an interview in fifteen minutes. Please read The Weed War and be prepared to talk about money in politics and the separation of church and state as it pertains to the second constitution and declaration of independence.”

  She ended class, but I stayed afterwards to talk to Abby. She gave me her number and we set a date to meet up this weekend to discuss our takes on The Weed War before next Tuesday’s class. I was so excited I sped home and began reading The Weed War.

  Read more of The Freedom Files in the next book The Weed War

  _______________________________

  Sneak peek of (The Weed War)

  Chapter 1

  The year is 2161, and the world is under one government: The United Corporations of the World. the year is 2161, and the world is under one government: The United Corporations of the World. Land is divided into provinces and each province is represented by the number of corporations that preside within its borders. After the fall of the great twentieth century experiments like the U.S.S.R and the USA, a new more streamlined approach of governing developed. People still needed basic necessities regardless of the system, so corporations stepped in and began an entirely new kind of government, one that has no separation between private and public sectors. They seized the properties they needed to increase their profits and made laws that banned anything that didn't further the bottom line. Every legal institution in the world answers to one bank, and the bank is run by a special committee appointed by the top ten corporate CEO's in the world.

  On July 4th, of 2025, it became illegal to not work for a corporation, the penalty: death. As harsh as this may seem, after martial law for four years, and massive social upheaval, most people wanted security and safety. They gave up on many of the common practices that they saw as the downfall of democracy. Entrepreneurship was abandoned and now everyone is required to work 32 hours a week starting at the age of 33.

  People needed someone to blame for the financial situation the world found itself in. The finger was pointed at people who didn’t contribute before, like children and moms, so the education system evolved. All people are to attend appropriate mandatory schooling until the age of 33. School starts at birth to allow mothers to meet their own work obligations.

  Every year students test to determin
e what track each individual will be on. Most schools for people past the age of twelve are for studying trades at vocational schools. They put the students to work while giving them the tools it takes to function at a low wage job.There are still jobs for people that robots still can’t perform.

  The system is a computerized aggregation program dubbed "Selection," because it selects the best life path for individuals. In the old system they tried to make everyone equal. Selection understands that people are not equal; instead they are given exactly what their aptitude deems. Individuality has been slowly legislated away. Every person in each province wears the uniform of the corporation they were indebted to when their parents filed for a new birth permit. They all have the same unisex hairstyle as well.

  In one province that was once the northwestern portion of the United States, just outside of Apple, the largest metropolis is AELA. AELA is Apple’s Educational Leadership Academy and the destination for the province’s brightest students.

  AELA -ROOM 22, 20th Century History, 18 to 20 year old Gifted and Talented students.

  A bright white classroom with neat rows of desks is empty with the exception of Mr. Borinski, who sits at the only out of place object in the room, a large worn-out wooden desk. He leans forward, takes a sip of his steaming hot caramel macchiato, turns the page on today’s holographic news paper and presses the highlighter function. He circles a headline.

  "Another Teacher Arrested for Subversive Acts of Treason"

  He scans down the page and stops dead center. "Ah ha, treason, teaching Jefferson..."

  As the bell rings, he shakes his head, places his palm on the highlighted section, and pulls the article into the air, where it hovers freely. His eyes scan the screen until they fixate on a file in the bottom right of the floating screen. Pinching it between his fingers he drags the article into the file. The file automatically opens and the article shows up next to thumbnails of hundreds of other articles with titles about teachers being arrested. He presses a red button and the file minimizes back into the screen.