The Neurotic’s Court

No official state decree or police order holds me in my room, but I feel a sense of responsibility to remain locked inside, to prevent the spread of a novel disease, whose name saturates every news feed, bulletin, and information source available. Most are bowled over and face a life of infertility (desirable) and respiratory complications (undesirable), if they are not killed. The elderly, of everyone, are the most vulnerable. 

Yet, the only people I see from my apartment window are aged 55 and above.

(I do not live in an apartment. I live in the basement of my parents’ house. I have had to move back in with them. I am recently unemployed. I do not qualify for unemployment benefits, but I am fortunate enough to not need them. I have no obligations at the moment, not even to job-hunt, as there are no jobs. If there are jobs available, then it is everyone’s presumption that no one is hiring, so no one is wise to the fact that there are jobs out there and I am just not job-hunting. When I have to find a job, I might miss these days of isolation.)

Their nonchalance at this time prompts me to conclude that, in reality, I owe nothing to the boomers. They polluted the oceans, churned out carbon dioxide as if their life depended on it (ours will and our children’s will), and they constantly deny us politicians whose policies might enact some change and some modicum of social good. For example, the all-but-decided victor of the Democratic nomination is an establishment politician of the Clintonite “third-wave.” This candidate is all but a Republican if one bothers to study their record. The other candidate, maligned constantly, is really nothing more than a social democrat, even less radical than the social democratic parties of Europe, South America, and Asia. So modest are his proposals that neither private property nor corporate personhood would be under threat. Even still, his proposals are called “too expensive,” “unthinkable,” and “a violation of the Constitution” by the very people I am staying indoors to protect. Yet, they amble around freely, without care.

I resolve to put them on trial.

Of course, I cannot really convene court and pursue the righteous justice that my rage demands. I am stuck inside.

(Even if I went outside how would I round-up all of the boomers? Better yet, what would I do with them? We’ll see very shortly that even my artificial, improvised People’s Court, made of lint, a broken Swatch, and other domestic detritus, will face countless theoretical complications and material obstacles to the deliverance of justice.)

A make-believe court will have to do. When I was very young (actually until the age of fifteen), I made-believe constantly. I called them “pretend-stories.” Oftentimes, I was a Pokémon trainer, but my earliest memories of pretend-stories are of Thomas the Tank Engine characters. This latter example fits the rather bureaucratic and austere pretend-story I’ve resolved to enact: The People’s Court.

First, who will judge? Myself, of course. I take my cue from current juridical practices and Plato on this point. I have two degrees in philosophy. In any event, even if I am unqualified in the end, I have passed judgement. After all, I am the raison d’etre for this People’s Court (I, Me, Je, Ego). Why veil my intentions behind procedures and nominations? I believe it is more honest to display one’s power and desire for control where it manifests than to hide behind humanist platitudes about rights, values, and law. Since my grief is with the generations and classes who have destroyed the planet and denied myself and others basic necessities, I should not hide behind false morals and take responsibility for the violence I am causing. This is the honest route.

Now, to assemble a jury. The first theoretical problem – that of who judges – was a simple knot to untangle; it was barely even a knot. This however raises so many questions. Do I select the jury? Practically speaking, I must, since I am home alone at the moment, and even if someone else were home, I would not want to embarrass myself and tell them that I’m playing make-believe. Yet, if this is a tale of ‘The People’s Justice and Sacred Rage’, I maintain there must be some actual representation of ‘The People.’

However, I then recall most of the other left-minded people I’ve met self-proclaimed activists; social justice warriors; anarchists with trust-funds; anarchists without trust-funds but viable safety nets in the form of wealthy parents; leftcoms who insufferably target the less-well-read in the classics of Marxism on the Internet; socdems who believe in a natural, ontological marketplace (drivel); the tendency-less who are just confused; the long-haired, constantly wary white men and women who proclaim solidarity with Rojava, the YPG, or some other vaguely successful ‘socialist’ organization in a far-off land, a safe distance to justify taking no action domestically. Do I really care about ‘The People?’

Of course, many of the people I’ve just described don’t exist. They’re caricatures that I’ve partially invented, partially exaggerated, and partially experienced first-hand. These are not ‘The People.’ Moreover, the people most exploited by capitalism and generational negligence are not the people I’ve just listed, since the people I’ve just listed largely originate from the very class I am putting on trial. No, that list is a pedantic attendance sheet of characters sprung from my excitable, and admittedly irritable (so prone to rage am I) imagination. Indeed, I recognized this with a self-deprecating parenthetical towards the beginning of my tale; one exactly the same as the parenthetical denigration a few lines above this one. 

Now, the recognition of this fact inadvertently leads me to a satisfactory conclusion. So satisfactory, I shall exclaim it aloud:

“Since this court and whatever participants may be present are of my imagination, it only makes sense that I choose them. We should be honest in the way we organize law, community, and human relationships. My material conditions bar me from procuring vetted, wise, open-minded jurors who may disagree with my argumentation, call for mercy, or call for greater wrath. This court’s supreme limit is me (Me, I, Je, Ego) and these theoretical problems and procedural dilemmas are dishonest ways of avoiding responsibility. I should face my objective circumstances and act accordingly.”

In this spirit, I set out to acquire various objects to stand in as jurors (There’s a pun on objective somewhere here.)

Why not simply be both judge and juror? Another dilemma! Ah, but this is one simpler than the two previous. See, I myself (odious self!) cannot be trusted fully; no one can trust themselves (their self?) fully. I must introject my judgements into objects, alienate my rationale into another thing in order to inspect it more closely. It is only through literal objects with make-believe minds, mouths, and anuses that I might be sure and steadfast that I have sufficiently justified my rage. To be objective, one needs lint. (There’s the joke, almost.)

Another theoretical problem arises: At every hurdle, I have inched forward by returning to the base fact that this whole court is my own game, a little artifice to pass the time and distract my anxious, angry, abysmally agitated self. Why call this ‘The Peoples’ Court’ at all? If we are being honest, then let us be honest at all junctures.

Hence, I redubbed the court ‘The Neurotic’s Court.’ The apostrophe appropriately designates this little boudoir as singularly someone’s, an individual’s possession. In this case that “someone” is me. Why “The Neurotic?”

Firstly, neurotic because the very fact that I write this down in tedious detail attests to some preoccupti0n, some physio-psychic twitch that needs getting-out. Secondly, the neurotic, in some aberrant domains, is the figure who asks questions of themselves. The neurotic’s concern is totally and completely wrapped in questions of the self. In the end, this kangaroo court is all about me, so why try disavowal when assumption comes so easily?

Hence, ‘The Neurotic’s Court.’

Upon concluding this, I began collecting my objective jurors. (There it is!)

A jury of eleven. I like the number eleven. It is prime. It is the first double, if you start from zero or one. Finally, there is no chance for a hung jury to find its way into my very important proceedings. All that is required is seven jurors to agree that the defendant is either guilty or not guilty. Why? Because I (Je, Ego) thinks so, therefore it is. I’m already liking this judicial fantasy much better than my paltry reality defined by my apartment walls (Rather, my parents’ walls, or, more accurately put, the bank’s walls, since they still haven’t paid off their mortgage to provide us a home. I live here and contribute nothing.)

The jurors are simple to find. I know I’m growing a bit impatient and tire of the exercise. The fleeting joy siphoned from the tyrannical authority which emerged just a moment ago flew off.

Juror I: Lint ball from under the bed.
Juror II: Homer Simpson pin on a tack board behind my (dad’s) desk.
Juror III: A soccer ball which was long ago chewed up by my now dead dog.
Juror IV: A cracked bassoon reed.
Juror V: A pocket-sized artist’s rendition of Nephi from that famed Great Awakening American epic, The Book of Mormon.
Juror VI: An environmentally friendly toothbrush made of bamboo whose bristles are too rough on my gums to use.
Juror VII: Dog’s brush.
Juror VIII: Sim card from that year abroad.
Juror IX: A screw.
Juror X: A painted rock that someone made me for an idiotic ‘team-building activity’ when we were RAs in college.
Juror XI: At first, I choose a black panther statuette my dad got in Tulum, but I think better of it because I dislike its association with a neoliberal, ‘radikewl’ superhero franchise. Instead, I select a Gameboy Advance cartridge: Wario Land 4.

The jurors assemble neatly. The soccer ball is a bit large and it throws off the tableaux. I swap it out for a broken Swatch.

Now, we are ready.

I summon the defendants – previous generations and exploitative classes – to the courtroom (my bedroom floor). I commence:

“Here, gathered, people of the jury, are those who ignored and continue to ignore the signs of resource scarcity and climate change; who refused and continue to refuse to give up their position of privilege for a more equitable society; who retained and continue to retain the means of production and siphoned and continue to siphon surplus-value from the labor of workers; who bought, buy, maintained, and still maintained property, then demanded and continue to demand exorbitantly high rent payments for it or keep the spaces empty, while millions go homeless and the majority struggle to afford the right to sleep in a bed under a roof. Here, gathered, honorable members of the jury, are those who deemed business degrees worthwhile and even more valuable than education in philosophy, pure mathematics, history, the arts, and other such essential domains of thought and activity.”

“You may ask, ‘What evidence does he provide?’ I answer: You need only look outside to see the current situation expose and exacerbate the effects of these crimes. I need no evidence to bring before you because I only must show you the world in its misery. That window shows you just how wretched these people are.”

“I ask for the harshest punishment possible.”

The jury, so moved by my opening statement, immediately convene at the open window. They agree that a glance at the manicured lawns in a desert state and that current laws and conditions, determined long ago by systemic and societal decisions, allow people to mull about contentedly while others die unnecessarily are reasons enough to convict. It is the swiftest conviction of nearly hundreds of millions of people in the history of judicial systems. I have made history.

It is a good thing the conviction was so easy and quick to come, for I am now bored of this little escape.

I put on a neopsychedelic song by an artist who has performed at a desert music festival several times. The song is about a writer and a singer, two lovers captured in a Norman Rockwell painting. I imagine they live in a Frank Lloyd Wright home, though I’m fairly confident Norman Rockwell never painted any scenes with Wright’s architecture, though I may be wrong.

I ruminate on the fact that a life like that will never be mine. I only have this apartment. (I do not have this apartment.)

But, unlike Mick Kelly, I don’t even have a job to get dressed for and go to. I just continue to stare at walls with a six-pack of the best beer brewed on the Wasatch Front at my side.

“The beer had a nice bitter taste after the ice cream and it made her drunk. Next to music beer was best.”