When I was a kid there was a word that was never heard in everyday conversation. Even as most of the dads in the neighborhood could be heard working through the holy trinity of "hell, damn and son of a bitch" when their wives were out of earshot, NONE would dare add the queen mother of them all to their profanity palette. F**k was something we kids would spot on the side of a boxcar scrawled by some hobo or mental degenerate. A lad (never a lass) who dared drag that one out around the house would wind up as so much ectoplasm on the kitchen wall or, worse yet, be packed off to reform school with a bar of soap clenched in his teeth. It was that bad.
Fifty years ago, while wearing Army green for our side, I watched all of the air go out of everyday maledicta as I soon learned the military greased the wheels of its entire operation with profane language. No private, drill sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel or general could get to the end of a sentence without employing a plethora of some of the most colorful profanity known to man. Of course f**k was the Swiss army knife of them all, seeing service as noun, verb, adverb and every other part of speech. This ubiquitousness caused it to lose most of its punch. It became a mere space filler with no more shock factor than a simple flutter blast from the downtown orifice.
In 2020 that once taboo, now punchless word, is everywhere. As I am certainly no saint, I make no judgement other than to note we have become a less intelligent and far more coarse society than we were even thirty years ago and we are poorer for it.
The same can be said for money. In the 1950's there was a television show called "The Millionaire" which featured actor Marvin Miller playing Michael Anthony the ever faithful executive secretary to mysterious billionaire, John Beresford Tipton. Tipton got his kicks sending old Mike out with a million dollar check made out to some schmo who had never had money. The show revolved around waiting and watching to see what the nouveau-riche recipient of his largesse would do with the dough. As I recall, the chosen clown would usually start out with some genius plan of putting the wad on Lucky Larry in the eighth race at Hollywood Park only later to figure out a better use for his or her new found riches. There was always a message to appeal to our better angels. That show would be much different today. No doubt the lucky millionaire of 2020 would use the money to promote his new rap "song" which would go nowhere and he would wind up living under a bridge while waiting for the government to bail him out.
In the good old days of the fabulous 50's a fully loaded Caddy cost $5k, a nice new house $20k and a million bucks was real money. Today, for most of us, a cool million is nice but it sure doesn't go as far as it used to. With congress it's merely tip money. The oily thieving bastards who do our nation's business don't even bother to talk in billions anymore. We're now so far down debt road that only trillions will do! It seems not to matter to our crooks, err, representatives that these trillions they so blithely toss around are trillions of imaginary dollars we don't have in the bank and are putting on our children and grandchildren's tab. Nope. As long as they can buy enough votes from inattentive and hopelessly uninformed voters to secure their place at the public trough we should all just go along with the program. "Nothing to see here, folks. Pay no attention to a bunch of well dressed criminals behind the curtain spending your future and, as yet uncollected, tax dollars. We're the government and we know best!"
Yes, trillions is starting to lose its shock value. Can anybody count that high? Not to worry. We'll soon be talking QUADRILLIONS and that's REAL money.
Where's John Beresford Tipton when you need him?
