Boomsday

Chapter 13

“From Washington, tonight, a novel proposal on how to solve the Social Security crisis. For that story, we go now to our correspondent, Betsy Blarkin.”

“Thanks, Katie. Cassandra Devine, the twenty-nine-year-old blogger who calls herself CASSANDRA, is back in the news. Last month, she urged young people not to pay taxes and to storm the gates of Boomer retirement communities.

“At a press conference today, she unveiled a plan that, she says, would solve the problem by making the government solvent.

“Her solution? The government should offer incentives to retiring Boomers-to kill themselves.”

“‘Americans are living longer. Okay, but why should my generation spend our lives in hock subsidizing their longevity? They want to live forever-we’re saying, let them pay for it.’”

“Under Devine’s plan, the government would completely eliminate estate taxes for anyone who kills themself at age seventy. Anyone agreeing to commit suicide at age sixty-five would receive a bonus, including a two-week, all-expenses-paid ‘farewell honeymoon.’

“‘Our grandparents grew up in the Depression and fought in World War Two. They were the so-called Greatest Generation. Our parents, the Baby Boomers, dodged the draft, snorted cocaine, made self-indulgence a virtue. I call them the Ungreatest Generation. Here’s their chance, finally, to give something back.’”

“Devine has even come up with a better term for suicide: ‘Voluntary Transitioning.’ I spoke with her earlier today after her press conference…

“Ms. Devine, do you expect anyone to take this proposal of yours seriously?”

“Well, Betsy, you’re interviewing me on network television, so I’d say that’s a good start. If you’re asking why am I proposing that Americans kill themselves in large numbers, my answer is, because of the refusal of the government, again and again, to act honestly and responsibly. When Social Security began, there were fifteen workers to support one retiree. Now there are three workers per retiree. Soon it will be two. You can run from that kind of math, but you can’t hide. It means that someone my age will have to spend their entire life paying unfair taxes, just so the Boomers can hit the golf course at sixty-two and drink gin and tonics until they’re ninety. What happened to the American idea of leaving your kids better off than you were? If the government has a better idea, hey, we’re all for it. Put it on the table. Meanwhile, we’re putting this on the table. And it’s not going away.”

“A number of experts that we spoke to, including Karl Kansteiner of the Rand Institute in Washington, actually agreed that such a measure, however drastic, would in fact solve the Social Security and U.S. budget crisis.”

“The average American now lives to seventy-eight, seventy-nine years old. Many live much longer. We currently are experiencing what could be called a surplus of octogenarians, nonagenarians, and even centenarians. If the government didn’t have to pay benefits to these elders, say, past the age of seventy, the savings would be vast. Enormous. Indeed, tempting. Certainly, it is not a solution for, shall we say, the faint of heart.”

“Others, like Gideon Payne of the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule, call Devine’s idea ‘morally repugnant.’”

“Have we finally reached the point where we are advocating mass murder as a national policy? This entire plan, this scheme, is an abomination in the eyes of the Almighty. I tremble for my country. This woman should be ashamed.”

“Cassandra Devine doesn’t appear in the least ashamed. Indeed, she seems quite determined. Katie?”

“Thank you, Betsy Blarkin in Washington, for that report. Finally, tonight, Wal-Mart announced that it has obtained permission to open a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-square-foot megastore on the Mall, in Washington.…”

“I’ll take two more questions. Anne?”

“What is the president’s position on her proposal?”

“What proposal? Whose proposal?”

“Voluntary Transitioning.”

“No. No, no, no. I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

“What do the president’s economic advisers have to say about it?”

“They don’t- Look, there are no conversations about this…no one in the White House is having discussions about this. No one in the White House, or, or anywhere in the entire U.S. government-”

“Are you saying that the president isn’t discussing with his advisers the Social Security crisis? The stock market fell another five hundred points yesterday on news that the Nippon Bank-”

“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. Please. I’ll take one more.”

“Has he talked to anyone about Voluntary Transitioning?”

“All right, that’s it. We’re done. This briefing is over. Thank you. Good morning.”

“Maybe,” Terry said to Cass as they watched it all on C-SPAN, “the line dividing reality from absurdity in this country has finally disappeared. I guess it was inevitable, the way things were going.”

“I don’t know,” Cass said. “Maybe it just shows that people are tired of hearing the same old bullshit.”

“Right. They demand fresh bullshit.”

“Is it?”

Terry stared at his protйgйe. “Whoa. You been drinking your own Kool-Aid? I warned you about that.”

“Come on. We did it. It’s on the table. They’re certainly talking about it.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“They asked me to be on Greet the Press this Sunday.”

“Well, well. Very good. Who else they having on?”

“Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Gideon Payne.”

“The White House must be pretty freaked out if they’re sending the OMB director out to do battle. He’ll dismiss you as a nut.”

“I’ll say, ‘You’re borrowing two billion dollars a day from foreign banks-or were, until they stopped lending it to you-and I’m the nut? Okay, let’s hear your solution. Other than making twenty-year-olds pay for thirty years of incontinence.’ I’ll tell him, ‘Hold on, pal. You’re the budget director of a locomotive headed off the cliff, in the middle of an earthquake, on fire-’”

“Easy on the metaphors.”

“Whatever. But it is a runaway train. The White House is talking about wage and price controls. They’re desperate.”

“They’re also leaking it that it wasn’t their idea to let you walk. I wouldn’t go making them too mad, if I were you. And watch out for Payne.”

“Payne? He’s just another preacher on steroids.”

“Rule number one: Don’t drink your own Kool-Aid. Rule number two: Never, ever, underestimate the enemy. Gideon Payne didn’t get to be Mr. Pro-Life by being an idiot.”

Cass reflected. “Did he really kill his mother?”

“That’s what they say. Why don’t you ask him, on the air? That’ll break the ice.”

Cass’s phone rang.

“Ms. Devine?” said the voice. “I have Senator Jepperson for you.”

“Well, well. Hello, Senator.”

“Cass? Voluntary Transitioning! Best euphemism I’ve heard since ‘ethnic cleansing.’ I love it. With all my heart, I love it. I knew this was a winner from the get-go.”

“Randy,” Cass said coolly, “when I presented it to you, you practically threw me out of your office.”

“Darling girl, I had a committee meeting. On that moronic monorail that my distinguished colleague wants to build in the middle of Alaska. Someone has to stand up for the caribou. Now listen up. Pay attention. I’m calling to say-I want to sponsor the bill.”

“To save the caribou?”

“Screw the caribou. No, child-Voluntary Transitioning. It’s big, it’s bold, and I love it to death. Pardon the pun. Now you and I both know that it doesn’t stand a chance of a snow cone in Dante’s Hell. It redefines reductio ad absurdum. It’s the policy equivalent of Pickett’s Charge. We may go down in flames, but they’ll be writing ballads about us. Oh, how I love it.”

“And you want to go down in flames?”

“Honestly?”

“Randy, why do I cringe when I hear you say ‘honestly’?”

“Don’t be too hard on me, Cassandra. I’m disabled.”

“Don’t go there, Randy.”

“I want to sponsor it for the same reason you came up with it. To make waves. To make those lily-livered weasels in the White House wet their pantalones. I’m going to get Ron Fundermunk to co-sponsor it with me. The junior senator from the great state of Oregon. You know how they are in Oregon. It says the ‘ Assisted Suicide State ’ right there on the license plate.”

“Watch Greet the Press this Sunday,” Cass said. “I’m on with Gideon Payne.”

“Loathsome little toad,” Randy said. “Did you know his ancestor shot my ancestor?”

“What?”

“In the Civil War.”

“Sedgwick?” Cass said.

“Clever girl. He was a brilliant soldier and by accounts a lovely chappie. Distinguished himself in every battle-Antietam, the Wilderness, Gettysburg. They were getting ready for a big clash at Spotsylvania. He was inspecting the Union artillery position. There were Confederate snipers. The officers were nervous and told him he should take cover. He said, ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.’ His last words. Story is, the sniper who drilled him is related somehow to Gideon Payne. Give him a good kick in the macadamias for me, would you?”

Greet the Press was the premier Sunday morning news show. Its opening theme music consisted of trumpets and kettledrums, affecting a tone of earthshaking momentousness, as though an electronic curtain were about to rise to reveal the chief justice of the Supreme Court, a prime minister, and the pope.

The host was a genial, ruddy-faced man named Glen Waddowes. He began his career as a Benedictine monk, left the order under circumstances never entirely clarified, then became a speechwriter and ultimately chief of staff to the governor of New York. He ran for Congress, served two terms, and, with eight children to feed (he had apparently remained Catholic), accepted a job running a network news bureau, ultimately taking over Greet the Press, whose motto was, “Since 1955, more important than the people who appear on it.”

Beneath Waddowes’s jolly, rubicund exterior lurked a mind armed with brass knuckles, a shank, and a blackjack. He had famously derailed the presidential campaign of Senator Root Hollings by asking him, “Senator, with all due respect, what makes you think that a man like you has the right to run for president?”

Cass had done her homework. Still, as she sat in the greenroom before the show, her palms were clammy and her chest felt tight.

In two other corners of the greenroom, eyeing her with barely concealed disdain, sat Gideon Payne and the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. They were carrying on polite conversation, the purpose of which was-mainly-to exclude her. The OMB director was pretending to be interested in what college Gideon Payne had attended. Gideon, for his part, was pretending not to notice that he was being flattered. As the saying goes, what flatters people most is that others feel you’re worth flattering. Gideon knew he was worth it and accepted it as nothing less than his due. He was a short, fat, elegant man in his late forties. He wore his hair slicked back, gave off a warm, clovelike aroma of French cologne, had a neatly trimmed beard, carried a silver-tipped cane, and dressed in bespoke suits from Gieves amp; Hawkes of London.

Cass overheard him saying to the OMB director, “As I said to the president just last week…” She mused that the only way really to top that was to say, “As I said to the president in bed this morning…” But the OMB director, apparently not being able to make this boast, merely nodded and pretended to be impressed by Payne’s easy familiarity with the summits of Olympus-on-the-Potomac.

They were led into a refrigerated studio by whispery production assistants, miked, foreheads blotted dry of sweat by the makeup lady-not that it was possible to sweat in these subarctic temperatures.

Waddowes arrived, preceded by a flutter of aides with earphones. He was all smiles, looking like a fifty-five-year-old altar boy who’d just had a swig from the sacramental wine cruet in the sacristy. Cass smiled back, trying not to overdo it for fear her grin would freeze in place.

Five, four, three…Trumpets volunteered, kettledrums beat their somber, self-important tattoo.

“Economic calamity…,” the host intoned over montage footage of depressed-looking traders on the floor of the stock exchange. “Retiring Baby Boomers trigger a Social Security crisis”-gray-haired sixty-somethings in golf carts, fleeing one of Cass’s mobs-“and angry youths saying they’re not going to pay for it anymore.…?Foreign banks refusing to go on financing America ’s debt-” Segue to a shot of Japanese currency speculators shaking their heads furiously. “Have we-finally-reached the tipping point that some are now calling ‘Boomsday’? Our guests on this week’s Greet the Press…”

Terry had been right. The OMB director treated Cass like an unwelcome bug that had splattered on Uncle Sam’s vast windshield and simply needed to be wiped away, if possible without going to the trouble of pulling the vehicle over to the side of the road.

Cass patiently and courteously countered that her generation was quite open to hearing another solution, as long as it emancipated them from having to pay the bill for the excesses of the prior ones. He announced that the White House was boldly “considering” appointing a “blue-ribbon presidential commission” to “study the problem.” Cass-still polite-suggested that this was akin to being on a runaway train and appointing a commission among the passengers to “study the problem that they were about to drive off a cliff.” That being the case, the OMB director sniffed with all his Harvard hauteur, he hardly expected a “callow PR person” to understand the complexities of a highly engineered locomotive. After all, so many moving parts…It went on like this until Gideon Payne, impatient of being left out of the fight, came out swinging.

“May I-might I-interject?”

“Please,” Waddowes said.

“Ms. Devine is ironically named. Because her scheme to kill off America ’s most sacred resource-her respected elders-is nothing short of demonic.”

“At least”-Cassandra smiled-“I’d be willing to give my mother a choice whether she lives or dies.”

Across the country, fifteen million viewers gasped.