Warning! Comrade X discovers that the Oppressors are now using rodents as Agitprop!

In my voluminous correspondence with Comrades the world over, I have come across an incredible and startling story (from a Comrade in the Pacific Northwest, an area particularly notorious for its disregard of workers’ rights and its universal practice of corporate vetting and complete tax relief for corporate entities), one that reveals the insidious and microscopically complex nature of the bourgeois plot to oppress us! They know, these clever Oppressors, that we know of the tricks of ideology, alienation of labor, wage control and worker competition, controlled production and control of the means of production, the now-complete plot to destroy guilds and unions, etc.; but what they don’t know, is that Comrade X outsmarts them all by single-handedly (well, along with Comrade Y, of course) and indefatigably searching into even the remotest corners of Global Capitalism to expose every single means of oppression they can think of! Nothing can be kept hidden from Comrade X!

To wit: In said recent correspondence, Comrade X was made aware of the recent importation into a small port town in the aforementioned region of this country of a certain European grey squirrel. Now, why would a town seek to import squirrels? Don’t most places attempt to find ways to rid themselves of these rodents? Well, this particular community, made up mostly of longshoremen and alcoholics, bought, at taxpayer expense (Nota bene: not ONE corporate dollar funded this political/corporate decision to “beautify” the town, given the previously-mentioned tax conditions under which corporations thrive in this part of the country, and so EVERY cent spent on this RIDICULOUS scheme [wait, it gets worse!] came from the very shallow pockets of the workers themselves, who, it might be added, did not vote to add this “improvement” to their town, and, if truth be told, have neither vocally registered complete public assent and happiness over this occurrence NOR taken to the streets to protest this absurd use of public capital [as they should]!).

SO: what happened was this: said port city is a planned community, which we all know means one in which the corporate owners of the local marine-based commerce created a city in which workers would live so close to their jobs that no time would be lost in commuting, no other options for “entertainment” would avail themselves to the working class other than what the bourgeois decided to offer on the waterfront (where they can control worker temperance or other sumptuary activities, limiting their use of alcohol, prostitutes, etc.), and all political control is removed to the city center, to which the workers’ backs, as it were, are turned, yet that center still holds a business district suited for the bourgeois shopper, one who can drive to it during the hours during which our unhappy workers toil on docks and in canning factories or various dangerous and high-risk logging concerns.

SO: the city is centered around a circle, the middle of which contains the local seat of power, and surrounding which is a park, and INTO WHICH the local overlords, in their wisdom, decided, for purposes of “beautifying and eclectifying” (yes, this language was found in the local “news” reports) the city (read: the bourgeois seat of power!) 100 EUROPEAN GREY SQUIRRELS and, since these particular things eat only a particular kind of nut (or so they thought) found only in a particular area in Europe, 100 EURPOEAN NUT TREES to support their dietary habits!

Well, after arriving (and much against their will, it is to be supposed), these squirrels were set free in the park (the trees having already been planted), and immediately began to run frantically and with great confusion all over the grassy area of the park and into the road which encircles the park and the local courthouse and governmental chambers, right into the path of unsuspecting genteel bourgeois motorists, killing 90% of the newly-imported and highly confused squirrel population within the first three days of being released (it should be noted that after twenty-four hours efforts were made to re-capture the squirrels until a decision could be made concerning their fate, but the nearest ASPCA was some 150 miles away, and by the time they arrived to offer assistance to the ineffectual efforts of the locals, the damage had been done to the now-decimated squirrel population).

Not a happy story, eh, Comrades? Well, it goes on: the remaining 10% of the squirrels found the familiar trees and retreated to them, but every so often decided that, fed up with their usual diet of European squirrel nuts, that they would rather sample the new American nuts and assorted droppings in the garbage cans of the various fast food outlets of the local community college located directly across the street. Unable to keep the squirrels from crossing the road and ending up as deficits in the town’s budget (as well as becoming line items in the town’s budget [“animal control and removal,” i.e., they had to pay people to scrape up the flattened bodies of these unfortunate creatures after their completely unfair encounters with vehicles]), an enterprising local architect (the son of the one who built the oppressive and controlling worker shacks, in fact, a certain Phineas R. Phlebotom, Jr., Esq., if, indeed, that was his real name – he fled the city shortly after this incident in an unrelated scandal) came up with the idea of building a BRIDGE across the road so the squirrels could safely pass from their native nut tees to the fat-and-cholesterol-laden leavings of the local students as well as whatever nut could be had by them from the trees on the other side of the street.

WELL: so here we have it: ANOTHER publicly-funded expense: A SQUIRREL BRIDGE, which, after much persiflage on the part of local leaders, is now considered a LOCAL TREASURE and TOWN ATTRACTION (it is always mentioned prominently in any brochure produced by the local Chamber of Commerce), with the workers’ full (though, I suspect, coerced) support! In fact, it has become a local tradition to spend what little time off the proletariat have (Sunday afternoons, mostly) not spent in local bourgeoisie-owned drinking establishments (of course the Oppressors recoup the capital they lose in payment of wages through dispensation of legal narcotics!), to sit on park benches (funded, of course, by themselves), watching the squirrels run across the bridge from one tree to another, eating one nut then another, and then running back again.

ARE SQUIRRELS REALLY ALL THAT INTERESTING? NO!

And so: SQUIRRELS HAVE BECOME YET ANOTHER WEAPON IN THE BOURGEOIS WAR AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT! Agitprop in rodent form!

Comrades, I ask you: imported squirrels? Really? What next? Imported mosquitoes? Imported gnats? Imported termites?

Rise up!