[b]Joseph Heller
Now you’ve given them hope, and they’re unhappy. So the blame is all yours.[/b]
Not often thought about in that manner, is it?
‘Help!’ he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, as the policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. ‘Police! Help! Police!’ The doors were shut and bolted, and the ambulance raced away. There was a humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him. Yossarian smiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous, realized with alarm that they were not perhaps, intended as a call for police but as a heroic warning from the grave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and gun and a mob of other policemen with clubs and guns to back him up. ‘Help! Police!’ the man had cried, and he could have been shouting of danger.
Not often thought about in that manner, is it?
It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Let’s just say that, viscerally, we know exactly what it means.
When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering.
And that was long before Trumpworld.
In a world in which success was the only virtue, he had resigned himself to failure.
You know, given his pitiful bank account.
I’m cold, Snowden said softly, I’m cold.
You’re going to be all right, kid, Yossarian reassured him with a grin. You’re going to be all right.
I’m cold, Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice. I’m cold.
There, there, Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. There, there.
I’m cold, Snowden whimpered. I’m cold.
There, there. There, there.
Trust me: You’ve either been there or not.