Financial bankruptcy is much more of a headache than the seductive appeal of moral bankruptcy./Image Credit: Licensed Dreamstime stock, Antonio Guillem.
Fiduciary Felicitations, dear Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) readers! Today, though it’s our first Money column, we’re going to talk about a financial end, of sorts. Of course, every end is the opportunity for what, readers?–that’s right: a beginning! So, let’s talk about Chapter 11, or bankruptcy and whether it’s right for you. Clearly, moral bankruptcy is the way for us to go, as we’re now fulling backing the Dr. Faustus–except he definitely doesn’t have unlimited knowledge–of current Republican politics, President Donald Trump, but let’s see if the same is the case with financial bankruptcy, shall we?
Chapter 11 of the Soul…and the Wallet!
As Chapter 11 is a legal designation, the website of the U.S. Courts tells us businesses, and less commonly individual people, can declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If you’re looking for some reading material to take the place of your sleeping pill, we highly recommend this website. On it, you’ll…oh, sorry! We fell asleep!
Reactionary Reorganizing
Before the soporific effects of that site took hold, you’ll see that it outlines that chapter 11 involves a reorganization of a business or of personal finances with the intent of allowing them to continue existing, if you will. Think of it like the Republican party agreeing to have Donald Trump be its nominee to run for president in 2016, shuffling lots of alliances around–mostly members of Congress doing mental gymnastics in order to justify agreeing to silently support or actively aid someone they know to be totally unfit to lead the country. Or you could look at it as the conservative bloc of voters jettisoning legitimate expectations of decency or civility to explain to themselves and others their support for Trump, given that its based on the hope that he’ll reduce their taxes and trickle down profits into their pockets. Better still, imagine it as an entire political party–the Republican one–entering into an abusive relationship with the minority of Trump voters holding it hostage with their insistence that the whole group continue to prop up Trump, no matter what awful thing he does, daily, to make the party a chaotic wreck, make laughable its mandate to govern, and reflect horribly on the leaders who defend and make excuses for the psycho they got in bed with.
Every Debtor Has His Day
Chapter 11 also allows for the declarer to hold off debtors by laying out a plan to repay them. You can think of this as having to pay the piper at some point, but on a reasonable schedule that works for you. If only it worked that way in politics.
The Republican party is now fully beholden to the minority of Trump supporters that make it up, and even if/when Trump leaves office, they’re going to come-a-calling again. How the Republican party is going to pay those debtors, we have no idea. But the term, you made your bed, now lie in it, comes to mind. Just please don’t force the entire nation to sleep in it with you that time, as you are now.
The Boring Stuff In the Middle
If something’s not right-wing-centered, you know it’s of little interest to us. So all the stuff with creditors, trustees, administrators, and on and on makes us want to stick a fork in our collective SYRW eye. Why would richies like us, or not-richies who for some bizarre reason, like maybe Stockholm Syndrome, deify the rich, want to learn too much about bankruptcy when we’ll likely never have to declare it. If there’s one thing we’ll do anything to get more of and hang on to, after all, it’s money, money, money.
Let’s just say there will be someone, appointed by the courts, monitoring that you stick to the financial plan you lay out. Very unfair! Leave it to the left wing Deep State to breathe down our necks instead of just trusting that we’ll do the right, right-wing thing, when both anecdotal evidence and vetted research shows that people left to their own free-market devices will take advantage of other people, laws, and anything else to increase their bottom line.
The Final Farewell
One day the gavel will go bang, and a judge will declare the terms of your bankruptcy are met. It’s over. Our moral bankruptcy, however, has no such satisfying sound or government official to weigh in on an end to the ever-increasing decrepitude of our souls. That seems like it’s just going to go on and on, until it’s so bad one day it’ll hit us with the same finality as gavel slamming onto wood: we’ve become bad, bad people. Horrible. The worst.
Chapter 7-11
There’s also Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which, according to the fab folks at FindLaw, is, “the closure of the debtor business and the sale of liquid assets to repay creditors.” Well, now this seems like where the conservative coalition is headed, no? Closing up shop on any sort of value system, setting our morals free as if they were a caged bird and are now spreading their right-wings to fly away home, and calling it a day on holding our leaders accountable for behaving like civilized human beings instead of trash-mouthed, boorish, cretins.
Should I Stay, or Should I Go?
So sang classic punk band, The Clash. We should make it our theme song, it seems. Should we stay in morally-solvent territory? Oh, wait! We had already decided! We said bye-bye to our moral agency when we decided it was cool to elect one of the most willfully ignorant, blatantly mendacious, and ideologically vacant human beings to exist as our leader and continue to support him despite evidence we shouldn’t do so that’s so obvious it’s almost embarrassing.
Do you want to declare financial Chapter 11? We hope this beyond-simple jog down bankruptcy lane has given you some framework to talk to a financial/legal expert about whether that’s the right move for you.
Until next week, then, SYRW readers! We truly are grateful for your readership.
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
