It was you dumb fucks. You were the soft, ass-kissing underbelly that let the Republicans in, and so, the Russians. You hung on their words. You cultivated them as friends because you flaked on some fucked up intractable daddy issues. You were comrades in mediocrity- the kind of louche camaraderie ignited by donuts in the break room, or the free corporate calendar and polystyrene Rubix cube keychain appearing at the receptionist’s table. A communal acceptance of a living death that prepares the body for the saline and valium drip of ever increasing stints in front of the television. A foot tingles, grows painful, sloughs off. The dull children watch and wait. They know the coin collection is virtually worthless, but some hungry immigrants will pay top dollar for this shithole of a brick ranch, and each of the kids will have a new car when all the paperwork is done.

Nancy Nall and her droogies are already like the censorious ghosts of dreams who ask “why haven’t you been to see me in so long?” while they assure you “The cancer’s in remission again. I’m going to whip it this time.”

I don’t know when I first got the feeling the wall between the dead and the living wasn’t merely permeable, but the dead had actively colonized the space of the living, setting up rec rooms and buffet tables, the plastic bags containing their organs sloshing and fermenting as they leaned in for another helping of banana pudding or a bingewatching session of Game of Thrones. But they’re here to tell you authoritarians aren’t so bad; they’ll share some of the shit they steal from you, and if they kill you, big deal: you’ll still be here, wondering if your hair is good or if your IRA is in the shitter from the latest Republican stock market plunge. The worst that can happen is you’ll be another space-hogging corpse, forever going over the old routines, greedily awaiting the nightly frottage with the living and hoping the dead’s familiar hope of breathing again; knocking shit around, getting your hands on the kids to fuck them up good and proper; copping a feel of some of the newer consumer goods.

There are now news networks devoted exclusively to the moldy dead and the aspirational politics of the aggrieved white corpse-state. And the venture capitalist funded “news conservancies” touted as a replacement for actual news are no better than Robert Vaughan hawking hair formula for decapitated crash victims.

The welfare state of the white dead comes furnished with the aura of protestant sensibility. A just reward for keeping your head down and dedicating your living years to unimaginable tedium. For mastering the art of sucking the boss without betraying a shred of that curdling resentment. For humping Rick Snyder’s talking points like a page just out of braces. You deserve this reeking shame of continuing in the presence of the living, sharing the furniture and living spaces you once held in common. You’ve earned the right to have your still-stupid ruminations and commentary interpreted as folk wisdom, or the voice of heightened awareness, even if it’s just Andy Griffith went to hell when Don Knotts left the show. Them chocolate pinwheels sure is good. At least you’re not a dead nonwhite, who come to death not knowing how seamlessly bland they could have had it, and who will probably never truly master the entirely selfish art of going on and on for the sake of going on and on.

The old white trash is forever here, unaware how fucking dead it is. In those high waisted pants and cancer wigs, rooting through bags of coconut flavored Brach’s candies and Railroad Mills snuff. They believe the youngs are fucking like rabbits in every darkened corner and it’s not like the old days when you could only fuck when you could afford it, or were supposed to. They believe the Civil War came out wrong. They believe we were on the wrong side in WWII. Nothing ever tasted quite as sweet after they started letting the coloreds have it. And they have successfully prevailed upon the living to legitimate those grievances as a source of political power.

They continue to haunt us in their ageless solecisms as surely as they haunt flea markets in the form of still greasy fry-daddies and True Detective magazines. Strongly scented funereal mahogony day beds, lift chairs and recliners soaked with end of life fluids. Our dead came drifting back to us on a wave of white mediocrity, and the mediocre let them bury us.