The Manifesto
I don’t know if this is true for the non-partisan sides of government, but whenever I walk into the office and find mail on the desk, I know I’m in for a little treat. Primarily because the only people sending physical mail to their representatives, at this point, are small children and extremely elderly people, and I would always rather spend my morning dealing with whatever they have decided is the most important issue of the day than the middle-aged women calling me because their children saw an unhoused person, which is a real thing I was dealing with last week.
This week, I got one such treat. A manila envelope hand-addressed to the politician I work for, with a return address embossed using a custom ink stamp. Already a great start.
The envelope contained a 19 page word document, detailing the heroic fight between one elderly man and the government.
Our deeply-wronged constituent had been in a no-fault accident last year, in which he claimed a young man in a truck rear-ended him and the young man claimed the old codger in question spontaneously began backing up at an intersection. The police, who, in fairness, rarely feel an obligation to do their jobs, looked at the situation and just went “well who the hell knows what’s happened here, truly this is an unsolvable mystery. No fault accident, call your insurance companies, case closed.”
Because our protagonist was older than <PERSON>, this triggered an automatic medical review of the man’s license. This happens whenever someone over the age of 75 is in a car accident. You go to your doctor, you have them fill out a form declaring that you can still see and draw a clock, you’re good to go. 339
Medical care is free at the point of use here, so it’s not a financial burden — it’s literally a 15 minute appointment and a form.
This man, though, does not feel that this is a routine procedure. No. Our hero, the one protagonist of reality, is being unjustly persecuted by the police and our government. He is being harassed, damn it, and he’s not gonna take it any more.
He refuses to fill out the form on principle and submits a freedom of information request to the police, compiling the evidence that he is being targeted. I know this, because he included the results of the FOIA and described his emotional response in excruciating detail.
As a result of his principled stand against the encroachment of big government, his license is revoked. He is now on a one-man quest to restore his license without submitting to the indignity of a medical exam, and he wants our help.
To be clear, we can do nothing for this man. He is not getting his license back. He should, however, potentially pursue creative writing as a career. 554