Protrope (pro-tro’-pe): A call to action, often by using threats or promises.
“Hi Ho! Hi Ho!, it’s off to work we go. Off to the salt mines, or I’ll stick a hot butter knife you know where, and it isn’t in a butter dish. You have one minute to get out there and toe the line, or I start shooting. I am your God, but I am not your savior. Ok, time’s up.” BLAM! BLAM! BLAM, “A trifecta! Three malingerers. Three stooges. Rub-a-dub-dub, load ‘em in the tub and dump ‘em in the lime pits. If you want their shoes or anything, you have my permission to fight over them.”
Mr. Jones, the guard, was a psychopath. Prior to the “Change,” he had run an award-winning day care center called ”Little Sprouts.” After the “Change” he was cited for “grooming” children by feeding them nutritious lunches and waiting with them at the school bus stop. His accuser was a Floridite minion who took over “Little Sprouts” the same day Mr. Jones was convicted and transported to the salt mines. The new owner/principal of “Little Sprouts” renamed it “Sparta Day School.” Like ancient Spartans, the children wore no clothes and fought over everything—from lunch to Legos. If they weren’t wounded somehow during the day, they were spanked in private in the new principal’s office to “shield them from prying eyes and build their character.”
Mr. Jones’s descent into a homicidal mindset and wanton killer was nearly inevitable. If he didn’t kill laggards, he would be killed after being tortured in front of everybody. He was given a vivid detailed description of how he would be tortured that he was required to read aloud every morning through a bullhorn at 6:00 am. After the reading was the call to “toe the line.” If he had no malingers on a given morning he would shoot at a random victim, wounding them in the leg, and hoping he wouldn’t be tortured for not killing them. So far, the wounding strategy had worked.
The Charlie Manson Salt Mines were a horror show. You should’ve gathered that by now. Since the “Change” prompted by the “Floridite Coup,” when democracy died and thugs took over governance and law enforcement at every level. All US citizens were required to have a minimum of 6 tattoos depicting death and destruction, and including at least one tattoo of “The Joker.” Lying was valorized to the point that there was the equivalent of a Nobel Prize awarded for “Consistent and Credible Misrepresentation of the Truth.” Everything belonged to the government, including your home and car, which you had to rent from the government. Freedom of Speech was non-existent. Dissenters could be shot on the spot. Liberal gun control laws, along with stand your ground, encouraged killing dissenters. If you were annoyed by what they were saying, you were being threatened and you could let them have it, standing your ground. They didn’t have a chance. Dissent vanished.
I ended up in the Charles Manson Salt Mines, here in Utah, over a misunderstanding. I was suffering from my summer allergies and had sneezed several times in succession. A women pushing a baby stroller yelled, “He said the “F” word! He’s trying groom my baby and give me a lewd hint of what he’d like to do with me. Lock him up, Officer.” When I got to court, I tried to explain to the judged. that it was a sneeze—“Achoo” not “F-you.” The judge said, “While I commend you for coming up with a pretty good lie, I’m convicting you of public sullification, a new crime developed to enable courts to send off anybody they want to to the Charlie Manson Salt Mines. In your case, you bothered my niece with your obscene and immoral sneezing. I hereby sentence you to 10 years hard labor.”
So here I am. It all happened so fast. My teeth are falling out. I’m still wearing the Brooks Bother’s suit I was wearing when I was convicted and transported. It smells and is stained, with holes in the knees and elbows. I won’t talk about my underwear. Ironically, my hair and beard look like Charlie Manson’s. We have a look-alike contest each year that I’m thinking of entering. If I win, I’ll be made into a trustee at the Manson Memorial Museum at the Spahn Ranch. if that doesn’t work, I will ask Mr. Jones to shoot me.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 