Part and parcel of my post yesterday about Work, Richard Conniff raises the subject of government spending, but in a whole new way.  He suggests that nobody likes paying their taxes because the word “tax” has so many bad connotations:

I propose we stop saying “taxes” and start calling them “dues.”

I’m perfectly fine with the negative connotations of the word “tax.”  Taxes are necessary, yes, but they are a drug to the recipient, and I don’t want to make drugs more appealing.  ”Dues” has the connotation of club membership, though, with benefits and privileges and responsibilities, which isn’t far from the bond we Americans have. 

Instead of denouncing taxes, politicians would do better to appeal to the patriotic corners of our hearts that warm to phrases like “we the people.” “Taxation” is a throwback to the time when kings picked our pockets. “Paying my dues,” a phrase popularized in the jazz music world, is language by which we can stand together as Americans.

Maybe if we start calling them “dues,” we can have a little more say in where the money goes. 

When I was in junior high, patches were pretty sweet.  Everybody had denim jackets, and everybody wanted them to have patches.  In my time, I’ve proudly displayed patches from Ski Santa Fe, from Yellowstone Park Service Stations, and from County Line Hunting Club, which were places where I recreated, worked, and shot animals from time to time (in that order).  This light fare from the Times is also about patches, but of a different kind.  Black ops patches, which shine a dark light on a dark corner of the nation’s government.

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. “To Serve Man” reads the text above, a reference to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. “Gustatus Similis Pullus” reads the caption below, dog Latin for “Tastes Like Chicken.”

Part esprit de corps, part gnosticism, part patriotism, these patches are pretty awesome to look at.  And in some ways, they reveal that black ops people are people, too.

In an interview, Mr. Paglen said his favorite patch was the dragon holding the Earth in its claws, its wings made of American flags and its mouth wide open, baring its fangs. He said it came from the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees developing spy satellites. “There’s something both belligerent and weirdly self-critical about it,” he remarked. “It’s representing the U.S. as a dragon with the whole world in its clutches.”

I think it’d be pretty awesome if I were to do something, one day, that merited a patch like that.