A Brief Look at the History and Nature of Forced Recycling Day

This holiday comes from the Western Purge tradition of the 2010s-60s. It is a variation on the classic Purge Day celebrations, with one new added goal: clean this motherfucking planet up.

The idea to have the original Purge Day was sparked, unintentionally, by the writers of that movie, The Purge: its thematic origins, though, can be traced back as far as the fall of Rome under Nero, or, more likely, to the Venetian Bridge Wars of the 1300s-1700s — wherein, every year or so, the entire city of Venice would go absolutely fucking bonkers, for days or even weeks at a time, fighting with each other, using fists and sticks and stones, over the ownership of a bridge that is now dead and gone.

The original Purge Day was first celebrated in the year 2018, on December 11th, after the then humble, hard-talking-hard-working-hard-living-workout-guru Chuck Norris (who took over as president, after Mike Pence — who had already taken over for Trump, who died in what appears to have been an horrific fruit smoothie/blender incident — died mysteriously, in his Indiana mansion, from an accident involving a Shake Weight, some organic meat, and black martial arts belt which had somehow become fixed around his neck; the last words he uttered before leaving this great big fish bowl we call life were, “Get the motherfucker who played Delta Force!” which Pence’s personal bodyguards decided, collectively, had meant, “find Chuck Norris and take him to be appointed immediately to the position of President of the United States, regardless of chain of command”) decided that we needed to, quote, “trim the fat right off this pussy-ass population!”

About 2 decades after the first Purge Day, quoted here in an interview with Time Magazine, Norris speaks about the difficulties of installing the new holiday: “Well we knew that Purge day was going to go over tough with those stupid lefties. But we also knew that it was a necessary answer to a question that required a response: namely that of our own violent tendencies. You see, in a world where violence is everywhere present, we can’t help but take on some of those violent tendencies ourselves: war is necessary to maintain peace, in this world. Our children must learn this at a young age. Unfortunately, it gives them what we in the business like to term, “Excess energies.” And I’ll tell you what: I don’t know how it hit me. But I was thinking about it; when the population got big enough, the total of those “excess energies” began to outnumber our police force, our military — our everything. The left and right were at odds, and we had some consoling to do if we didn’t want this bastard to get out of hand. There was also the problem of obesity at the time: how to deal with such an overweight country? Our total weight was way bigger in proportion to our population than any other country. So, I came up with this great idea: get everyone to save all those bad thoughts till one day, December 11th, and you can take em’ out then on whoever you like. Whoever? Whomever? Which is it again? Either way. You wait till the 11th, then bash in the brain of anybody who you want to. Or steal their stuff. Karate chop them. Whatever you want. Then, you get people being active, you get those excess energies all expelled. Yep. My own original idea. Mind if I subvert this interview and ask how it feels to be in the presence of genius? And jeez, Barney — it’s Barney, right? — I’ll tell you what, Barney: the best part of the Purge has been what’s happened with the economy. I mean, we didn’t even see it coming. Didn’t even cross our minds, not once. But, right around the beginning of December, we always seem to see a huge spike in the sale of clothes, food, tobacco, gunpowder, gasoline, firearms...”

The first Purge led, across the United States and its outlying territories, to over 22 million american deaths.

To say the very least, Norris was in a state of ecstasy over the numbers.

His speech from the day after captures the general attitude of the american people at this time:

“Wow wow wow wow-ee! Look at you all! Look at all of you! You’ve made it! Do you understand the amount of work we have just done? And in only 24 hours?! Well let me tell you folks: at one-hundred seventy pounds per dead meat sac — which is a low-ball estimate, as we all know, because the weight problem in this country has us all ballooned up to ridiculous proportions and absurd weights — you folks have just finished participating in the greatest weight loss achievement ever conceived in human history. According to accountants at the Pentagon, we shaved off approximately 3,894,000,000 pounds — in less than 24 hours! I think you should all be feeling very proud of yourselves: every one of us. Even I feel a great deal of pride about what we have conquered here...”

History shows us that holidays grow: they change, they adapt, they evolve. History shows us that the same is true of culture, politics, religion, science, philosophy, society. History shows us that, unavoidably, all of these factors collide, at one point or another. In this case, they collided to cause a shift to Purge Day that would change it into what the holiday we have all come to know and love: Forced Day of Recycling. The idea is pretty easy to grasp: from Norris’ reign — which, after a change in presidential term limits and a re-vamping of his diet, lasted nearly 45 years, until an untimely and misfortunate Uber accident — we shift into the era of Gaugus Dirgun Gogger the Latter. The Latter’s reign lasted for the rest of his life as well, into the early 2100s. Gaugus was a person’s person: a humanist of humanists. A meta-human, if you will. He understood that humankind would not survive without an earth: he also understood death as an unavoidable and unimportant part of a critter’s life — especially if that critter didn’t sort it’s number 7 plastics correctly.

What follows hardly needs explaining.

Gaugus made it so that, instead of just Purge Day, there was one more key limitation to the rules: you may only attack individuals or businesses who are either directly or implicitly responsible for being environmentally irresponsible. Because of the calmer demeanor of the new day, people were actually able to go about their normal routines in some select towns and cities. To assure that all were following the correct procedures as they went about their days, going to the dump and doing regular household chores, Gaugus also ordered armed guards to occupy every private residency, and all trash facilities: they were to scrupulously check each and every piece of trash trying to make its way out of the house, or into the landfills and the junk yards and the transfer stations, to make sure that environmental friendliness was maintained. The punishment if you are caught at a dump trying to skirt your duties is a swift kick to the back, and a quick shot of lead to the brain.

Really, the only places that were unable to continue their daily routines were places of high finance, places of business or oil, or prisons: there was no stopping the People from exacting their revenge. Only, because the focus of available targets was so restricted by Gaugus’ rules, physical damage was all that really ended up amounting: no true uprisings ever occurred. Nor are any foreseen. Nor could any ever hope to come to fruition. That is perhaps the most brilliant part of it all: the physical damage communicates to the People that their job has been completed. When they are finished destroying buildings, burning businesses, blowing up oil wells — when all is said in done — it feels to them as though they have made a great change: and, perhaps physically speaking, they have. Visually speaking, indeed. But, what they forget is that infinite resource is a given for those that the People say they hate: resources from the baseball bats the People bought to smash those business fronts. Resources from the food the People use to fuel their raging, environmentally conscious destructive streaks. Resources from the places the People go home to rest, afterwards. Resources from everywhere: all aspects of the People's lives are there for the taking, for them. When one possesses all the resources in the world, it would follow suit that rebuilding a building would really not be such a big task: they can just put up an identical building, same blueprints, as if nothing had ever happened. And everything can go back to normal.