Monday, March 20, 2006

Scaring The Sheep Into Submission


People live in fear of an enemy they can never completely escape--each other. Everywhere they look, someone or something really scary lurks that wants to do them harm.

They know this as surely as they know those steel-helmeted talking hairdos dressed up as news commentators are the ultimate and final authority on everything from car chases to scary person of the week.

They know this because those superficial and empty people tell them so, those people whose hair never moves and whose faces have that putty colored orange cast of wrinkle filler, or worse...that pallid and that pasty pale look of a spackled wall. Those pitiful and empty bags of human skin and fetid hot air are the people they trust to never lie, to never exaggerate, to never cover a real story as long as there is a car chase, a missing white woman, or some hate to monger here and there.

The tragic thing is that these news-actors are merely puppets reading from a script designed to keep anyone from thinking too hard about who the real enemy might be. The easiest way to do this is to talk the prisoner (i.e. me and you...the ones who are still walking around outside the cage...) into not only building his or her own prison, but to also surround it with very large walls, throw up some heavy-duty metal bars on all the doors and windows, and pay someone with a uniform to stand at the entrance and look mean. This is called "being safe."

But the average idiot isn't all that easily fooled. They ask how can they feel safe when every time they venture out of their little Stepford Kennels, the monsters jump out at them and scream "Give me your car! I want to be on the evening news just like OJ!"

Or their daughters decide to go vacation somewhere really scary where the real enemy is not the dark stranger lurking in the shadows, but that nice, white rich boy who gets away with killing people because everyone knows only poor people would do such a thing. And his house is surrounded by walls and fences and bars and he carries around a whole bunch of keys.

He must be safe. And did they mention, rich? Doesn't money cleanse all sins and make the bearer of it squeaky clean safe? So they trust him the same way they trust the news-actors because he lives inside the kennel with them, just as they do, just as frightened little rabbit people do all over the world. They obediently built their prisons, moved in and kept out all the monsters outside the gate.

And now they feel so safe, so protected, so secure in the knowledge that anyone coming looking for them will get lost in the warren of perfectly manicured landscaping and houses that are so similar, even they get lost sometimes. They laugh about it. Ha ha. I got lost in my own neighborhood. Ha ha ha.

But this nice young rich boy offered to help them find their way home. What is there not to trust? Of course they let him show them the way home. He had such a nice smile, and did we mention that he was rich?
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