I Have No Mouth And Must Scream
Not my title, by the way - I lifted it from Harlan Ellison - but entirely accurate.
What's really come over me in the past few days hasn't been so much the shock and misery and wretched depression of the first week post-election. It's at the same time much subtler and far, far worse.
It's the sensation that the house is on fire, but no one wants to interrupt the good time they're having watching football. You yell at the top of your lungs and you point at the flames licking across the ceiling, and someone asks if you'd like another beer. You point out that the smoke alarms have been firing for a good five minutes, and your host responds that he probably needs to replace the batteries. And then you start to wonder whether you should just sit down and enjoy the nacho dip, because nobody else seems to have noticed a thing.
I was at the bank last week, waiting in line, and unwillingly watching Good Morning America. As you probably know, you have to have televisions everywhere, since people would get all fidgety in the absence of video entertainment, and might have to expend the effort to pull out their phones. In fact, my new favorite least favorite thing - little TV screens on gas pumps - because if you went for four minutes without a commercial, the World Would Fucking End.
Anyway, back to the bank. The Morning Giggle Gang laughed and nodded knowingly about some of those zany appointments the incoming administration was likely to make, and then went on to another top news story, which was video of a fireman falling off a ladder. That's right, this video was so important that the whole country needed to see the fireman falling off the ladder - once at actual speed, and of course, once in s-l-o-w-m-o-t-i-o-n. Ouch! I'm really looking forward to hearing about the deportation riots, or maybe Russia invading the Ukraine, to be followed by box office tallies, the hot toys this Christmas, and the story of an attractive young actress' grueling but successful battle against addiction! Yay, America!
Meanwhile, an avowed racist, anti-Semite and misogynistic asshole, and host of the news site of choice for those Red White And Bluebirds unable to handle the rarefied intellectual altitude of Fox and Friends, gets the nod for the top White House political post. An incoming president arrives with no idea that he actually has to find about 4,000 people to fill Executive Branch jobs from IT to appointments to chefs, lawyers, policy experts and managers. A week after the election, the State Department and Defense Departments still have not been contacted by that same incoming president's transition team so that they can start briefings on, well, things presidents should know. The incoming president checks to see whether three of his kids can get Top Secret security clearances (turns out they can't), at around the same time that his kids fire the only member of the transition team with national security experience. And then someone asks me if I'd like another beer.
There's a hologram out there, and it surrounds us all. It's the forced laughter, the cheery "Good morning!", the great tidal flows of money and bullshit and hype and scam and spam that make the world go around - or so the realists tell us. Wise men and clever women run the world, and they care - they really care about you and your life, and would never abuse their authority or skills. The policeman is your friend (not available in some areas - ask your Freedom Dealer for details). Someday soon, we're all going to be rich, and we're all going to get laid. There's a shiny new car for you. Everything is under control. Everything is normal. Everything is going to be fine, just fine.
Except that it won't. Why not? For five simple reasons:
Lies are not freedom.
Symbols are not strength.
Illusion is not safety.
Wishing is not reality.
And the hologram is death.
= new reply since forum marked as read
That doesn't happen often, but God it's great when it does.
We are all very thirsty.
May the pitcher always stay full!
and if I might say - great writing! 