| Friday, January 4, 2008 |
16:20 - There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2677
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So, like, I'm confused:
Let's assume, for the moment, just for fun, that the government and the media are two sides of the same coin, in perpetual cahoots and backing each other up. Forget the Rathergates and the Abu Ghraibs and so on for now; let's just humor the conceit. Call it a thought experiment.
So: assuming that, wasn't it in the interests of the Powers that Be to keep the "sheeple" feeling fat and happy? Wasn't that the whole idea—to lull everyone into a false sense of security, to keep people from feeling like there's anything wrong, so they go through their lives in dead-eyed dreariness and don't question the rules that order their existence?
At least, that's how I always read the script. But how exactly does it square with this idea here that the same forces that want us to remain fat and happy are also conspiring to terrify us, to make us jump through hoops, to keep us perpetually paranoid and on edge?
I mean, the same people are claiming that the Powers are doing both things to us. They're controlling us through bread and circuses, and they're controlling us through manufactured unrest. How do they do that?
How are we supposed to feel about these claims? Sure, everybody knows that terrorism doesn't really exist, that it's just a false-flag enemy ginned up to give us something ethnic to hate and fear. At the same time, everybody knows that the economy is going to hell and the government is a bunch of criminals and the election is a fraud, no matter how pretty a face the media puts on it. Right? ...But then, I suppose, everyone also knows that global warming is a farce and the war is actually going swimmingly and obesity isn't a problem and everyone will have plenty of money to retire, despite the media's transparently fraudulent attempts to pump worry about those things into our minds on a 24/7 basis. Right?
What am I missing here? What's the grand unifying theory? Am I supposed to be skeptical of the media's scaremongering, or of their soothing platitudes? Should I hate them for treating me like a cow, or for treating me like a hungry coyote? Which should I wish they did more of?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. And that's what you get without even being affiliated with the dark forces whose bidding everyone assumes you're doing anyway. Who would want that job?
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Brian Tiemann
