Harrison Bergeron (and the handicapper General)
Be seeing you
Posted by M. C. on September 10, 2024
Harrison Bergeron (and the handicapper General)
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on July 27, 2023
While we may claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government rulers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.
Even though the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, we just keep going back for more.
For instance, we claim to disdain the jaded mindset of the Washington elite, and yet we continue to re-elect politicians who lie, cheat and steal.
By John & Nisha Whitehead
“I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
There’s a meme that circulated on social media a while back that perfectly sums up the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today:
“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?”
Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering that keeps us fixated on circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles, distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, and incapable of focusing on who’s really shaking the jar.
This controversy over Jason Aldean’s country music video, “Try That In a Small Town,” which is little more than authoritarian propaganda pretending to be respect for law and order, is just more of the same.
The music video, riddled with images of militarized police facing off against rioters, implies that there are only two types of people in this country: those who stand with the government and those who oppose it.
Yet the song gets it wrong.
You see, it makes no difference whether you live in a small town or a big city, or whether you stand with the government or mobilize against it: either way, the government is still out to get you.
Indeed, the government’s prosecution of the Jan. 6 protesters (part of a demographic that might relate to the frontier justice sentiments in Aldean’s song) is a powerful reminder that the police state doesn’t discriminate when it comes to hammering away at those who challenge its authority.
It also serves to underscore the government’s tone-deaf hypocrisy in the face of its own double-crossing, double-dealing, double standards.
Imagine: the very same government that violates the rights of its citizenry at almost every turn is considering charging President Trump with conspiring against the rights of the American people.
It’s so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.
If President Trump is indicted over the events that culminated in the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, the government could hinge part of their case on Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime for two or more people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” anyone “with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege” the person enjoys under the U.S. Constitution.
That the government, which now constitutes the greatest threat to our freedoms, would appoint itself the so-called defender of our freedoms shows exactly how farcical, topsy-turvy, and downright perverse life in the American police state has become.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Cat’s Cradle, Government, Kurt Vonnegut, militarized police, Small Town | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on October 8, 2020
And now, the healthy must pretend they are sick – and be treated as presumptively sick. The fact that they aren’t isn’t a mitigating factor. In fact, it is a kind of perverse crime in that they are punished for living normally – on the basis of the fact that they aren’t sick.
This is being characterized as “selfish.”
It is an actionable offense in many areas.
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2020/10/06/welcome-to-bergeron/
America is becoming Bergeron – a new country based on the principles laid out in Kurt Vonnegut’s depressingly prescient short story, Harrison Bergeron.
It is a country in which – as in the book – you may not act if anyone of lesser strength or ability or drive cannot act at the same level. You must accommodate yourself to their level.
Everything is leveled – ever downward.
Until all are depressingly . . . equal.
In misery. In poverty. In thrall to suffocating edicts limiting what they are permitted to do – and told they must not do – on the basis of what others can’t do. Or resent you for being able to do, which they can’t.
One of the most obvious expressions of this principle is on the road, where the law punishes competence as a kind of affront to the incompetent. If some people can’t handle making a right turn on red without creeping out in front of right-of-way traffic and causing a wreck thereby, no one else is allowed to make a right-on-red. If someone ignores the law forbidding it and makes a right-on-red safely and competently, by judging the flow of traffic and applying the necessary degree of acceleration to merge with it smoothly, he is punished for being competent.
For having ability – and daring to use it.
Some will say that, no, the offender ignored the law. True – but only superficially.
Consider that the competent execution of the action isn’t a mitigating factor. Just as health is no excuse for not Diapering.
Which is proof positive that the true offense – not mentioned but nonetheless – is lack of obedience premised on the acceptance of incompetence (and sickness) even in its absence.
At the first hint of snow, the roads are now inundated with liquid brine – if they’re not closed outright, as in my part of Virginia – where the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed even before it snows, stays closed if it doesn’t actually snow . . . because it might snow.
Because some people can’t deal with snow.
Highway speed limits are today what they were 60 years go – notwithstanding 60 years of improvements in tire/brake/suspension technology and half a dozen “safety assists” in addition to that.
Glaucomic granny sets the pace.
And now – because granny might die – everyone is treated as if they, too, were a granny and might die.
Healthy people at very little to no risk of death from catching a cold must live in perpetual fear of death. If they don’t fear it, having no reason to – they must be forced to act – and look – as if they did.
For the sake of those who do fear it.
Instead of sequestering granny, everyone else is sequestered.
And Diapered.
Soon, they will be Needled. Not because they need it – being healthy – but because some people aren’t. Everyone must be made unhealthy – by injecting them with substances that make them so, which suppress the competence of their own healthy immune system to ward off colds.
A public sneeze will soon be treated the same as spraying a crowd with machine gun fire – and there are Bergeronites who equate the two. Even if you don’t sneeze. Because you might.
Ergo, the Diaper.
It’s as vindictive a policy as forcing people who can drive to operate at the level of those who can’t – and punishing them if they don’t.
It all flows from the same ugly principle. The Sickness Regime is merely the latest and entirely predictable evolution of least common denominatorism – the Bergeroning of America.
It has been evolving for a long time, gradually – until it reached a critical mass – gesundheit! – this year.
Decades before the locking-down of the healthy population to protect the unhealthy portion of the population, it became common practice – in government schools – to limit the progression of instruction of the bright kids to accommodate the dullest kids.
It was called “mainstreaming.”
When kids played team sports, participation trophies were handed out to everyone in lieu of trophies for winning.
Adults lacking ability were hired for jobs over those with ability. This was called “affirmative action” – and it worked in the same way (and on the basis of the same motives) as forcing a champion sprinter to run in boots so that a mediocre rival could keep up with him.
Because some people can’t use a rearview mirror, everyone must be forced to buy a back-up camera. Because some people are terrible drivers when sober, the slightest amount of alcohol in the system of a good driver subjects him to a charge of “drunk” driving without regard to his actual driving.
Everything has to be idiot-proofed . . . for the sake of the idiots at the expense of those who aren’t.
People with the foresight to live below their means, who set aside money for their own retirement, are punished for their prudence by being forced to “contribute” money to subsidize the retirement of the imprudent, thereby rendering them just as dependent.
People who can competently handle a firearm – having never given reason to believe otherwise – are presumed incompetent to handle a firearm on account of the demonstrated incompetence of other people.
And now, the healthy must pretend they are sick – and be treated as presumptively sick. The fact that they aren’t isn’t a mitigating factor. In fact, it is a kind of perverse crime in that they are punished for living normally – on the basis of the fact that they aren’t sick.
This is being characterized as “selfish.”
It is an actionable offense in many areas.
Granny isn’t forced to enter a restaurant – and can enter wearing a Face Diaper if she likes.That’s not Bergeronic enough. The restaurant must force all of its employees and patrons to wear a Face Diaper.
Every level of American society is being pulled toward the floor like a tablecloth grabbed by a temper-tantruming toddler – who will never be allowed to grow up – by making the adults at the table sit on the floor, amid the spilled soup and broken plates.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bergeron, Diaper, Kurt Vonnegut, mainstreaming, obedience | Leave a Comment »