Is This A Great Country Or What?
by tristero
Today, I woke up to learn that perhaps the reason why Benazir Bhutto was accidentally killed by a protruding metal lever on her car’s sun roof – hmm, something seems not quite, eh, kosher, about that story, but never mind – was because she was about to reveal proof that the upcoming Pakistani elections were rigged. And since everything that happens in the world is really about me – sorry, I meant US – my heart immediately swelled with patriotic pride.
Oh, America! How glad I am to live in a country where legitimate questions about rigged voting machines, uncounted ballots, voter intimidation, phone jamming, and other well-documented examples of egregious Republican electoral fraud are simply ignored, dismissed by the Real Players as mere gibbering Oliver Stone-style lunacy. No killings. No riots. And look, can you believe it?!? Britney’s sister struck a deal for an on-demand telecast of her kid’s birth – I mean, y’can’t argue with the money and all, but something’s not right about that.
No question about it. Bullets and bombs = big mess. And everyone knows how much Americans dislike icky things; why, we’re so sensitive that our government won’t even allow our media to broadcast the coffins of our military killed in action. And crude histrionics like public assassinations have a habit of sometimes provoking the most uncontrollable of reactions from the masses. No question about it: ignoring, or laughing at, those who cry “Foul!” beats killing ’em. And the best joke of all is it’s even politically correct! Anyone objects, y’simply say, “What? You’d rather we didn’t laugh and instead kill those who doubt Florida 2000, etc, etc? You nuts or something?”
The cultivation of indifference. Modern America’s greatest contribution to the grand art of authoritarianism.
Special note to conservatives and other functional illiterates: I am not, for a moment, suggesting that it would be better if there were political assassinations in the US instead of widespread indifference. And I have no idea whether Britney’s sister intends to broadcast the birth of her child.
But if she did, I guarantee there’d be no bodily fluids anywhere. Except, that is, for the new mother’s tears of joy, falling in elegant rhythmic counterpoint to the plangent parallel sixths of a wistful piano phantasy, as the newborn cries to the heavens (but mixed down to a tasteful level). We’re talking Nielsen here and after all, Americans don’t like icky things.
