Friday, April 08, 2011
Swift would love us
The marauding enemy army known as EPA made breathing illegal last year. Today the Lower Nuthouse, showing a remarkable brief burst of verbal lucidity, attempted to remove the enemy army's authority to halt breathing. But the Upper Nuthouse is solidly anti-breathing and so is the Executive Nuthouse, so the attempt to restore our right to breathe will not succeed. Which the Lower Nuthouse knows perfectly goddamn well, so their effort to restore life is an intentionally pointless gesture.
None of the dystopian writers of the past saw this coming. Swift's Laputa was closest to modern America in its relentless overturning of every known fact, but the Laputan rulers didn't have as much power as our Gaian Occupation Government. In Butler's Erewhon the rulers had the same suffocating "Message: we care" nannitude as our BushBushObama dynasty, but they didn't go in for literal suffocation. Huxley's new world was hedonistic; only political opposition was squashed. Orwell's Airstrip One prohibited most pleasures, but didn't prohibit life itself.
Still, I think Swift would understand and appreciate our plight best. ¶ 5:06 AM
None of the dystopian writers of the past saw this coming. Swift's Laputa was closest to modern America in its relentless overturning of every known fact, but the Laputan rulers didn't have as much power as our Gaian Occupation Government. In Butler's Erewhon the rulers had the same suffocating "Message: we care" nannitude as our BushBushObama dynasty, but they didn't go in for literal suffocation. Huxley's new world was hedonistic; only political opposition was squashed. Orwell's Airstrip One prohibited most pleasures, but didn't prohibit life itself.
Still, I think Swift would understand and appreciate our plight best. ¶ 5:06 AM
