We are the alien overlords. I am reading in the New York Times our detailed plans for laying seige of cities in Iraq. We will attempt to control the minds of the inhabitants (demoralizing the fighters, calming the civilians), and systematically in our now infinitely superior ways conquer each city. We have become the creatures from our movies of the the fifties: the aliens who attack from the upper air, utterly overwhelming the civil defenses of mortal communities. In this telling of the story, the aliens are good, overthrowing tyrannies beginning a new age of brotherhood, democracy, and peace under the benevolent watch of the superior entities from outer space.
In dystopian films, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the aliens win. They are cautionary tales but they are scary because deep down we know that sometimes the aliens do win. In the movie version of War of the Worlds, the aliens eventually die of the common cold or something equally innocuous to us, but here in the “new world” it was the aliens who brought the germs and the earthlings who died in droves.
I’m tired of this monochromatic media world of anti-idiotarians (I call them smugopolists). I’m tired of the drumbeat of dupes, change-the-subject talking point cascades, Perotists, and sniper defenders.
But I have work to do, so I’ll sign off with a snipped from Camper Van Beethoven
…in the mind of Ronald Reagan
Wheels they turn and gears they grind
Buildings collapse in slow motion
Everything is fine, everything is fine