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Suppose It Goes Something Like This...?
© John Erickson
A city on a hill contained endless bounty. Its lights could be seen for miles. Within it, one could encounter all manner of people: bookworms curious about similar topics, techies chattering on the latest evolution of android, prospective dates. And Starbucks.
It was a money generator that kept people alive, the nation strong, its enemies far from its shores and famine far from the table.
Then, one day, a bitter multibillionaire was bent on destroying the city. Prosperity brings control - and it was unseemly that ordinary people should siphon off power from men like himself, he thought. Such is reserved for men of stature who possessed fine table manners and held the earth in their palms.
So he talked to his associates in the media. Media associates liked talking with the bitter multibillionaire because he'd always bring presents for them: promises of promotion, wealth and removal of their enemies. This time he proposed his Grand Design. Push this story, he said, and the earth and all it's bounty shall be yours. The media associates liked the bitter multibillionaire's Grand Design. They enjoyed controlling the public with fear because the public reminded them of the kids who beat them up in school. "We'll see who inflicts pain on whom," they said with glee.
Shock headlines appeared:
A new disease has been discovered. It has no symptoms, it's impossible to detect and has no known cure
Some days later:
Your neighbor is killing you. Each sneeze results in 1000 deaths.
Lack of symptoms is the first sign of infection.
Ratting-out your neighbors increases lifespan, new study shows.
If you see anyone doing anything, report them. They will kill your grandmother, your baby and your puppy. They are to never leave the house. If they go out, we'll lock them in a cell. We're making room for them now by releasing murderers. Stay home, stay safe.
The entire nation grew quiet. It produced no goods. People were afraid of each other. Intellectuals raced against time to dress their debating tactics in credible tones to keep the public paralyzed one more day. Then when the lies became evident, one hundred new, more erudite lies had been prepared and issued to confuse and control the public.
When fatalities failed to match the fevered rhetoric being issued, statistics were appropriated from other causes and rebadged to puff the numbers.
And lest these lies didn't win over the troublemakers, the bitter multibillionaire had a talk with governors and mayors. Illegal edicts were issued, quarantines were implemented, fines and threats were enacted. Riots were overlooked so that asymptomatic counter-revolutionaries could be arrested to protect the aforementioned grandmothers, babies and puppies.
But there were other nations on the earth, more ambitious ones who were eager to seize control from weak, fantasy-entranced countries. They continued manufacturing, building their militaries and buying the debt of the fear-filled nation.
One day, one of these ambitious countries foreclosed on the fantasy-ruled nation, sent in it's military, established its own companies, and didn't give a shit about the loud, obnoxious media, it's fantasies or the bitter multibillionaire who funded it all. The latter were welcomed at a hospitality camp on the mainland, along with most of the original inhabitants of the once light-filled city. This made things easier for the occupying nation.
Now the bitter multibillionaire, the media functionaries and the fantasy-entangled intellectuals argue with one another during rare breaks at the quarry to which they've been assigned for re-education.
The End.
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