Diatribes 7-9

Diatribe 7

Distraction, misdirection, obfuscation. All methods by which our attention is drawn away from what our leaders don’t want us to see. Daily newspapers have given up reporting facts in favour of the sensational, the fantastical and the semi-fictional. Ministers are sacrificed at the altar of lies to keep us from becoming aware of what is being done in the name of security. We are given a view of a dangerous and fearful world, where our way of life is under assault from a myriad of outside agencies, while those who speak out an try to point out where the real danger lies have their opinions quashed. Opposition is branded as a form of terrorism or at the very least as being sympathy for terrorists. Those who decry the segragation of our society along religious and racial lines are themselves branded as racists and bigots, all while the terrorists against whom we fight an invisible war feed on the fear promoted and encouraged by our own government.
Liberty is not negotiable for the sake of security, indeed our liberty is a big part of what gives us our security. If we have to trade even the smallest of our freedoms in the course of our fight against terrorism, then the terrorists have already won and we have given the state more power over us than they are entitled to.
If someone is misguided enough to want to blow themselves up for the sake of their beliefs, whatever they may be, then nothing short of clairvoyance and telepathy will be able to detect them. A suicide bomber wears no uniform, does not have to be from a certain ethnic or religious background. The current picture of a bearded male of mid-eastern descent as terrorist is only there to give the population a focus for its anger and dismay which is obviously something that is different, other, or ‘them’. As long as our attentions are directed away from the complicity of our own government in the formation and perpetuation of these suicide cults then it doesn’t really matter who the enemy is, as long as its someone else. The truth that our leaders in their wisdom is that anyone can be a suicide bomber. Islam has no monopoly on fanaticism. There are no telltale signs that will give away a persons intention to take their own life in an act of mass murder.
We are constantly told that we are at war. This is undeniable. Where the contradictions creep in is when we are given a description of our enemy. The enemy we are given is one we can point at and say “They are different. They are evil. Its Us versus Them.” but as I mentioned above; A terrorist cannot be identified by his race, or by their faith. A terrorist is just another face in the crowd until the moment they release their destruction upon it. A visible enemy is just another distraction, designed to hide the failings of our own government.
Our leaders live in fear of the day the distraction fails and we finally see clearly what they have been up to. The overused excuse of ‘National Security’ is a smokescreen behind which are hidden the many unsavoury things done ‘for our protection’, when it is the fact that they are done at all only serves to endanger us further. The tighter they clamp down, the more people are recruited into the ranks of those who seek to destroy our freedom. Like a snake eating its own tail, the state pursues security at the cost of all else.

Diatribe 8

We are unknowing slaves. We live at the whim of a state who sees us only as human capital. A resource like any other, to be used in the pursuit of riches. A herd to be bred, cared for, trained, and if need be culled. We are conditioned from birth to be good littel consumers, workers, and breeders. Trained to serve the economic desires of a faceless fiscal machine whose only purpose is to continue its own existence.
Monitored, guided and controlled, our every habit and quirk manipulated, analysed, and used to the advantage of the machine. No-one benefits and only the machine reaps the rewards of our ceasless consumption. The machine knows no master, every man, woman and child on the face of the earth is tied from birth into a life of servitude and blind slavery.
The Matrix is a metaphor, but it is not entirely fiction. At least with the matrix there was an intelligence which, though alien, could be negotiated with. There is no mind behind the machine we serve, no consciousness to appeal to for mercy. It simply feeds without thought, soul, or conscience.
I would rather be a slave and told I was a slave, than be a slave and told I was free.

Diatribe 9

Its like a jigsaw that you have all the pieces for but no picture of what it should look like. We have various bills and legislation going through our parliament (and some that has already passed) which are peices of this puzzle. We have our leaders themselves and the laguage they use to address us, another peice. We have the various unimportant and sensationalised stories which are printed in the papers every day, thats an important piece, like a corner or something.
Adding it all together you get one of two pictures. One is the one where the holders of power are genuinely good people and want to make the world a better place and see their actions as the best way to do it. This picture is one which exists in an ideal world, where leaders are all good and decent, and have only the well beings of their citizens in their minds. It is also one where the arms of officialdom are purely beneficial to the populace and manned by similarly good and decent people. This is a pretty picture. The problem is that it can only be made by forcing the peices to fit and suspending the natural instinct that we all have, ie; that the person next to you is just as damaged, flawed, self-centered and vicious as you are.
The more likely picture is that our leaders want to control our lives, restrict our freedoms, and give themselves carte blanche to do whatever they please to serve their corporate masters.
The press is partly responsible for the current state of apparent apathy which infects the populace. By hiding the truth that their masters want hidden. By feeding the populace endless streams of excremental ‘news’ about so-called ‘celebrities’, feeding us the latest scandal cooked up by the government to distract us from the real scandal.