The Kafwellian Dystopia

Those of us who are level-headed and clear thinking, e.g. the rest of the world, should sympathize with America right now.  That country finds itself in the unenviable position in which half the country fervently believes the Anti-Christ has just been revealed, and the other half piously believes that the Second Coming has just occurred, and both are right.  In fact, one might think of the situation as the Second Coming of the Anti-Christ.

One the one hand, the Anti-Christers are so convinced that TEOTWAWKI has arrived, that they've decided to get a head-start on the death and destruction bit.  They have spent their life savings to hire a fleet of buses to haul them around from town to town, where they can help folks get going on burning down civilization and destroying culture.

On the other hand, the Second Cominites, in their orgiastic revels, are blind to the fact that the Old Baddies they just threw out are all getting reappointed by their Savior.

It's a rather pitiable position for a nation to be in.  Not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, they are both engaged in beating the living daylights out of each other, while both are wondering where the hell those attacks are coming from.  One can only assume that Kafka and Orwell have sat up in their graves and are gleefully watching the proceedings.  It is the birth of a whole new form of governance called Absurdist Kafwellian Dystopia, in which even the Elites who run the place haven't a clue what they are doing.

There was a priceless moment when Donald Trump, the Anti-Savior for lack of a better term, met with Barack Obama, the outgoing Anti-Savior.  One can only assume from the look on Trump's face that the Secrets of the Universe have just been revealed to him, and it looks nothing like the world he had planned on.  He has been handed the keys to Gringott's Wizarding Bank, only to find it stuffed to the rafters with perfectly ordinary lead ingots and not a horcrux in sight.

Suddenly, as the inebriated fog of celebratory and commiserative parties slowly wears off, both sides are beginning to realize the wisdom of P. J. O'Rouke's famous satirical invective, "Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards."  As folks stumble out into the glaring sunlight, they are dazzled both by their stupidity for both having been taken for a ride, and for not having chosen a more palatable Anti-Christ.  Even Mr. Trump seems a bit overwhelmed by his own rhetoric, if that makes the reader feel better.

Trump honestly never thought he'd get elected, which some people might find rather quizzical.  He entered the race to steer the dialogue; that's it.  What he found was that he had tapped a nerve more raw than biting one's tongue while enjoying a particularly spicy bowl of Tom Yum.  At some point, he realized he was too far in to quit, though he knows the next mouthful of Tom Yum is gonna hurt something fierce.

It's an amazing crazy quilt of interests who have all been playing a game of brinkmanship, and all of them have tumbled over the cliff.  As they all plunge inexorably towards the rocks below, they are all fighting each other to be the last ones to land, thinking the leading corpses will cushion the blow just enough to claim victory.

It is nice to think that Americans have learned their lesson now, and if they make it to another election, will choose the sane option of avoiding polls altogether.  After all, if no one participated in the circus, there wouldn't be much a circus to watch.  All shows require an audience, otherwise they are just rehearsals.

When will people realize that the only viable option is to not surrender ANY personal sovereignty to ANYONE for ANY REASON?  One need only look at history to understand that, in the end, NO ONE is ultimately happy with the outcome of any election, because it always means having to bow down to some undesirable result, no matter who claims victory.

So as we watch the absurd pageant of quasi-religious fervor unfold like the legendary Corpse Flower of Sumatera.  This is an appropriate metaphor because not only does the enormous flower smell like rotting flesh, it is also a parasite, an apt metaphor in so many ways.

If you swear allegiance to an abstraction or subscribe to a creed that you did not create, then you are part of a System that cannot be reformed from the inside.  The System is so inculcated into daily life that to change any part of it ripples out into the most insignificant parts of daily life.  Like a gangrenous limb, it must be entirely cut off.  There is no curing bit by bit.  The only way forward is to bit the bullet and get it over with.

Instead, the vast majority of people with endure any amount of absurdity and indignity, rather than suffer the momentary pain of the cure.  In fact, most will come to convince themselves that the bizarre and unwieldy System is preferable to any alternative, even liberty and individual sovereignty.  Ultimately, nothing will change until the pain of the System is so unbearable that there is no alternative but to crush it and take whatever follows, which as the people of Iceland learned is actually a far better choice.

Most people are terrified of making choices and taking responsibility for them.  They would rather play the victim and have institutions that rush to their aid, but they rarely realize the enormous price they pay for such cure, choosing to pay the price of liberty for the childlike state of eternal childhood.

And so the Kawellian (to coin a term) farce proceeds apace.  The Absurdist Dystopia grows unabated, sucking the life out of people like a massive parasite that the masses willingly accept out of fear of personal responsibility.  Such is the nature of insanity.

On the plus side, though, it makes for a helluva comedy.