At
our last session we spoke in very general terms of the creatures who inhabited the
dead planet called Earth 500,000 years ago. Our aim was to describe the social
climate that prevailed there, particularly in the region known as the United States of America
The talkers and the stultores were
the "aristocracy" of drone society, the mercatores clearly a
kind of "middle class," with the exception of a small number of
well-connected negotiatores, and the bellatores and laboratores
the unfortunate "lower" class, though hardly more unfortunate than
the members of the middle class in that the latter were controlled no less
strictly than the former, albeit with a few more rewards thrown in "to
sweeten the pot."
The elevation of a drone from one order to
another, though infrequent, was highly publicized, with the aim of creating the
illusion that all drones could advance in this way. To foster this illusion,
and keep the drones "glued to their seats," occasional competitions
were organized in which a worker drone was chosen by "judges" to
become an entertainer after demonstrating his ability to "sing
songs." The judges were generally stultores who had become
"talkers." Occasionally ordinary drones were allowed to vote for
their favorite stultor, in much the same way as they voted for the
producer consoles who would control them. The results of these competitions
were announced with great fanfare after the general drone population was reminded
to imbibe their pacifying beverages, lest their excitement exceed acceptable
bounds. Worker drones could also be elevated in this manner and become stultors
by demonstrating their prowess at hitting a ball with a stick or pretending to
be a hero in the various "morality tales" worked up by the consoles
to instruct the drones.
Though it is not clear how and when the
consoles established their primacy, it is in fact possible to reconstruct the
history of the United States
of America
The myth of the hero was clearly the great
myth of American life. The moral rectitude and sexual purity of the classic
hero were ideals "whitewashing" the moral baseness and sexual
impurity of the common drone. The solitariness and self-reliance of the classic
hero embodied the drone's dream of freedom from the controls of society. The
terrible wound that the hero often bore in his breast fed the drone's fantasies
of healing love. The triumph of the hero against console-like types reflected
the drone's resentment of his "betters."
However, not all heroes were perfect. Within
these morality tales a "modern" hero evolved who was seldom pure and
often morally flawed. He was a tough cop whose wife had left him because he
drank too much. He was a former commando who had been booted out of Special
Forces for disobeying orders and causing the death of his best friend. He drank
too much because his partner had been shot while the hero was sleeping with
some stripper or even shaking down a drug dealer. He disobeyed orders because
his commanding officer was corrupt or a coward. Back on the street he hooks up
with a tough broad who is trying to get out from under the thumb of a mobster,
or maybe with an innocent midwestern type trying to find out how her brother
was killed in the big city, or maybe with his best friend's widow, or maybe
with his own estranged wife. The flawed hero is morally more like the drone and
more vocal in his resentment of authority, so the identification is stronger.
He is the kind of redeemed hero the drone would like to be. In the end he
wreaks havoc, just as the drone would like to do, and gets to interface with
the tough broad or the midwestern type or his friend's widow or his own wife,
making a fresh start.
The production of morality tales and other
forms of entertainment comprised an industry no less important to the American
economy than the production of acidic beverages and "processed"
foods. Though no one would have missed or desired the products of these
industries had they not been habituated to them, their existence was essential,
for the American economy would have collapsed without them, forcing Americans
to go back to an earlier time when "consumers" ate healthy foods and
entertained themselves. This would have put a big hole in the pockets of the
consoles, so their leaders arranged generous tax cuts and other incentives to
enable them to produce more unnecessary commodities and employ more drones at
the minimum wage.
Some have claimed that the pictures produced
for the "viewing enjoyment" of the drones in the all-seeing eye of
the consoles do not reflect reality, that the "actors" neither speak
nor act like actual drones, let alone like consoles, that the dramas invented
by the producers do not represent the actual conditions of life in America and
that the "reports" presented by solemn "reporters" are
distorted and superficial versions of undigested events. In this respect it may
be noted parenthetically that the failure of reporters to report accurately and
meaningfully is not necessarily a result of bad intentions. Most often it is a
result of lack of talent, for if they could see deeper or write better they
would not be reporters, they would be historians and even novelists. As for the
actors and producers associated with the morality tales presented to the
drones, we have already noted the mythological nature of these extravaganzas
and should therefore not expect to find in them a literal reflection of reality
but rather a guide to the "dreams" of the audience to which they are
addressed.
The drone, as we have suggested, was
ignorant, that is, totally dependent on "reporters,"
"analysts," and talk show "experts" for his understanding
of the world around him. He could not read anything longer than a column or two
of newsprint. He could not find his own country on an unmarked map. He could
not describe at any length the most important events of his own history or explain
the most elementary scientific principles or speak intelligently about the
cultural achievements of his race. However, it cannot be said that keeping the
drones ignorant was an express aim of the consoles, though there were of course
a great many things that the consoles did not wish the drones to know. On the
contrary, wishing to inculcate values beneficial to themselves and prepare the
drones to serve them, the consoles organized an "educational" system
for this very purpose and certainly would have been surprised when it turned
out that the drones learned very little within this system and indeed developed
a strong aversion to learning as such as a result of being put through it. This
was in marked contrast to the ease with which messages and instructions were
absorbed when shown in the all-seeing eye of the consoles, though of course
this entailed endless repetition, which in itself was not very different from
the methods employed by the "schools." Yet in one case the drones,
and particularly the young, sat transfixed and did precisely what they were
told to do while in the other they fidgeted and couldn't even get their
multiplication table straight.
Clearly the writers of messages and
instructions were more sophisticated than the "educators." We cannot
say why one type of console was drawn to "education" and another to
message writing. We can only speculate about the failure of the educator to
educate when he had before him the successful model of the message writer. Our
own researchers have indeed detected a fatal flaw in the methodology of these
ancient educators. For unlike the message writers, who recognized and were able
to exploit the passivity of the drone, not to mention his unconscious drives,
the educators only recognized what they regarded as the "evil" in him
and therefore concluded, inappropriately, that the drone must be forced to do
what is "good," in this case to learn, an attitude that derives
directly from the primitive religion of these creatures. The young drone was
thus made to sit perfectly still and ingest huge volumes of
"material," memorize it and repeat it. The immediate effect of this
bludgeonlike method was to destroy the innate curiosity of the drone and
transform him from a creature who wanted to know everything into a creature who
wanted to know nothing, except for a scholarly few whose ability and ambition
could not be destroyed by the system and therefore survived it.
The consoles thus exploited the laziness and
passivity of the drone to fill his head with artfully designed messages and
instructions while the educator overwhelmed him with information that bored him
to death instead of devising methods that captured his attention. Thus the
drones were "shortchanged," being made to "pay" for an
education they did not receive and becoming easy marks for reporters and
analysts who were only slightly less ignorant than themselves, seldom even
understanding the languages of the countries they reported from or commented on.
The consoles are said to have arrived in America
It is in this context that we first
encounter George Washington Bush, though it is not known precisely when he came
to prominence. What is known is that at a certain point America declared its
"independence" and produced a Constitution establishing the property
rights of the consoles and the means by which they would maintain power and
control the drone population. The consoles then seated themselves in various "houses"
and assemblies and proceeded to oversee a system that maintained the existing
inequalities. These "houses" were often magnificent edifices built to
accommodate the rather squat figures of the console
"representatives," who held forth at great length and enacted laws in
such profusion that only trained "lawyers" could keep track of them
and these lawyers incessantly argued among themselves about the meaning of
these laws which even the legislators did not fully understand so that
"judges" were often required to intervene while the poor drones sat hat in hand waiting for their
fate to be decided. Naturally enough, since these laws were made by the
country's most powerful individuals, they were most lenient in regard to their
own crimes and most severe in regard to the crimes of others. Thus the powerful
permitted themselves to "grab" as much land as they wished but
punished mercilessly those unfortunate creatures led by circumstance to
"grab" a loaf of bread.
In the eight years of his life, before being
recycled, George Washington Bush doggedly enforced the laws of this land and
conducted its wars, transferring "money" from the poor to the rich
and taking care of his good friends the Havemores, a family that apparently had
close ties with his own. Frequently he took long vacations on his plantation
with his wife, Martha, where he liked to ride and shoot. Occasionally he made a
brief visit to the troops and assured them that one way or another his wars
were going to be won, neglecting to tell them by whom.
The Havemores had probably arrived in
America together with the Bushes, soon carving out little empires for
themselves and sticking up thousands of signs saying keep out private property trespassers will be shot on sight or
failing that prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They also got fat
government contracts and big tax writeoffs. They ate well and had black maids
and Spanish-speaking gardeners. Money wasn't a problem. Dick Havemore was fixed
up with a little board chairmanship between stints as a public
"servant." That netted him millions. Ditto for Don Havemore.
In managing American society, the dilemma of
the consoles was clear: by instructing the drones, among other things, to
consume "foodstuffs" that would ultimately kill them they were in
effect "cutting off the branch" they were sitting on, much like
skydiving instructors who knowingly supply their students with defective
parachutes. However, this does not seem to have disturbed them in the least, as
the "little ones" soon enough replaced the "senior
citizens" as eager and pliant consumers, so that a kind of natural cycle
was established and no carcinogen-bearing "chow" or fat-saturated
"grub" went uneaten, even by the toothless. The producers of these
harmful substances were apparently connected in some way with the ubiquitous
Havemore family and therefore received certain privileges denied to other
"pushers." Ditto for polluters of the air and poisoners of the soil.
Some researchers have claimed that the
drones were subjected to a special surgical procedure in infancy to remove part
of their brain and ensure their docility, much like the "neutering"
of domestic animals. Though this did not prevent the frequent outbursts of
violence among these creatures it ensured their receptivity to messages and
instructions, making it nearly impossible for them to form thoughts outside the
system of concepts to which they were trained to respond. With a complete
brain, it is argued, the drones would immediately have "seen through"
the messages they received just as they saw through "glass" and
understood clearly what was hidden on the other side. This is merely a
supposition, and as we have found no evidence to support such an argument we
are inclined to look elsewhere for an explanation of this phenomenon. In fact
there is a school of thought that maintains that the drones did understand the
deceptive nature of the messages they received and yet were still compelled to
respond to them, which perhaps indicates elements inherent in their
"psychological" or even biological makeup that caused them to
"buckle under," like sheep being led to the slaughter. In the
"animal kingdom" such herd instincts along with the primacy of
dominant males generally ensured the health and prosperity of the species but
among the drones these same instincts made them easy prey for the consoles as
well as for their own kind. Not only "weak" individuals were weeded
out to preserve the vigor of the herd, but in fact most individuals were
weeded out, becoming true drones in the service of the strong, whose polished
language mesmerized them like the language of "commercial messages,"
though, as we have noted, they were more than likely able to "see
through" these messages. In the latter case the message writer addressed
the subconscious of the drone and thereby animated drives and forces that the
drone could not control while in the former case the strong merely asserted
their authority and exploited the primitive need of the drone to follow a
leader.
At the same time, as mentioned, the consoles
encouraged the drones to affirm the values that served their own interests,
such as patriotism to ensure that they would be prepared to fight in the wars
organized by the consoles, free enterprise to ensure that the consoles would
not be hindered in their rapacious pursuit of wealth, democracy to ensure that
the vast majority of Americans who lost the big races would be "good
sports" about it and accept the dominance of the few, and of course
"hard work," "tenacity," "honesty,"
"decency," "modesty" and "respect for authority"
to ensure that they would keep their noses to the grindstone. So successful
were the consoles in inculcating these values that the drones who suffered the
most in this system invoked them as evidence of the superiority of the American
way of life, unless they were color-coded black and consequently not really
privy to the American way of life, despite the frequent casting of blacks as
judges and police captains in the morality tales, which was conceivably a
subtle counterweight to the black criminals in these tales as much as a
gratuitous crumb tossed to the disinherited.
Many of the drones used to transmit
commercial messages seem to have been trained as ventriloquists, utilizing a
variety of "voices" to encourage ordinary drones to acquire
commodities. Sometimes they spoke "sincerely," sometimes
enthusiastically, sometimes even "humorously" to endear themselves to
the drone family gathered around the console by pretending not to take the
commodity seriously. Clearly a great deal of thought was invested in the
selection of these voices and the elaboration of the little dramas played out
in the all-seeing eye of the consoles in order to get around the natural
defenses of the drone and lead him by the nose, though the fact that huge sums
of "money" seem to have been invested in this endeavor leads us to
believe that the consoles were confident of a positive result, counting on the
stupidity of the drone to ensure his ultimate acquiescence to whatever messages
and instructions they transmitted. There is no question that they
"studied" the drones quite closely and therefore understood their
weaknesses, which they cynically exploited in order to enrich themselves,
feeling, we imagine, considerable contempt for creatures who were taken in so
easily and perhaps making a few "jokes" at their expense as they sat
around the office dreaming up new messages. We can also understand the enormous
satisfaction such consoles must have experienced in getting tens of millions of
drones to memorize and even repeat their inane slogans and jingles. The
commercial message, together with the three-minute video clip, seems to have
been the great art form of late American civilization, superseding literature,
painting, sculpture and classical music and clearly tailored to the waning
attention span of the drone.
In addition to appearing in the
"news" broadcasts, most often as criminals or victims, ordinary
drones also appeared occasionally on the "talk shows" alongside the
experts and analysts to complain about their misery or display a certain
quality of freakishness which the experts and analysts might then discuss in a
learned manner. Freakishness and misery were also the leading motifs in the
confessional or confrontational shows in which a "host" egged on the
guests until a fistfight broke out. These were rare opportunities for the
drones to "have their day" and get an all expenses paid trip to Hollywood or New
York
Many of these criminals were housed in
"prisons," which were sometimes the subject of the morality tales, as
were law courts and hospitals, and if the confrontations in these tales were
less convincing than the "live" confrontations in the
"reality" shows, they at least had the advantage of being bloodier
and were therefore suitable vehicles for peddling sanitary products and pain
killers. Though many of the drones were squeamish, the thirst for blood among
them was always present in varying degrees and therefore the producers of
sanitary products and pain killers made sure they got plenty of it and deliberated
solemnly about which of the bloodbaths would "move" their products
more quickly. Mr. Bush was proud to be associated with such producers, the
producers of bloodbaths and the producers of sanitary products, and assured the
drones that they helped make America
Other nations tried to imitate the American
way of life, but with less success, being perhaps less
"materialistic" or having less stupid populations. The Europeans, for
example, had historically never found it necessary to foster the illusion that their
"orders" were fluid and that anyone could improve his lot through
ambition and hard work. Everyone knew his place and consequently there were
fewer disappointments and fewer mental breakdowns. The illusion of freedom and
social or economic mobility left tens of millions of "middling"
Americans with the uncomfortable feeling that they had no one to blame but
themselves for their lack of success. Some therefore pretended to be
successful, "aping" the manner of prominent drones, reading book
reviews instead of books and filling their homes with fake antiques. Some just
talked big. The poor, on the other hand, knew better and understandably became
bitter. Nonetheless, in the latter part of the 20th century, many Europeans
became infected by the democratic "bug" and began to dream of
prominence in the American tradition, becoming easy prey for the European
consoles who let loose hosts of reporters, message writers, experts and
analysts to control and manipulate them.
All this being said, we cannot deny the
possibility that we are "misreading" the materials at hand. Certain
scholars have argued that it is inconceivable that a society should function in
the manner that the United States of America seems to have functioned, that
"leaders" should engage in such flagrant deceptions and communicate
in a language consisting substantially of meaningless rhetorical devices, that
wealth should be hoarded by the few, and that the many should consent to and
even celebrate a system that strangles them. We too acknowledged that the
images projected in the all-seeing eye of the consoles often had hidden meanings, so that while the
"news" broadcasts were distorted narratives and the "talk
shows" were forums for idle chatter, the morality tales were mostly
parables. We believed that we perceived a purpose in these spectacles and the
messages that accompanied them, which were designed to control and manipulate
the drones. And yet at the same time we found it difficult to understand how
the drones could be so stupid as to be taken in by them and organize their
lives precisely in accordance with the instructions they received from the
consoles. Accordingly, we concluded that certain "psychological" and
even biological factors must be at work making the drones such easy prey. Many
of these factors were apparently "selected out" in the monkeys who
succeeded the drones and conceivably form the "link" between the
drones and the consoles. It is also conceivable that the consoles themselves
are linked in some way to us, though if this is the case there have obviously
been many significant intermediate stages in the evolutionary process.
This is the most reasonable interpretation
of the materials at hand. However, certain other interpretations have been put
forward which it may be profitable to examine. One is that it was the drones
who originally were the masters of the consoles and became their slaves in a
"coup" of some kind, or perhaps through some insidious process in
which the positions of slave and master were reversed without the drones fully
understanding what had occurred. Proponents of this view argue that this
reversal of positions must have occurred in a very early stage of their common
history because it is inconceivable that drones would have subjected their own
kind to the atrocities commonplace in this society and conspired to cheat,
starve and poison their brethren, stepping over bodies, as it were, in pursuit
of their own ends. Only creatures of another species, it is argued, would be
capable of such "inhumanity."
This is a compelling argument, but the fact
is we see many prominent drones behaving no less callously than the consoles,
such as "reporters" in pursuit of "stories" or
"mercatores" and "negotiatores" in pursuit of "money."
In essence there is no great difference between the behavior of drones and
consoles aside from the fact that the consoles are smarter and more powerful.
Nor are we convinced that a "rebellion" of the kind described took
place. It seems far more likely that the consoles were the masters of the
drones from the moment these two species came into contact with one another,
though we concede that there may have been a time when the drones ruled
themselves, in a society not much different in principle, if far less
sophisticated and far less vicious, from the one organized by the consoles as
soon as they established their dominance, or were perhaps ruled by the monkeys
until the consoles came along. In the latter case it is also doubtful if the
cruelty that characterized relations between master and slave would have been
so marked, despite the natural aggressiveness of the monkey. The mind of the
monkey ran along less fiendish lines and he certainly would not have known how
to run a whorehouse or an advertising agency.
Though we are inclined to believe that the
consoles ruled the drones from the outset, we acknowledge that the entrenchment
of this rule may have occurred over a certain period of time during which the
consoles devised ever more sophisticated methods with which to enslave the
drones. However, as we can see from what we believe to be early disks belonging
to Console I, their methods were quite sophisticated to begin with and the
drones sat at the feet of the consoles with the same rapt attention as they
displayed in a later period, consuming the same acidic beverages and breakfast
cereals and no doubt dreaming the same dreams of acquiring commodities, pinning
females on the ground and destroying other drones in the name of freedom and
democracy. The only significant differences seem to have been in the depiction
of the way drones interfaced and in the system of color coding. With respect to
color coding the early disks restrict themselves to a simple "black and
white" differentiation while later disks display a greater variety of
"colored" drones in positions of prominence, like the judges and
police captains mentioned above and even an occasional brain surgeon or nuclear
physicist. With respect to interfacing the early disks rarely displayed females
with long, bare legs or any other provocatively exposed body parts, unless they
were "beauty queens" in "swimsuits" or "ladies"
in handsome gowns that showed some "cleavage," or perhaps "loose
women" flaunting their wares or innocent "girls" bathing in the nude
and offering a tantalizing glimpse of their rosy flesh or well-endowed females
being seized and pinned on the ground, or anything else the producers could get
away with to excite the drones and capture their attention. The later disks are
less coy and undoubtedly lost some of their effect, forcing the producers to go
to greater lengths "to get a rise" out of the jaded drone though of
course without offending "public taste."
The system of seemingly flexible boundaries
that in fact enclosed a series of rigidly constructed boxes
"channeling" the movement of the drones from one prison to the other
– from the home to the school, from the workplace to the mall, and finally to
the grave – with numerous "sidetrips" on circular byways that led
back to their starting point, comprised the whole of dronish society. The few
who rebelled against it became outcasts or outlaws, deprived of its meager
material rewards and the comfort of the herd. They gathered "on the other
side," in an undefined space, beyond the reach of the messages and
instructions that rained down on the heads of the drones from morning to night,
and consequently ruled themselves. The consoles despised them, persecuted them,
tempted them, or simply ignored them, pretending they didn't exist. The drones,
for their part, feared them, thinking they would shatter the illusions on which
their peace of mind was based and divert the thoughts of the "little
ones" from the games and snacks that nurtured them. Such rebels were
called "beatniks" and "hippies" by some and sociopaths by
others. Fortunately the former generally "grew up" and recanted while
the latter generally ended up in prison. In this way American society was able
to endure for a while longer, until the final catastrophe that ended human civilization,
paving the way for more rational beings like ourselves.
___
Fred Russell is the pen name of an American-born writer living in Israel. His novels Rafi's World (Fomite Press), dealing with Israel's emerging criminal class, and The Links in the Chain (CCLaP), a thriller set in New York against an Arab-Israel background, were both published in 2014. His stories and essays have appeared in Third Coast, Polluto, Fiction on the Web, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ontologica, Unlikely Stories: Episode 4, The Satirist, CounterPunch, Gadfly, Cultural Weekly, Ragazine, etc. A chapbook collection of his shorter opinion pieces called Short Takes: American Notes may be downloaded as a free PDF file at http://scars.tv/chapbooks/ under the publisher's listing for 2015.
