nourishing obscurity

Sometimes, you know, our current circumstances read like a bad movie, sort of like a meshing of dystopic sci-fantasy The Rise of the Pod People with 1984 and you only know these creatures by the marks on the back of their necks, if you can get a look.  Our hero, an MP called Quan Billgo, comes across an anomaly in accounts and has a quiet word to his colleague at the members’ bar.

Unbeknowns to him though, that very colleague is a member of the Pod People and they have a Common Purpose – the takeover of the planet, reducing it to a population of serfs, with only the loyal to the Empire surviving.  The loyalists, now dubbed the Insurgents, are forced out into the wilderness, which has been blighted anyway, the oceans are poisoned, GM food and water are meted out from central depots and all is controlled.

As in Soviet Russia, no one speaks a word of dissent, not even in pillow talk because the demoralized and zombie-like people, conditioned to indiscriminate sex and drug-taking from an early teenage, all supplied by kindly teachers at school, have learned that one has to fulfil oneself first, that is the prime directive, the second being to let Nanny do the running of the nation – the increasingly zombie-like people [remember the GM food] are now conditioned by food ticket and “pleasure talon” rewards, to dobbing in neighbours and even family.

That central authority needs no money, no sustenance as we would know it but it is a useful tool to use for the vast human flotsam which still values such trinkets – after all, money is a controlling tool, the best there is.

Meanwhile, there is a pretence  of parliamentary government which the people vote for but it is a sideshow, a charade, something to fill the bleak television hours with, interspersed with gameshows and reality TV which teach the people to be greedy and self-centred and for the mushy hearts, there is always the excitement of the soaps to distract the attention from the direness of their own existences.

Meanwhile, the weasel words, their original meaning twisted out of recognition, continue to be breathed into the people’s ears – democracy, tolerance for all, multiculturalism and so on  and the big stick words – racism, sexism and unreconstructed, are used to eliminate dissent.  From time to time, rent-a-thugs are sent onto the street to protest and the MSM reports in its usual way, concentrating on the brave security services who thwarted the actions of a couple of hundred malcontents, the cause of their protest, it’s roots, never actually making it to the soundbite.

The Leader comes on and announces some new draconian measure to ensure such does not happen again.  After all, the people’s current prosperity – all have food and drink and entertainment is provided – is vastly preferable to the bad old days when the Euro collapsed, ushering in the new global currency and more centralized control from the UN building.  People need not concern themselves with the slow exterminations going on in Africa and South America [they got into South America via the new Falklands conflict which got out of hand].

The push for localism got up and running around that time – everyone contained within their own areas and travel only for the apparatchiks, the internet now only sporting approved sites which made freedom noises but were really party apparatchiks in disguise.

Quan Billgo suddenly sees it all and dedicates himself to making contact with other frightened souls across the “nation which once was” but the agents of CCHQ are everywhere and can sniff a dissenting walk or look and report it back to The Leader.

Meanwhile, the enforced migration has begun … [drumroll] … to the Moon.

Episode two at the same time next week.  You can read a transcript of this week’s show on page 94.

Filed under: Politics & economics