Happy Misery

Dear George,

Critics who compare your administration to something out of George Orwell’s 1984 miss the point. Your administration is closer to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. 1984 was a police state; Brave New World was a pharmaceutical state where people embraced their oppression by popping Soma.

I mention this because American’s have trouble accepting the fact that life is one big fucking trauma. They continue to buy into the consumerist fantasy that life is a never-ending beach party in which youth is eternal and their complexions remain smooth and unblemished by the ravages of age.

So when they experience sadness, tension or anxiety, they feel something is wrong with them because given all the toys and gadgets that surround them, they should be happy.

Into this breach come the pharmaceuticals with their array of antidepressants and tranquilizers. Like Soma, these drugs are the “opiate of the masses,” carrying out the same function religion once carried out.

Through clever marketing, our children are drugged at a young age because the “experts” have convinced their parents that popped pills improve their performance in school as the drugs transform them into efficient little test-takers.

This drug dependency strengthens the hold of our corporate oligarchy on the masses. During the sixties, our oligarchs made the painful discovery that dance and song can enflame rebellious passions in the young. Oh sure, there were drugs, but none of them were FDA approved. Consequently, their side effects only feed into this rebellious spirit.

It is more conducive to social stability to numb these passions with pills and well-packaged bland music that keeps the young sedated in their misery.

Who needs a gulag when one has psychotropic drugs? Write the right script for a dissident outraged over the social injustices of feral capitalism, and before you can say “pharmaceutical,” you’ve got a happy consumer on your hands.

Pepsi and pills are giving us a new generation of smiling drones. The goal is to enhance productivity while dulling the intellect.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones