Dust Motes and Santa

Dear George,

A dust mote on a dung heap is hardly noticed; a dust mote on the polished lens of a telescope screams for attention. America has become a highly polished land where the tiniest blip can cause chaos and confusion and throw the best laid plans into disarray.

For over a century, children have been sending letters to Santa, and the Post Office has allowed members of the public to take a letter and buy the requested gift for a needy child.

Until Thursday.

On that day, the Post Office abruptly killed the program.

It seems that at an unnamed post office, a postal employee saw a registered sex offender select a letter.

End of program and an end of gifts to poor children, even though hundreds of thousands of children have received gifts without a single incident. But, in a well-ordered society, the public is conditioned to sweat possibility, not probability.

When, and if, the Post Office restarts the program, they plan to black out the names and addresses of the children and assign each letter a number which will be recorded on a roster that will be highly classified and locked away, thus totally depersonalizing the program.

This is as it should be because we are determined to create a threat-free society. And do you know what the greatest threat to our well-being is? It’s our fellow humans! Every time we so much as make eye contact with another, we put ourselves at risk.

Stop and think about it! Only a third of all homicides are committed by strangers. That means that two-thirds of the country’s corpses made the mistake of getting too close to another human being. The simple act of getting married increases the risk that an individual will end up with a chef’s knife in his or her heart.

We are a society with an obsessive need for security. Only by avoiding all human contact will we achieve this security. Have you ever noticed that the elderly tend to lead isolated lives? That’s why they’re elderly. If you want to live a long and healthy life, shed your family and friends.

There is a political dimension at work, here. Isolation prevents the formation of groups and communities that might start agitating for systemic change. An isolated public is a malleable public. That is why our 24/7 media is so important. They are geniuses at creating a succession of dust motes to drop on our polished lives to keep us frightened and withdrawn.

I do have one suggestion to improve our national security. Listing people’s names and addresses in an easily-accessible telephone book puts them at risk. List numbers instead, and have people call a central exchange to get connected.

Keep ‘em off balance and they’re easier to control.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones