Tales of Danger and Threat

Dear George,

When you get right down to it, reality is a mess. It’s an erratic, undisciplined, unpredictable, nonlinear, contradictory, raucous, ribald, jarring, traumatic, grating, discordant, unstable, fitful, inconsistent, volatile mess.

This is why cultures erect a firewall between themselves and reality. This firewall is the narrative that is used to bring an illusion of order to reality’s cesspool. In traditional societies, this narrative was a slowly turning cycle of myth, legend, saga and song.

For the modern corporate state, it is different. The narrative is an instrument of social control. This is especially true in the United States where the narrative sings of a linear march towards a grand destiny. This narrative sings not only of destiny, but of threats and dangers from which the citizen-spectators of the state must be protected.

Up until recently, this mythical threat was a monolithic communism. The state got a lot of traction out of it. Tragically, the Soviet Union vaporized, China went capitalist and Cuba lost its cache' as a viable threat.

Praise God, Islam rose to the challenge as the corporate state was able to mount a narrative of monolithic Islamofascist terrorists bent on destroying Fortress America.

A Belgian commie summed it up very nicely when she said, “Another cause of the paralysis of the Left in the anti-imperialist struggle is the fear of being associated with terrorism.”

See how a robust narrative can control dissidents and troublemakers.

But, leave it to the Brits to take this to a new level. It seems Britain and Iceland are having a little dust-up over Iceland’s economic collapse. A lot of Brits had deposited money in an online bank domiciled in Iceland, and Britain didn’t think Iceland was doing enough to protect its British depositors.

So Britain invoked Part 2, Article 4 of its Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act and declared Iceland a terrorist state, thus enabling them to seize the assets of an Icelandic bank on deposit in Britain.

Doesn’t it sent chills up your spine, the thought of the entire population of Iceland, all 319,756 of them, strapping bombs to their chest and sailing their fishing boats up the Thames?

I do hope our Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is paying attention. The Brits are pioneers in making creative use of anti-terrorism legislation. If someone becomes too critical of our imperial corporatism, all DHS has to do is declare them a terrorist and seize their assets. Just the threat of that will be enough to shut them up.

He who controls the narrative controls the world. That was about the only thing you understood during your presidency.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones