> There's protesters running around screaming "death to
> israel" and "death to america". They're burning flags.
> They're publically gathering.
>
> This is what we call freedom. You're welcome.
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." -- Soren Kierkegaard
Freedom is an illusion. Freedom as its understood is a mere distortion of reality. A "free" society defines its own concept of freedom, which constantly shifts depending on whoever is manipulating the illusion. As soon as an overt method of control is done away with, a more subtle means takes its place. The British aristocrats become the wealthy colonial American land-owning Aristocracy, who become the captains of industry, who become the mass media, who still create the illusion of freedom, who still control everything by manipulating our view of reality. Now we have the Internet. The Internet is dissolving all ability to control information. So who's going to define what "freedom" means now?
Well, no one. Most people are sheep, so they'll stumble about the world of ideas, latching on to whoever is best at manipulating them into their own false brand of reality. People will enslave themselves to whatever lie suits them and believe they are individuals, engaging themselves in every frivolous and unhealthy distraction which jumps for their dollars, so that they can keep themselves from analysing the way they live, and keep themselves from realizing how ego-centric, wasteful, and detached from the natural state of human existence they have become. And then, the illusion of democracy will fail, democracy requiring a sheep-like consensus and a class of people who hold the real power by creating the fake world which exists in the minds of the populace. Even as elections occur, the masses will know that their political power is an illusion.
But what happens when reality catches up? When this digital facade disappears and all of the "individuals" who care more about their new friends on myspace than anything have to deal with urgent problems like scarity, overpopulation, terrorism and the depletion of natural resources? What can fill this power vacuum in the world of actual power? What will rise from the ashes of our current power structure? Who will pick up all this cool weaponry we have laying around? As the current control structure decays, the established elites become more shameless in their corruption, becoming a decaying network of increasingly irrelevent good ol' boys, incompetent fools whom increasingly few really trust, spoiled brats who were practically born into their station in life; degenerate shadows of the men who came before them, who turn to greed and corruption out of the same selfishness and lack of purpose which drains the rest of post-modern America.
So who's going to tell us we're free next? Will anyone believe them or care? I think people are just going to go to school, go to work, pick up the kids from soccer practice, call the babysitter, file their income taxes, mow their lawns, play video games, go shopping for useless shit they don't need, watch DVDs, buy trendy devices made by Apple, pay $30 to see a baseball game in a park named after a cell phone company, give their kids Ritalin because they can't focus, file for divorce, or engage in any of the activities that keep Americans occupied, fat, ignorant, and desperate for fulfillment. And after the 10,000,000th time someone tells them how great it is to be free, they'll stop believing it.
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