Shakespeare said all the world's a stage, and we are but players -- bit players, he might have added, although he preferred to write about the high and mighty. I don't know about the high and mighty, but to tweak the old bard a bit, I would say it is more like a novel we are living in, and a bad one at that. The Warren Report, the 9/11 Commission Report, the "news" as it is fed to us 24/7 by the mass media, what is it all but pulp fiction, a never-ending penny dreadful hacked together by bullet-headed propagandists dedicated to no higher goal than keeping us turning the pages, day after day, scam after scam, disaster after disaster, with no end in sight. The story is not interesting or coherent, the characters abominable, the mysteries transparent, the plot obvious and predictable, but we keep reading because there is no alternative. This is what passes for reality, according to the assembled forces of the mass media, the government, academia and the "scientific community." Opposing them is the "truth movement," the name itself a pitiful reminder of our ignoble state, and infiltrated and splintered into a thousand pieces, as our martyred president once vowed to do to his nemesis, the CIA.
Gone are the days when nobler pursuits were possible, unraveling the secrets of nature and exploring human nature and the meaning of our lives. No, a few hacks have turned us into slobbering addicts of the daily news, woofing and whining after every tidbit thrown to us to satisfy our hunger for the "truth": Who killed JFK? Who flew the planes? Were there any planes? How could the Air Force be defeated by box-cutters? Etc. etc. This is what bothers me almost more than anything else. It is humiliating. They have stolen our reality. They are stealing our time. They have replaced the mystery of life with a whodunnit. They are not worthy, so far from worthy, but they have done it. How can I put it more vividly? They have defecated in the middle of our lives, and forced us to spend our time figuring out who did it, even though we know who did it. They did. The people writing this trash. We are under their complete control. We have no recourse. If we oppose them, we simply become villains in the story. This helps create tension, which is their strategy, the strategy of tension. It is a military operation.
If we just keep reading, as we are supposed to, we become victims, and we will die victims. Yet if we try to put it down, it will pick us up again, with the next murder, the next war, the next holocaust, and we are still victims.
There is a crucial difference between Shakespeare's metaphor and mine. Consider whom or what William might have thought to be the playwright, the director, the stage designers. Would he have suggested the CIA, the Queen's secret service, the Palace, the high and mighty themselves as a class, the wealthiest 1% (or less) of the population? No, these are our concerns. Shakespeare was asking who, or what, is God? We have been reduced to asking, "Who is playing God?"
As long as I'm mixing metaphors, I'll add one more: Plato's cave. I got this from Webster Tarpley (Synthetic Terror). This is more like it. Can you imagine Shakespeare's Jaques as one of Plato's prisoners? No. These two metaphors really don't mix. Now try it with us. We are the prisoners, watching the shadows on the wall. Even when we stand up and protest ("But these shadows are not real!") our shadows too are projected on the wall and become part of the performance.
I don't know where the exit is. I do know the performance is terrible, and I hate being part of it.
Not to end on a totally bleak note, the internet is a point of light, even in the Cave, if we can survive i-9/11 and stave off complete government-corporate control (Internet2).