Can you believe this $#!+?

Click here to view a dramatization of the newscast you may watch today.

You're having a nightmare, go back to sleep

If someone were to announce today, "We the Government reserve the right to spy on you, collect any and all information about your life, micromanage your behavior, shoot you dead with impunity, wage undeclared war on nations thousands of miles from our borders, and generally ignore any poetic prose you worship about your inalienable rights," would anybody really care?

Someone might look up from tweeting about dead celebrities and say, "Oh. So THAT'S what you've been doing," and nod off again.

What's with the heroin

You can be addicted from your first taste, and oh by the way your first taste could be lethal.

What idiot would ever put heroin into their bodies?

(This thought is not meant to imply support for the "war on drugs." If you want to poison yourself, be my guest. But really ...)

Seeking an artificial high from a substance that could kill you has to be the most moronic thing in the world. Well, aside from voting while expecting to make a difference.

The omnipresent face

On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Is it just me, or is Barack Obama on TV a lot? It seems no news story is complete without a visit to Our Leader to get his opinion about what's going on.

This will shock some of you, but it's possible to live your life and make decisions without wondering how Our Leader would handle it – or seeking his help or beneficent aid.

Rhetorical question

Is there a bigger buffoon or more inept politician/diplomat in the world than John Kerry?

The evolution of American liberty

1776

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

— Thomas Jefferson, July 2, 1776

2014

There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

— George Orwell

The men behind the curtain

"Shift isn't about security versus freedom or socialism versus capitalism," Micah continued. "It isn't about you versus me. It's about giving the people of this union an Us and a Them. Whatever fate they end up with, our system gives them the illusion that they are choosing it. They'll know who they can bond with and who they should blame for everything that's wrong. Us and Them. It gives their lives a framework. It gives them an identity and a purpose."

The Beam, Season Two

Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant