The Machinery of Night

Sometimes the pessimist in me fears that our country may be too asleep from mindless, pornographic entertainment and the failure of the decadent, cozy-with-the-powerful, corrupted remains of the Fourth Estate to care much about the potential utter ruination of America as a democratic republic.

Maybe the Powerful in America have figured out that you don’t need to be a formal autocracy to rule the world and your citizens as an empire; you just need to keep the plebes busy with porn and “When Planes Crash” -style “reality” television and gladiatorial contests and bread and circuses. Just keep their reptilian brains busy and stimulated enough so they don’t notice their increasing powerlessness and slavery – they just feel free because they vote every few years for candidates, none of whom pose any real threat to the lever-pullers controlling the Machinery of Night (to borrow a phrase from Allen Ginsberg) that binds their souls and enacts their slavery.

Or, maybe Americans will begin to talk to one another about the danger posed to their freedom by ceaseless propaganda-in-service-of-empire, and turn off their televisions and porn and stop eating themselves into gaseous stupors, so they can look hard enough to actually see what’s really going on all around them.