Esteemed Reader: March, 2004

“If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinion for or against anything.”

As I stood on line at the café today glancing at the New York Times, I looked up to see an acquaintance eyeing the headlines.

“So, what you think about the Democratic primaries?” he asked.

The man had a tone of repressed hopefulness, like someone who expects the worst but secretly anticipates the best. And his question carried the assumption that I, as publisher of a magazine that expresses a political point of view, harbor a corresponding degree of concern and opinion. He was wrong.

“There are several answers to your question,” I began. “First, the Bush cadre is a band of ruthless criminals that has already demonstrated it will stop at nothing to gain and hold power and to further its self-serving agenda of waging illegal wars of aggression on sovereign nations and US citizenry. So it’s clear that they will lie, cheat, and steal, using anything from electronic vote-rigging to assassination and staged terrorist attacks to ‘win’ the election in 2004. As far as I can tell, the Democratic primaries are irrelevant.”

He nodded solemnly.

“But this is not important,” I continued. “It is simply the work of machines within a machine. For all intents and purposes, free choice doesn’t exist. I mean, did you see The Fog of War, the documentary about Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War?”
“I sure did!” he replied brightly. “During the war those of us who really saw its stupidity and horror considered McNamara to be the ultimate villain. But in the film he seemed like a really sensitive and intelligent man.”

“Exactly. He was an intelligent, charismatic, and loyal cog in a machine, and these apparently positive traits were his failing. In his eagerness to be helpful to his President and country, McNamara was oblivious to the horror of his deeds not because he was evil, but because, like all of the world’s great villains, in his ignorance and buried conscience he thought he was doing good!”

“Do you mean to say that criminals aren’t responsible for their crimes?”

“It isn’t so simple. We are all machines within machines. We don’t have any real choice because we are asleep, dreaming dreams about who we are, where we are, and what we are to do. It is a world of sleepwalkers dreaming our lives, very much like the plight of humanity in The Matrix. The politicians with their fingers hovering over the nuclear missile launch buttons are some of the most deeply asleep.”

“Well then, it seems like the whole system must be flawed.”