The Con

[Cain]

"Man would yield his sovereignty to an immense power; one that does not destroy, or even
tyrannize, but one that serves to stupefy a people, reducing them to nothing better than a flock of
timid and industrious sheep."
- Alexis de Tocqueville, from Democracy in America

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the scenes."
- Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court

"We cannot trust . . . people who are nonconformists."
- Ray Kroc, former CEO of MacDonald's


Tell yourself everything is OK.  Its a lie, but believe it anyway.  Never mind the spectre of never ending wars, economic collapse, genocide, hurricanes, race riots, insurgency, rogue WMDs, drought, floods, famine, overpopulation, Peak Oil and all that.  Not that avoiding thinking about it will help you, but whatever it is , it'll be a sure improvement over business as usual, where They beat your dreams out of you and replace it with Their dross, all downloaded from their mega-broadband satellite dishes directly into your living room.

You find your taxes are on the rise, that nothing works, goods are so shoddily made they fall apart in their packaging, pre-made fads are actually over by the time the weekend is finished.  The streets are filled with sub-human thugs and vandals, you get headaches from the bugging devices hidden in your rubbish bins, the air feels like a smog blanket and yet YOU STILL PUT UP WITH IT!

Or perhaps you're richer and luckier than the most of us, and living a life of luxury thats killing you at a slower and nicer way than the poor slobs above.  You've got your Ultimate Plasma screen, your BMW and a line of coke, but you've got an indescribable ache and are paid to say things you hate all day long.  But you can't see a way out, or a person to punish, so you go on until your half-life kills you.

Or maybe you don't.  Perhaps you look around and wonder ,Äúis it just me who thinks this is insane?  Is everyone really this stupid, shallow and ignorant, or have I just become so horribly twisted that I can no longer understand my fellow human beings?,Äù  If only.  If it was just you, then They could kill you and move on.  But its not.  Everything is getting worse...for this is the Age of The Conspiracy.

Things just didn't get this way, anyone could see that.  Even normal Pinks couldn't screw up this extraordinarily.  It has to be the result of a conspiracy.  But the question is WHICH conspiracy?  Is is the killers of JFK?  Or what about Majestic 12?  Or is it the International Bankers of a certain ethnicity? Or the Freemasons?  The Illuminati?  How about the Vatican?  Or shape shifting reptilian aliens who dominate the world?

The problem with such a short sighted view is that it sucks you right in.  All these and other conspiracies are so interlocked that invariably you get drawn into others and spend your whole life running after it, noting it and learning its subtleties.  And there are so many you are bound to find one that suits your own biases perfectly.

But none of these minor conspiracies are anything like The Conspiracy.  They can't be.  They don't permeate everything we do, are part of the food we eat and the air we breath.  Many of them are real enough, thats true, but even they are unaware of the ,Äúgreater plan,Äù which they all unknowing serve.

Because the Conspiracy isn't one of those fiendishly complex and intricate ones.  In all truth, it doesn't even know that its a Conspiracy.  Its so vast and broad that it underlies the lesser conspiracies and most of the human experience.  Quite the opposite of devious, it exists merely by exploiting the Pink and merehume fear of the new, a yearning for cuteness and hatred of the real, a lack of imagination and desire to be ordered around like a robot.  This butt-kissing Code of Normality (or ,ÄúCoN,Äù ) is the most insidious and dangerous threat.  The CoN is bigger than nations and wars, gods or demons, Republicans or Democrats, the President and interlocking corporate ownership.  Its everything from the mealy mouthed clerk at a store to genocide to why Britney Spears singles actually sell.

The fear of the unknown is what allows the Con to get away with murder on a truly massive scale.  It permeates the basics of society, that there is The Other, and they are Different.  Sure, people like some new things, so long as it doesn't act like its new.  Kind of like how that new girl group are so different to last week's one.

But of course, a Pink won't fear the Con.  Why should they?  If there was a huge conspiracy, it wouldn't be after them, would it?  After all, they aren't important.  They pay their taxes on time and behave in RightGood ways.  They don't go out of the way to cause trouble or be weird.  In fact, the only reason they're safe, because they've been had all along!  They don't even realize how badly and totally they've been controlled.

The seedy underbelly of Pink existence is the worst kind of hell imaginable.  A culture of yes-men and arrogant assholes, idiots who believe in the myths of Positive Thinking and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, who become so horribly disillusioned and screwed over daily that they fall into the trap of the Con and say ,Äústuff everyone else,Äù and grab what they can for themselves.

The Con has nothing against you personally.  It doesn't want you dead, it just doesn't want you to be happy.

That Pinks would rather fight their neighbours than the Con has been its secret to success over the long years.  Humans prefer everything to be familiar, especially enemies.  By the time two tribes had figured out their common enemy was the invader and not each other, they were already under the jackboot and its too late.  Whats worse, once this enemy leaves they are back to their genocidal ways.  This repeats itself from Bosnia and Serbia to standard office politics.  In fact, it is one of the only patterns that seems to repeat itself in every human system: screw the neighbours.

And thanks to this fact, we can look forward to a bleak future of planetary civil war, in which the ,ÄúFascism-lite,Äù of the industrial ,ÄúWest,Äù and its allies will be locked in perpetual conflict with the more traditional fascism of the Third World...where the landmasses of Europe, North America, Australia and Russia will be protecting their fat assed empires against the lean and angry hordes of the rest of the world...forever.

From the dawn of time we haven't changed our nature and have certainly never taken the smart choices.  With all the intelligence at our disposal, we have changed progress into meaning bigger and shinier weapons for us to play out our territorial pissing games with.

Listen to me:  Your elected officials think your are sheep.  Blind, panicked idiots who will swallow whatever they are told and don't have an attention span beyond the last commercial break.  I know, I've worked for them.  They think you are gullible and stupid and they look down on you as simple idiots.  And to be honest, they have a good point.  Anyone who believes what they see on the TV will certainly believe everything contained in the Warren Report.  Any sane, thinking person wouldn't let themselves or their children be used in exercises in international banking or weapons system demos for third world dictators who need an edge.

They've even got you fretting over terrorism and WMDs, while research goes into ,Äúnon-lethal,Äù weaponry that can fry your brain while leaving buildings standing, brainwashing devices, satellite based orbital attack systems and spying devices so complex than can accurately project your bowel movements.

And there is no escape.  The Con has successfully hooked everything on the most base and worst aspects of the US mindless consumerist machine.  The trash pop culture is the single most popular meme of our times, snotty attitudes, inane catchphrases and pointless convenience have replaced anything of value.

You even spend the majority of your life working for Them.  Hours turn into days, weeks into years.  The Con keeps you on the tightest leash possible, graciously giving you two days there, a week here. Even those are becoming shorter and less common as the corporate elite try to get the maximum squeeze from their workforces.  But its not easy, taking the wild monkey brain and forcing it to act this way without a fight.  You have to take a mind from an early age and train it to sit in unnatural positions for hours, respond to abstract things like bells, learn to butt kiss and look to authority for answers.  Equality in servitude, every man and woman a serf and every child a servant in training.

They even go so far as to make the fun outlets for this crap filled existence illegal.  Most fun forms of sex are crimes and don't get me started on drugs.  In most parts of the ,ÄúEnlightened,Äù world, having these is somewhat equivalent to being a leper or a heretic in the Middle Ages.  All someone has to do is yell ,ÄúDRUGS,Äù and your house can be repossessed, your  kids taken away, your door broken down and your assets investigated.  And don't even think of suing them if they don't find anything.  The so-called ,ÄúWar on Drugs,Äù, just like the ,ÄúWar on Some Forms of Terror (and not others),Äù and the ,ÄúWar on Crime,Äù are just covers to collect masses of information on the population through intensive domestic spying, as well as serving out the occasional friendly reminder of who is in charge here ie; not you.

But this is just too MEAN and NASTY to be true, right?  Freedom is on the march!  Colour coded revolutions are blooming everywhere, and those people in Iraq can vote now!  Ha ha, suckers.  Have you seen where voting has got us?  Choose between vampire 1, 2 or three (if you're lucky).  A couple of jackasses to throw insults at while unseen others make the real choices.  Nobody up there gives a flying piece of baby shit what you think and most don't even pretend to.  You're only freedom is consume as much as possible before dying, because thats your only worth to Them.

The only difference between the so-called liberals and so-called conservatives, no matter where you are, is what interest group has the controlling stock in the party and what rights they want to take away.  So-called Conservatives who fulminate against ,ÄúBig Government,Äù (Unless its spying on you or regulating your behaviour in the bedroom) are no better than pansy knee-jerk Liberals, who hand wring over every action and get caught up on non-issues like the plight of the Lesser Spotted Snail.

And don't even get me started on the ,Äúnon-conformist,Äù libertarians, anarchists and other assorted fools who think they are being ,Äúhip and trendy,Äù by defying the system.  YOU LOT ARE THE BIGGEST JOKES AROUND!  Bitching in your ever so trendy coffee shops like the intellectual failures you are, because you're too tragically hip to fall in with the ,Äúmainstream,Äù.  Guess what sucker?  YOU JUST SWAPPED ONE MASTER FOR ANOTHER!  The only difference between the establishment and counter-establishment is the name, no matter if they call themselves Libertarians, Anarchists, Discordians or Subgeniuses.  Who do you think promotes these pre-made subcultures?  Yup.

Its the rise of the Mediocretins.  This society, our countries, the WHOLE DAMN PLANET is swaying drunk with the stench of Pinks on its breath.  Nothing is different.  You can go to the most deserted places in South America or Darkest Africa and you'll see kids drinking bottles of Coca-Cola and throwing them away because thats what we do.  Nothing is different and everything is the same.  Safe.  Normal.  Dull.  Dead.  Identical suburbs, mini-malls, shops, hardware stores, ITS ALL THE SAME AND THERE IS NO ESCAPE!

In fact, something so terrifyingly fun like Armageddon would be a welcome change from all this shit!  Thats why Messianic religion's are selling like hotcakes, anything to escape this awful deadness.  But the End of the World hasn't happened yet, so who cares?  So long as the TV and the internet are still working, the left can congratulate themselves on being smarter than the right, the right can pat themselves on the back for fooling the left, and the two can concentrate on grinding everyone inbetween into meat for the Conspiracy engines.

[Triple Zero]

just printed off 17 copies of this for leaving lying around at random places.

a question: even though i believe different, your text does not deny that the Con is, like all other conspiracies, actively organised by a small group of "evil overlords", and the multiple references to "them" seem to reinforce this idea. is this intentional?
because, as far as i believe, it is mostly a result of the fact that people tend to like being like one another, the Machine, BIP etc.. all not really organised top-down, but more like emerging from the bottoms-up. cause even the so-called "masters" are just tools.

[Cain]

In actuality, its a mix of the two.  While the Con is a problem inherent in human nature, its hard to deny that there are several conspiracies in which there are a small faction manipulating events.  A perfect example is how religious zealots hijacked the GOP in America.  However, despite their apparent motivations, they are driven by exactly the same desires that exist from the bottom.

Its like the Aneristic Delusion, in a way.  It can be held by individuals or groups, quite often opposed to each other.  But its the same base motive informing all their actions.

The Con is also the way society works as it stands now.  So, for example, the Industrial-Military/Intelligence complex that killed JFK would rank pretty high among the whole Con, because of their influence and legacy.  Had the old style communists who tried to overthrow Gorbachev succeeded, they would be in a similar place.  The PNAC, whose teachings lay in a fanatical anti-communist and unashamed fascist, would be another.  And so on and so forth.  But they are the window dressing to the suicidal programing of the Con.

[Dell Ray]

Interesting POV.  I agree with you, and I guess just awareness of the basis of what is happening in our society and why It's happening is a small part of the battle...but we're all greater or lesser cockroaches.  Because we have computers, cars, pay taxes, telephones, we even use their roads...hell, even the money in our pockets feeds the monster.

Harsh, but true--
honest piece--
(followed by applause).

[Idem]

bump

[Payne]

Good call Idem. I like it when Cain gets into full flow. There's something so.... inevitable about it.

[Idem]

Well it was really really good, and only got 2 replies

[Cain]

It was the summer of death.  It was also the last important Discordian thing I posted at MW before getting banned the fuck out of.

Also, mucho credit must go to Ivan Stang, who wrote a superior version to this in Revelation X.  I wrote this one, from memory, trying to base it on that one.

[Idem]

 

Noticed a deviation from your normal writing style a bit (Dont see you doing that CAPS thing along with hyperbole too much)

[LMNO]

Put into queue for podcasting.

[Cramulus]

This is good stuff. Certainly gets my dander up.

(typical follow up question) And now what? You've named the beast, how do we slay it? If it can't be slain, how can we escape it?

It occurs to me that if the Con is a new-ish thing then there are new-ish ways to subvert it. If the levels of con-formity are rising, then new NonConFormist avenues are emerging too. A medieval serf has very few ways to subvert the dominant paradigm. A middle-class modern has more. In theory, Our Future Selves will have even more options, whatever that means.

I take hope in this - as the world becomes more and more uniform, the power of breaking dress code increases. In a homogeneous sea, the oddball is much more salient (and, sadly, that much more dismissable).

[AFK]

I don't think you can slay the beast.  I believe what Cain deftly describes is something intrinsic and inherit in mass-populated society and civilization.  The pull to conform is very strong amongst these societies.  It would seem you would have to offer a powerful, and easily accessible, alternative.  When I say accessible I don't just mean availability, I mean, something that will easily access the Pinkos' minds.  Even then, you won't get everyone. 

But, we've discussed these sorts of things before.  It's probably best to approach it in a more grassroots fashion, as we have been doing, and see how big you can make it.  Even if we all got 5 people to "snap out of it", in our lifetimes, I would consider that a success.  Will it change the world?  Fuck no.  Can we change the world?  Fuck no.  But do we lay down and watch it go on like this?  Fuck no.  We do what we can and hope it has legs. 

[stromcrow]

i don't think you can get out of it, because it would follow you. you're not the only who wants to get out, so if you get out, someone will want to follow you. and more will follow. and soon you'll find yourself in it again. the it might be something new, but it's an it again.

or maybe i just don't get the point.