All American Shut Up

All-American SHUT UP – the Good Reverend Roger – The real truth about America is that, yes, we’ll take your poor, your tired, etc…As long as they SHUT UP. Thing is, that’s all they want YOU to do. SHUT UP. Because it’s easier to control a population that is either quiet or is singing the party line (quietly). Why? Because for the many to be controlled by the few, the many have to be quiet enough to hear the instructions of the few. So they confused your WANTS with your NEEDS. You WANT gizmos and cell phones and whatever the hell else The Machine™ says you need this week. You NEED to be a fully-functioning biped. But that’s all turned around, now. Now you will keep your head down and shuffle to and from your job quietly, so you can get more things you just HAVE to have. If you’re lucky. If you’re not, you do whatever it is you have to do to get more cheap carbs, and maybe sleep under something that doesn’t leak too much. Some people believe that by ignoring The Machine™ that they are safe from it, if not from its attentions. “I IGNORE IT”, they say, “AND IT HAS NO EFFECT ON ME”…And that’s true, I suppose. They can’t get you if you’ve been had all along. A fish is not affected by the water in which it swims, and I suppose that if enough scar tissue builds up, you hardly even notice the hook in your mouth, either. And that’s just one way they get you to SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN. Maybe you’re a “slacktivist”, or maybe you LIKE all the right causes on Facebook. Congratulations, you’re a fucking cog. And not just any cog, but a HAPPY cog who is convinced they are BRINGING THE MAN DOWN by “getting the word out”…As if anyone’s bothered to hide it in the last quarter century. No, the only think you are doing is letting the grass from your grass roots grow beneath your fat, complacent feet. Let me make this perfectly clear: No matter WHAT you’re doing on Facebook, you’re SHUTTING THE HELL UP Same could go for here, for the ~ 70% who don’t actually get involved in any of the GASMS or projects that have an impact outside of Discordianism. And Occupy? Well, they started out well enough. Then many of them allowed the various cities to move them to parks, which is NO DIFFERENT than SITTING THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUTTING UP. There are notable exceptions to this, and you can tell who they are because the police beat them up and gas little old ladies in an effort to get them to just shut the fuck up. And then there are the anarchists and other fringe groups that yell and holler in ways that make themselves totally unbelievable, which is yet another variant of shutting up. Yes, brothers & sisters, The Machine™ owns the ball and the ballpark, and if you decide to play the game they’re pushing, then the very BEST you can manage is to get your name on a list without accomplishing anything. So the trick is to stop shutting up in a credible fashion. Pick your battles wisely…After all, screaming at the federal government does no good at all, because the decision-makers are so insulated by staffers that they won’t hear you scream, even if they wanted to. No, you scream at local government. Scream in your church. Scream at your school board meeting. Scream at yahoos who push The Machine’s™ agenda in day-to-day life. Small change isn’t much, but it’s better than NO change, which is what you get when you scream and aren’t heard, which is after all functionally no different than shutting up. Whatever You Do Don’t Shut Up. Marginalia: on page one, a doodle of a residential street with a giant flower towering over the houses, done very much in the style of a young child. On page two, a detailed and realistic image of Justice, sword in hand and scales held aloft, with no blindfold. She is saying “you can’t tell a Goddess how to behave” and a much messier drawing of a cat lolls on its back at her feet. On page three, a doodled mandala with the simple exclamation “CONGRATULATIONS!” On the fourth and final page, a man in uniform rings a bell. A sign next to him says COMING SOON and below that the words “Enlightenment, or something like it”