At the gas station today, I did hear someone utter perhaps the most asinine thing I have ever catalogued in 3-space: "The terrorists hate us because we're number one." This came from the same woman who earlier seemed relieved that 'Al Zachary' finally got killed.
This statement was occasioned by the TV blaring something about foiled cyanide attacks in the New York subway system. Our nemeses were to carry this out using aluminum soda and beer cans, don't you know.
"See?" She jerked another thumb at the TV. "Do you believe me now?" In an earlier conversation, she took offense when I said that the news was not real.
"You know...," I began as I bagged a customer's Miller Lite single, "from an epistemological standpoint, you can't conclude anything from this, because, as I have proven to you before, the government is a bunch of lying cocksuckers." She was a coarse type anyhow, so she never minded my gutter talk. "That they have now told you yet something else does not necessarily add to your understanding of reality. How you doin today, sir?" I got a nod from some out-of-towner who walked in with his fancy rope sandals and linen pants. Prices just went up.
I pointed at the TV. "If we make the not-at-all outlandish assumption that your society is an instrument in an enormous wealth transfer operation, then we might conclude that the lower the purchase price of information, the less likely it is to be true." I would need to explain this.
"See those papers over there? Or this one?" I picked up a paper from the desk. "The advertisers in this paper frankly don't care if what you read in it is true. And therefore, from an economic standpoint, neither does the publisher. They all just want you to look at the ads on your way to the picture games. As a matter of fact, the more the truth conflicts with their economic interests, the less likely you are to find the truth printed in this paper. Or see it on that TV, for that matter. Where the value of the prize is so high, you are unlikely to be able to purchase the truth for fifty cents. Or to get it for free from that television. Simply put, you will have to pay more --in money and effort-- to buy the truth."
"War is always about the taking of property. Don't you ever forget it. That you think it's about something else demonstrates only the effectiveness of the warmakers' marketing. It really has nothing to do with you being number one. And don't ever think that you will share in the spoils of that war. You're just the labor."
She was plainly put out by my continued questioning of her reality. By the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, she truly was becoming emotionally distressed. "What planet are you from?!"
Indeed...
It's not really a planet. It's more of a star system. And it's Zargon Nine. So get it right.
I have the ability to see the future. In it, the television watchers will be instructed to deliver me to the authorities so that I might be killed. And they will do it, because the alternative is that I will cause the collapse of their reality.
And that's fine. I wouldn't have it any other way; if I can save them then maybe someday I will find one of them to love. And if I can't save them, then I get to go home.
It's a win-win. Don't you know.
