Good morning! This is your Random Truth (RANT) bulletin with your random food for thought.
Today’s topic: Those with that thing up their thing that makes them do that thing where they fire their mouths inappropriately about people firing their mouths inappropriately, all the while pretending they’ve got the right.
You might think that we’re doing the exact same thing right now, firing our trap willy-nilly. Maybe we are! But hear us out first. We promise to entertain you.
Today’s topic is righteous indignation, of which there’s plenty these days. Wherever you turn, you hear people talking about other people talking about other people and the comments they made, in private or in public — who tweeted what, who commented where, who bitched about this, that and the other, the insensitive statement that hurt someone’s feelings, the joke that offended an individual or a group of individuals with its grossly inappropriate tone. It’s all happening! Nothing goes unnoticed, unrecorded, un-judged, or unheard, with an unprecedented amount of public scrutiny placed on everything you and your grandmother say.
In other words, the game is on, folks. The thought police have finally acquired their weapon of choice:
The Panoptikon.
No, I’m not talking about governments spying on people. I’m not referring to sinister, clandestine intelligence agencies playing big brother, gathering data and metadata 24/7.
I’m talking about something way nastier.
I’m talking about Little Snitch.
Little Snitch is a reality. It’s here, in our faces, on our cases, watching everything from the side, acting behind our backs, threatening to report us if we don’t do what it says, if we don’t give in to its temper tantrums and cow down to its demands. It threatens to make our lives miserable by always being there, behind the corner, spying, coveting, pestering. Doing exactly like Big Brother does, only little-like, snitch-style. Eager to do us in like Pooh did with Garp — ever see that movie, The World According To Garp? — it wants to destroy us like a little envious darling wants to stick it to those it can’t reach, everyone who doesn’t abide by its wishes, it wants to trip them over and see them suffer, feeling good and gleeful about it. Little shit can’t get its way, then no one does, telling on everyone and landing them in trouble to make up for the rotten makeup of its soul, for everything it wants but can’t have, drowning the world in the envy that chokes it from the second it wakes up to the moment it goes to sleep.
It wants its nightmares to become ours so that we may never know a moment’s rest. It wants us to share its state of mind, always stressed, always festering, on a mission to make everyone’s lives miserable and pat itself on the back for being all righteous and stuff.
It will kill us if it can, and, just like Pooh again, it will, at the first opportunity. Take a gun and shoot us at point blank, in cold blood. Take a camera and shoot us during our worst moments, making a public record of what horrific specimens we are, plastering it all over the internet, so that none shall escape the image of a transgression so beautifully caught on camera.
Welcome to the world of Little Snitch: Big Brother’s shitty little porcupine ally. Be careful what you do or say. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, where plaintiff, judge and jury are one and the same, happy to try you, sentence you and toss you in the pile of mass-processed suspects that feeds their daily appetite for lashing out at whatever doesn’t suit their needs.
Judgmental? Please! We’ve moved way beyond that. The term is Total Snitching. Something like Total War, but with fingers pointing, poking, and plenty of hissy fits. And high-pitched screams. And sighs and oh-my-Gods. And low-rumble no-nos. And pacification. And the ability to pass everything as the function of civilization.
Ever wonder why Rome came crumbling down? Look low, in the corners and shadows. You’ll find evidence of little snitches getting riled up with everything that didn’t please them, with everything that annoyed and frustrated them, making their constant complaints to their all-ears society, their advanced society, their sensitized and informed civilization, their over-sophisticated but under-performing organization, which, living up to its bloated name, proceeded by deeming all claims legitimate. It deemed all claims legitimate and true, affording every grievance with a platform by which the all-sensitive agoras — and the senates altercating over them — considered the merits of each tempest raised, little by little losing sight of the bigger picture, eroding their good judgment, committing cultural suicide.
Reaching? Maybe. But can you afford to take the chance? Can you afford to find out in due course if we’re indeed reaching?
Time for a change. Everything has an expiration date, a point after which it ceases to function. Democracy is no exception. Freedom is no exception. You may think we’re mad, but you’ll thank us for it, in retrospect, when the trash has been hauled out and the system is geared to return to an open society model that is truly open, and which works.
Until then, scream bloody murder while committing it, and hiss and bitch and snitch at will, helping the transition along. What? You think we’re wrong — that this here thing we live in is a democracy? That our dear Little Snitch allows for an open society to exist? The ship has sailed, my friend! What we have here is not democracy; it’s the paranoid world of grievance striking willy-nilly to satisfy its perverted sense of fairness. Democracy has long been dead. It was slain in the name of I can, therefore I will, and screw common sense.
Neurosis, on the other hand, is on the rise. Tense Little Snitch rules alongside stout Big Brother, having the time of their lives. Cacophony is all the rage, all the time.
Fact!
So when we say, Time for a change, we mean time to face the music. Time to engage in a little spring cleaning to get the system back on track, up to scratch, and ready to reboot, on the double.
Ready?
From RANT headquarters,
Good morning!
PS – Here is a video to elaborate what kind of behavior we’re dealing with so that we can envision the kind of mess we’re in and the type of reboot we need to engage in. Behold a man caught between two little snitches and big brother.
First published in Urban Times, Oct 22, 2014.