I had my first atomic war paranoia dream in 20 years last night.\u00a0 It startled me awake in a cold sweat, but then felt sweetly nostalgic.
\n<\/p>\n
I remember when the air raid sirens were tested every Wednesday, and our teacher would sometimes pause, and occasionally we\u2019d practice a sort of \u201cDuck and Cover\u201d drill.\u00a0 In the late 70\u2019s, Duck and Cover was starting to fade.\u00a0 By the time I was doing it, it had become a sort of hybrid fire drill.\u00a0 We\u2019d all get up, and line up against the cinderblock walls of the hallway.\u00a0 In the 70\u2019s, we\u2019d still go fetal.\u00a0 In the early 80\u2019s, we\u2019d chatter while the teachers poured bourbon in their coffee.\u00a0 By the time I hit high school, the sirens had stopped. After all, we \u201cwon\u201d the Cold War in my junior year.\u00a0 And the writing was on the wall long before that.<\/p>\n
It was, though, drilled into my mind that the end of the world was only 20 minutes away.\u00a0 Missiles were pointed at my backyard.\u00a0 Washington, DC.\u00a0 Ground zero.\u00a0 No hope of survival.\u00a0 All that would be left was a crater and, duck and cover or not, as soon as the sirens went off for real, we had less than half an hour to live.\u00a0 The TV told us this, the movies told us this, the news told us this, and so did our leaders, our teachers, and our parents.<\/p>\n
My childhood dreams were usually set against a post apocalyptic wasteland.\u00a0 Or, you know, I was in a Tron game.\u00a0 Or I was a ghostbuster.\u00a0 But, still.\u00a0 Doomsday on the mind.<\/p>\n
My dream last night was an odd mix of that childhood apocalyptic fear and the show Breaking Bad<\/em>.\u00a0 I was cooking and selling meth with my mother (dead these ten years) and we were constantly fighting.\u00a0 We had a crazed distributor we were trying to sell our product to, and the three of us were in a situation that was about to escalate to violence when, suddenly, a blinding white flash filled the windows and, in horror, we all turned to stare into it\u2026.and were burnt into oblivion.<\/p>\n What I\u2019ve found, today, is that a little touch of that constant fear we all used to live with his crept back into my soul.\u00a0 Looking back, it was worse than the State of Fear we\u2019ve been living in since 2001.\u00a0 These terror alerts \u2013 even in light of the fact that something actually did happen \u2013 seem so empty and\u2026well, corporate.\u00a0 That word comes to mind.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m overly cynical, but every single little thing today feels like someone is selling something.\u00a0 And not very well, either.<\/p>\n It was the same when I was a kid.\u00a0 The Soviets were bankrupt by the time Reagan took office.\u00a0 They\u2019d become a straw-man, and that was fairly common knowledge if you stopped to look at the situation.\u00a0 But they were still sold to us as the big, bad bear.\u00a0 An easy thing to do, really.\u00a0 America needs enemies.\u00a0 That\u2019s human nature.\u00a0 We all understand villainy and need to rally against it.\u00a0 The guys in black hats have been with us since before recorded history. They want your daughters, they want your land, they want your fire. Protect the tribe!<\/p>\n We also need an enemy we can understand.\u00a0 Korea, Vietnam\u2026all of that was hell.\u00a0 So, despite the obvious shift to guerilla warfare in jungles and deserts, we continued to train our armies to fight a World War II-style land war in Europe.\u00a0 The ultimate sign that the \u201cGreatest Generation\u201d had the world by the balls.\u00a0 The Greatest Generation\u2026 These poorly-educated farmboy yokels thrown into all-out war.\u00a0 You can educate them and put them in suits, but you can never take that country-thinking out of them.\u00a0 The children of isolationists, raised on the Depression and conflict.\u00a0 A generation of post-traumatic stress, greed, and segregation.\u00a0 What has the Greatest Generation given us but backwards thinking?\u00a0 And, due to that, social upheaval, drugs, and a nation that has sold its soul to the corporations.\u00a0 A nation where every succeeding generation had to fight a pointless war for twisted ideals.\u00a0 They sent their children to Vietnam, and their grandchildren to an endless Orwellian war in Iraq.\u00a0 And, worse, they made it seem okay.\u00a0 They\u2019ve trained us to be so complacent that we no longer complain.\u00a0 Our boys and girls come back in flag draped boxes and we don\u2019t care.\u00a0 It may alarm us, but we\u2019ve been turned into serfs.\u00a0 Armchair liberals.\u00a0 Well-heeled do-nothings working away half the day for pennies.\u00a0 We\u2019ve become the worst kind of people \u2013 we, all of us, allow evil to succeed through our own inaction.\u00a0 And, worse yet, we pretend we amount to something because, from our condos and dog parks, we complain.\u00a0 The illusion of rebellion.\u00a0 It\u2019s how we\u2019ve been taught.\u00a0 To live the lie.\u00a0 We pride ourselves on recycling, yet turn a blind eye once it hits the curb and goes into the same truck as the regular trash.\u00a0 Nor do we have even the slightest concept of what recycling actually is as we throw out our car tires, our toothpaste containers\u2026<\/p>\n We wear clothes and watch TV\u2019s manufactured by children and slaves, then say that we believe in human rights.\u00a0 Is that the Greatest Generation\u2019s version of human rights?\u00a0 White\u2019s Only, thank you very much.<\/p>\n But, even with all those controls in place, and with our brains turned into Play-Doh, we need an enemy. We still need the big, bad bear.\u00a0 Something to unite (and distract) the tribe.\u00a0 With the Soviets gone, we moved on to terrorism.\u00a0 A slow drift that began, for America, in the late 70\u2019s, was a queer little sideshow in the 80\u2019s, and was manufactured in the 90\u2019s to finally lead into 9\/11.<\/p>\n Not that the government is responsible.\u00a0 The manufacture of the terrorist menace is more the result of our chronic naivet\u00e9.\u00a0 And, once over the shocking hump of 9\/11, just something that\u2019s really good for business.\u00a0 Which is where my cynicism comes in.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t all of this corporate mumbo-jumbo when the Soviets were in town.\u00a0 It was our steely-eyed soldiers facing them down with the Iron Curtain in between.\u00a0 It was dashing secret agents foiling their plans behind the scenes.\u00a0 It was war, fought by warriors who had sworn an oath to the Constitution.\u00a0 Or, at least, that was the image sold (and bought).<\/p>\n Now we watch this weird, useless scrabbling in the desert, misdirected and mismanaged.\u00a0 Private corporate mercenaries fight for us, and we hear how those companies make billions, and reach mysteriously deep into the government.\u00a0 Our 21st-Century wars seem so shallow, so much under the control of the profits.<\/p>\n Now, yes, that was always there.\u00a0 The Nazi\u2019s wouldn\u2019t have had their war machine if not for the American auto-makers, and the Cold War was all about private industry.\u00a0 The mercenaries were always there.\u00a0 The corporations were always sticking their fingers in the pie, and taking more than their fair share.<\/p>\n Maybe things are different now because we\u2019re in the age of the internet.\u00a0 There are no more secrets.<\/p>\n Or maybe they just used to be better liars.\u00a0 Or didn\u2019t have to try as hard. When the social civil war of the 60\u2019s moved into the jaded complacency of the 70\u2019s, we were too busy trying to catch our collective breath to pay attention to anything around us.\u00a0 Then we hired an actor to lead the nation, and he did what he did best.<\/p>\n My question this morning \u2013 were those days better?\u00a0 Back when we were ignorant, back when we were afraid.\u00a0 Before the Dawn of Information.\u00a0 At any moment, that white flash would herald a wall of fire and death.\u00a0 A simple, abrupt end to blissfully simple lives.<\/p>\n Now our lives are not simple.\u00a0 Deep down, we know.\u00a0 We all know that we\u2019re living in the end days of the Republic.\u00a0 We all know what goes on in the world to bring us our limitless luxury goods, to keep us in flat screen TV\u2019s and designer clothes and cheap milk, affordable gas, and poorly made, gentrified condos.\u00a0 We all know that slaves made our shirts, and that the black man continues to be oppressed even while one sits in the White House.\u00a0 We all know that our days \u2013 and our lives as we know them \u2013 are numbered.<\/p>\n But it won\u2019t be a wall of fire that takes us out.\u00a0 No detonations above our cities, missiles streaking the heavens, or white flashes followed by mushroom clouds.\u00a0 The one thing we don\u2019t know, now, is how or when the end will come.\u00a0 When will our cars run out of gas?\u00a0 When will we be poisoned by the lack of regulation on frozen dinners, bottled water, and that cheap milk and meat?\u00a0 As we lose money, and those corporate gods make billions, we can\u2019t predict the outcome.\u00a0 As the Greatest Generation dies and leaves in its wake twisted, depressed fools, we aren\u2019t able to see a way out.\u00a0 Our parents, who betrayed us in the 60\u2019s and surrendered our freedom to the great Silent Majority, are now in charge.\u00a0 And, let\u2019s face it, they\u2019re crazy.\u00a0 They can\u2019t get along with each other, let alone run a country.\u00a0 They\u2019re guilty, addled on prescription drugs and crooked therapists.\u00a0 And they created my generation, now just beginning to ease into power, that has no clue which way is up.<\/p>\n And you poor fucking kids today.\u00a0 You fools in your teens and early 20\u2019s.\u00a0 I pity your lives.\u00a0 I weep for your future.\u00a0 They\u2019ve taken everything from you, gobbled it up, spit it back out into your faces.\u00a0 You don\u2019t even rank decent bad guys.\u00a0 The summer blockbuster-quality of the Nazi\u2019s and the Soviets are gone.\u00a0 Now you\u2019re fighting partisans throwing homemade bombs.\u00a0 Strange, dirty men following a strange god in an alien land full of huts and tents and cave-dwellings.\u00a0 We had Red Square.\u00a0 We not only lived the lie, but we loved it.\u00a0 Embraced it. Believed in it as we lay huddled in a fetal position in the school hallway, waiting for the end, hoping we would be heroes, living the moment as if it, and the next 19 minutes, were our last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had my first atomic war paranoia dream in 20 years last night.\u00a0 It startled me awake in a cold sweat, but then felt sweetly nostalgic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[113,111,110,112],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-atomic-war","tag-commentary","tag-dream-diary","tag-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}