Audience of Two

Wait a second. Hold up here. Why IS freedom such a big deal? What, exactly, has freedom done for us lately? I only ask because, it seems to me, the America people have yet to prove to anyone out there that they know what to do with all this freedom that we have rattling around in these United States of America. The train of Freedom for Freedom's sake needs to pull, for a moment, into the depot of examination and have a new load of questioning Coal dumped down its shoot of rote assumptions. To Quote a moment from Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia:

“What do you want? Bread? I’m afraid bread got left out of the theory. We are bookish people, with bookish solutions. Prose is our strong point, prose and abstraction. But everything is going beautifully. Last time- in 1789- there was a misunderstanding. We thought we had discovered that social progress was a science like everything else. The First Republic was to have been the embodiment of morality and justice as a rational enterprise. The result was, admittedly, a bitter blow. But now there’s a completely new idea. History itself is the main character of the drama, and also its author. We are all in the story, which ends with universal bliss. Perhaps not for you. Perhaps not for your children. But universal bliss, you can put your shirt on it, which, I see, you have. Your personal sacrifice, the sacrifice of countless others on History’s slaughter-bench, all the apparent crimes and lunacies of the hour, which to you may seem irrational, are part of a much much bigger story which you probably aren’t in the mood for- let’s just say that this time, as luck would have it, you’re the zig and they’re the zag.”

Sure, you can read that passage and think: wha? What he TALKIN Bout?? Much like I first did. But Stoppard is raising an undeniably thorny point here with his mild critique of the thinkers and the academics: What has freedom got us? Is, perhaps, individual freedom a pretty idea that is only slightly better then despotism? Is the fear that, at any moment, a King might ride up and cut off your head really all that different from a fear that, at any moment, the stock market might crash and you might have to go live in a box and beat off rats and homeless people every night?

With these thoughts in mind, I am now casting my hat into the ring. I am running on a new and unique platform that I hope will appeal to a large majority of Americans. Winston for Big Brother, '08! Think of the possibilities! I'll make all the tough decisions for you. I'll take your freedom, but really you weren't using it much anyway, and ill replace it will all the consumer goods you already have. I can offer Stoppard's Universal Bliss to you, as long as you don't ask too many questions about what Universal really means. But don't worry about that! If you can't see them, they can't see you! And you can remove yourself from the tumultuous stream of history's slaughterhouse simply by investing your alleged freedom in a vote for me! My promises to you are, admittedly, somewhat vague. Most of the time, you just keep doing what your doing, and never have to think about the fantastical academic prospects of greater humanity. You and ours will be taken care of. The Cable Bills will all be paid. And, if it comes down to it... I promise this: it will be quick, and you wont feel anything. You wont even know I'm there. Shhhhhhhhh