Out There

Are you out there? Can you hear me? Are you alone? Insecure amid the anxieties that besiege your frightened mind or are you secure in the knowledge that this new gaggle of acquaintances will shield you from the pain...at least for awhile.  You see I know what you’ve been exposed to day and in and day out since your childhood spent as a poor girl in a rich man’s house and I know how it cycles through your mind, again, and again, and again, making you want to scream for mercy or drown your liver in a poison tide.  Because it doesn’t matter whether you have that flock of hangers-on hanging off you or not, you’re alone and even behind a mask you can’t hide from it.
In short, my dear, you’ve fallen for a typical right-wing ideological trick, it’s called “self-reliance”, otherwise known as “isolation”, conveniently spread by reactionary messiahs because it makes you that much easier to conquer.  “Free-association”, otherwise known as the “freedom-to-call-your-fellow-citizens-lazy-bums” when they are under attack from this or that powerful group that is privileged enough to cut their jobs and call the police in.  Of course this lack of solidarity just paves the way for your own subjugation somewhere down the line but we “self-made men” prefer not to think about that.

Divide and conquer, the traditional mantra of the rich and powerful when they conspire to exploit the powerless.  It was the same thing in Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Tsarist Russia and the British Empire and it’s the same thing now.  They’ve been exploiting people since civilization began and, God help us, they’re getting rather good at it.  We common people have got to be just as good at resisting as they are at oppressing but it seems like these days we’re perpetually playing catch up.  And we’d better understand this and pull ourselves together because broken people are the only creatures on this planet that have ever made good slaves.

And I don’t care how many bottles of single-malt scotch, how many shiny BMWs or how many trendy Gucci bags you possess.  It doesn’t matter how flashy you are, how fancy you are, how fashionable you are, or how fuckable you are – you are broken and somewhere someone is sitting in a boardroom clapping his hands at your futility, celebrating every nuance of your weakness.  You may think you’re a celebrity, but he knows what you really are – just another obedient fucking peasant.

You see? I know you’re out there, you’re not talking but your silence bursts my eardrums.  I see the fiery trail of burnt bridges left in your wake as you charge off into the night, expecting others to forget you.  But all roads end.  Sooner or later there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, not when the trouble’s in you.  Where will you go then? Greenland? Antarctica? What will it take for you to realize the truth? The ultimate truth: we either stand together, live together, or we die alone.