THE FIRST DAY OF MMXI

I was reluctant to get up and face this first day of 2011 (or MMXI to Latin scholars.) Could I face another decade in what has so far been a gall stone of a century? Obviously I had little choice in the matter, but I could certainly delay the inevitable as long as possible, and accordingly – pausing only long enough to feed Finn – I took a Valium and went back to bed. A some point during this encore slumber I drifted into a half-dream/half-stream of semi-conscious thought that intrigued me sufficiently I felt a need to write it down before it melted from memory.
Two ultra-senior corporate executives recline in a skyscape boardroom like suave and elevated demons in some elegant enclave of a post-theological Hell discussing how to bend the planet to their totalitarian capitalist whim. Strange aircraft fly by in the toxic miasma beyond the glass. The dialogue, as far as I can reconstruct it, went something like this.
The first corporate demon explains, “So we find ourselves a charming sociopath with sufficient cheap charisma to be celebrity-marketed to the terminal lumpen.”
“Gender?”
“It really doesn’t matter.”
The second corporate demon nods and pours herself a cognac. “Right.”
The first corporate demon continues. “We inculcate them with a blunt-instrument measure of political ambition.”
“Power for it’s own sake?”
“For pleasure and profit.”
“And then?”
“We equip them with money, media access, and surround them with a impenetrable phalanx of attendant minders and handlers. The resulting illusionary cocoon of mindless praise and endless flattery, plus totally controlled and wholly favorable mass media access, will smooth the inevitable rough edges to create a superficial faux-socialization and the kind of shoddy appeal that is needed to succeed in the already farcical democratic process.”
“The selected sociopath achieves high office?”
“The very highest.”
“And then?”
“And then he or she proceeds to unravel what remains of civilization as it has been know, clearing the way for our full and complete totalitarian hegemony.”
“Would we allow the sociopath nuclear capability?”
“Of course. It’s goes with the position of power.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Yes.”
At this point the dream morphed into a memory of the movie version of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, and words of the Martin Sheen character Greg Stillson. “The missiles are flying. Hallelujah!”
But then the movie sequence is cut short by the smile of the first corporate demon. “But if that should be the case, we can retire to the Strangelove Bunkers until the dust has settled.”

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