It was a gripping science fiction book about America in the 21st century. On the cover was a picture of people in gas masks that made them look like sheep who were looking up. Supposedly, sheep are startled and made to look up as the slaughtering knife comes down. It exposes their necks and makes it easier to do the deed.
I did a search for this book on Amazon, and did not find it. So I guess it must be out of print.
It's OK, Big Brother Ashcroft would probably put a black mark in your permanent record for reading it. While we were all looking at the horrible 'bait and switch' Medicare bill, the Congress slipped in a few provisions of the Patriot II Act into another budget bill. So the FBI has even easier access to what you read and what you watch.
The new firemen in Kurt Vonnegut's 'Farenheit 451' would surely burn your copy if you had one. If Brother Ashcroft lets you read 'Farenheit 451' without putting you on a list of potential 'persons of interest'. 'Catcher in the Rye' is sure to go on Brother Ashcroft's watch list too. I never thought of it as political, but for some damn reason, the 'bluenoses' have always hated it.
You probably will end up on a watchlist if you found 'Johnny got his Gun" on video somewhere. And no, it does not advocate gun violence. It's about a disabled veteran, who doesn't do much of anything -- he can't.
Anybody notice how the FBI and IRS are going after the NEA, but they haven't even given us a progress report on finding the 'CIA Agent Outing TRAITORS' in the Bush Administration?
There are committees in the universities that are judging instructors now on whether they tow the neo conservative line close enough. Support the Palestinians, you got troubles these days.
Anybody else notice the 'creeping coup de tat'?
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all hated and more importantly feared 'intellectuals' and their books.
McCarthy feared movies. Anybody else watching watching the attempts to start new blacklists in Hollywood? There's quite a list of 'non-compliant' actors now. Anybody notice how most of them are not favorites of the people in power?
Notice how all the TV comes from favored corporate sources beholden to the government? Anybody else notice how two major speeches by Al Gore, a major political figure, get largely ignored in the press? And if his speeches do get mentioned they were downplayed without addressing the content? Aaah, it's only Al Gore talking about nothing again.
People who attend peace rallies get on air travel blacklists somehow... how interesting. The FBI wants to gather information on Americans citizens who peacefully excercise their rights again.
The president decides that American citizens can have their civil rights abrogated, and even imprison them without trial, hearing or charges.
I believe that if we don't throw the barbarians in the Thug wing of the Republican Party out in 2004, it is the beginning of the new Dark Ages.
The barbarians are attacking the very people who are trying to prevent the ship from hitting the iceberg. And remember... the third class passengers were locked below decks on the Titanic... just like the employees had their pension funds locked up in Enron.
Watching the media in America, and still having a memory of even the 'recent' past, is a torture to me.
The 'near-future' genre of science fiction has many distopian worlds in it. Places where science, government, and corporations run amok.
In 'The Sheep Looked Up', the people are wearing gas masks because of air pollution, there are filters on the air conditioning of their cars and they are driving ever farther to work, gasoline has shot up in price, the traffic backups are ferocious. The radio is full of propaganda about how well everything is going, people are scared, and they are being herded...
Just like America today...
It was a scary book, these are scary times...
I am a middle-aged man. I never really thought that book would come true. I am afraid it largely has.
I just don't believe that everything is OK in America, my birthplace, my homeland. I don't believe that conquering Iraq, even if Bush could pull it off, is going to make things any better. I watch our troops being mistreated by insanely rich corporations. And I see more oil pipeline fires, dead soldiers and, worse, even more recruits for the resistance. And they are getting ready to cut the Iraqi's food supply off. Quietly.
I don't believe that things are OK while the US government piles up debt that can not be sustained. Hitler came to power in a bankrupt country, remember?
And the economy is SO GOOD RIGHT NOW! But where are the jobs? And more importantly, where are the jobs that pay enough to raise a family? I seem to remember that the 'Great Depression' came after the 'Roaring Twenties'.
There were Republicans in charge.
And they were deregulating everything, trust in private enterprise! Wall Street was rolling in money! There is going to be "A chicken in every pot"! And then the bottom fell out...
My parents remembered the Great Depression, but they are gone. We don't really know what hardship is, but I am getting very afraid we are going to find out. There are lots... lots of people who have been unemployed for a year or more.
All it is going to take is for the Asians to quit financing US government debt. The asian banks have already been engaged in proping up the US dollar overseas.
Another bump that could send us over the cliff is for more oil exporting countries to adopt the euro as a reserve currency.
We are living in a world of 'gotterdamerung capitalism' now. As long as there is a profit in it, we are going to "mow everything down and see what happens".
There is a 'No Smokestack Left Behind' gang running the EPA.
But don't worry, the economy is growing REALLY, REALLY FAST! See the pictures of the Republicans smiling!?! Everything is just fine! Really!
There was a scary article in an older 'Discover' magazine (I believe) that discussed how (in the social/political sense) the peoples of Easter Island could have turned what was a tropical paradise island into a barren rock with no trees, even while they depended on the trees for canoes to let them fish for their main source of food and their only means of escape. Sobering...
Especially when you read about the cannibalism the islanders resorted to when the trees were all gone.
In another science fiction story, there was a huge aware super-computer that governments and corporations were feeding in information so as to improve their strategies for dealing with the world's problems... the computer said, "I want to stop having such bad dreams".
I want to stop have such bad dreams, so I am hanging on and voting Democratic this time.