Alex Baer: Out of Sight, Out of Shut-Eye

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Drone deathsThere'd be no telling what's really bugging us, second-to-second, without all the constant, helpful reminders from our talking-head gadgets, sound sources, headline services, downloaders, and assorted cultural pulse-takers.

The media does our thinking for us, so we can continue our sleepwalking, and our sleepdriving, and our sleepworking, and our sleepeating, and our sleepsleeping, in uninterrupted bliss.

It is now possible, for example, to go from coast to coast in this country, one of outlandishly enormous land mass and huge distances, and never once hear any local programming on the radio.  Instead, we can hear just one, long, steady drone, not unlike the long, steady drone heard just before an actual drone drops from the sky, a split second before the sky itself drops out of the sky, and right onto you.

Or your wedding party.  Or someone soon to be identified as The Wrong Person(s), in grudging news reports, which will then, Rube Goldberg-style, cause the U.S. government a nanosecond's spasm, and trigger a defensive need to offer those who remain upright (aka Blast-Deafened Survivors) compensation.  This financial offer is in lieu of simply not killing anyone with drones in the first place, in places where military (or other) intelligence is nonexistent, but in spots which might-maybe-could be used as terrorist hideouts.

Such key disputed-security locations are known under their various formal, military operational nomenclatures, such as Just About Any Foreign Country Except Canada and Sometimes Mexico, or, the more common, Almost All Places With Oil Which Happen to Be Small Foreign Countries Really Far Away from Us, and the routinely-adopted Locations Where A Drone, for Some Reason TBA, Blew the Living Crap Out of Everything in Sight.

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