Enough Is Too Much

by Adam Engel

Dead sheep shuffle. Do the dead sheep shuffle. Get in line. Waste your time.

Get yer gonads groped and your belongings touched by strangers' fingers.

Get shoved, get yelled at.  

"No, you ASS, don't go down THAT line, I said THIS ONE HERE."  

Reaction of the other sheep not, "Where do you get off telling this guy what to do?"  

Reaction of other sheep was, "Where do you get off not following orders  like you're supposed to do and getting on the wrong line and making it so much worse for the rest of us?"  

Worst of all were the eyes. Not of the tormentors, but of the victims. Spaced out, happy, in a way, happy to have big strong adults – armed men and women – tell them where to go what to do, finally some structure in their pathetic lives.  

Then again, what did I do?  Did I scream "NO"?  No.  Did I shove my "weapon," a toenail-clipper, in the eye of the rent-a-Nazi who confiscated it? No.  I'm as bad as you are. I don't deserve to live, at least not like a free adult.  

Fort Lauderdale. Newark.  Same thing.  Get in line and beg to be let on the airplane you reserved a seat on months ago. The airplane you paid hundreds of dollars so you and your wife could sit in crowded rows with the rest of the cattle.  The airplane owned by an airline that laughingly calls you a "valued customer" as their six-dollar-an-hour thugs search you from your stocking feet to your goofy American head.  

And me with my hip-replacement! Back luck. Sets off the beeper every time and it's:  

"Step over here sir. Remove everything from your pockets sir. Hip replacement, eh sir?  Right hip?  Arms to the side and stretched out sir. Yeah, that's it, like you're on a cross, sir.  What's this?  Antacids, sir?  Do you have a prescription for – oh, they're over-the-counter. My mistake, sir.  Hmmn.  Nothing else on you," re-inserting his wand into its holster. "Must be that hip replacement you was going on about. Okay, you're free to go sir. Yes, that line over there, sir. You're free to go over to that line there."  

Yeah,  yeah, I know: we don't have it as bad as the Iraqis, or the Palestinians, or the Afghans, or the Chinese.  

But just as we pay airlines for the privilege of cattle-hood, we pay THE MAN to make life miserable all over the world.  Our only consolation is that we're "free." That is, it's not as bad here as it is in other places THE MAN has devastated.  As for China, well, they have their own MAN. But I give them credit for kicking OUR MAN on his fat ass in 1949.  At least the woes of Chinese citizens are not our responsibility. Like, say the ridiculous condition of American "citizens" who'll walk straight to the gas chambers grinning self-righteously about how free they are. The Nazis would have loved a crowd like this. Would've saved them a bundle on soap and other "don't worry, it's all good" type props.   

Yeah, yeah: It's not as bad here as it is in Columbia or Saudi Arabia or Guatemala, or wherever else THE MAN dips his sticky fingers.  But it will be.  It will be indeed.  

So while the sheep are bahhing about the "dems" and the "repubs," THE MAN who controls both of those groups of boated, pocket-stuffing windbags, THE MAN who controls most of the world with amazing violence and relentless pursuit of death and fear, is cooking up new ways to beat us down, to mold us into the pathetic model barnyard creatures of HIS psychotic vision.  

"Moo," I say. I say, "Moo. Moo. Moo."  

I'm disgusted with myself for paying for the privilege of being searched, manhandled, and more or less kidnapped as the plane waited on the runway while some flaccid representative of THE MAN outbid the airline for the flight lane.  People have been killed for less.  A whole lot less.  If fact, THE MAN is killing and killing and killing people for doing little less than not being THE MAN.  

Don't you think it's Time to stop whining and deluding ourselves into thinking we're not despicable, weak . . . barnyard animals for not doing what must be done to secure our individual liberty and basic human freedoms?   

It was Time ten years ago, 20, 30.  We didn't act then, why do we think we'll act now?  Especially now, after a quarter a century of brainwashing with depth, breadth and intensity not seen since Stalin was still sleeping in a separate room every night and "The Manchurian Candidate" was a nightmarish "fiction" in the theaters.  

We are indeed pathetic.  But it's not too late to change.  As long as we're clear about what we're talking about.  One of us must go.  THE MAN, or everyone else.