Humour on Freedom Plaza
by Steve Cook
After break of several months I have been receiving again snippets of communications between an orbiting Arcturan survey ship and its base in the Arcturus system. I have done my best with the translation and offer it to you now for your consideration.
From: Earth survey ship "Look Lively"
To: Mission Operations, Arcturus IX
Subject: Summary of analysis of Earth’s political system.
There are four questions that have been bugging our learned colleagues back on Arcturus IX.
The first is:"Who is running Earth?" The second is "How are they doing it?" The third is "Are they sane?" The fourth is "Why do the people of Earth put up with it?"
Our year of study and survey of this planet has enabled us to throw some light on these questions, although the answers that have emerged do admittedly require some suspension of disbelief. As the old Klingon adage goes: "You couldn’t make this stuff up!"
We feel obliged to stress before you start reading this summary or the 895,537 page report that accompanies it: we did not make any of this up and we are not cranked up on venusian hypers, neither is this a spoof in celebration of the forthcoming festival of Montee Pi Thon.
Our findings are the inescapable conclusions that derive from our year of meticulously documented observation and study. We are, in other words, dead serious.
We feel equally obliged to apologize in advance for certain quirks you are bound to notice in our narrative: after 365 geosynchronous orbits of this planet just twelve miles above a native settlement called Los Angeles there has been some inevitable brain damage.
The three most notable symptoms we have experienced thus far have been loss of the ability to spell, loss of ...can’t remember the second one, we’ll get back to you on that... and a shrinkage of our attention span down to a mere.
We are nearly out of toilet rolls so wish to remind Supplies to make sure a shipment of Blissful Rectum (yellow) goes on the next supply ship before we are forced to cannibalise the nappies built into the emergency space suits. Also a meteor strike punctured cargo pod 33, resulting on the venting of our entire supply of Scent of Chlorine air freshener into the interplanetary ether, so if you would tell.
Our conclusions about Earth’s political system are as follows:
Earth does indeed have an emperor or equivalent potentate. All evidence points to control or attempted control by a single person (or entity).
Humans prefer to be controlled anonymously, by someone they cannot see. If they see the real controlling entity they are likely to go mad and become viciously cynical and sarcastic and make his or her (or its) life not worth living.
Humans therefore indulge in a perennial game called "politics" in which the real emperor hides from view and ordinary humans of average or below average intelligence pretend to be the leaders.
Being without something called "scruples" is required of anyone who aspires to the status of pretend leader (known variously as prime minister or president). We are not sure what these "scruples" are as we have not yet seen any in the course of our studies of the planetary tribal elites. It would appear they are very rare even though they all insist they have them.
All the remaining humans pretend they do not know any of this and honor the pretend leader according to custom by either deifying him or heaping abuse on him.
The pretend leader responds by a customary breaking of sacred tribal laws and then starting one or perhaps two wars with another tribe (or his own tribe if the other tribes are too busy) and then rapidly turning grey, aging prematurely, losing the ability to tell the truth and engaging in the customary rewarding of his pals known as "messing up the economy," before finally making way for a new pretend leader so the ritual can begin again.
The ousted pretend leader then spends time writing memoirs and "speaking after dinner" in which he pretends he was really a great statesman after all and "right all along" about almost everything.
The remaining humans meanwhile engage in a game called "Political Debate" in which they insult one another, hurl false facts at one another unencumbered by any obligation to know what they are talking about and explain how they could have run the planet better than the pretend leader (or the real leader, were they to admit his existence).
One of the evident advantages of this system is that the pretend leader and his accomplices give all the other humans someone they can feel superior to.
Once a pretend leader has been supplanted by a new pretend leader, the mass of humans then forget all the crimes committed by the ex-pretend leader while he was in power and "let him off" or give him lots of money, directorships and so forth.
The real emperor meanwhile continues to run the planet in peace. It would appear however that the real emperor is in fact a lunatic because, although allowed to run Earth’s affairs without interference, he is evidently running the planet into the ground and trying to kill most or all of its population.
He appears too to amuse himself by inducing various large groupings of humans to fight and kill one another or he creates bad situations and watches the humans run around hysterically and somehow muddle through and keep the show on the road, rather in the way one pokes a hive with a stick.
This leads us to suspect that the hidden emperor may in fact be a god (albeit one in need of counseling) or perhaps a representative of another, alien, species that plans to settle the planet once it has gotten rid of the humans.
If the latter is the case, then we suspect a being from a planet with a hot, methane/carbon dioxide atmosphere such as Tharg, as much of Earth’s industry at the service of the emperor appears already devoted to tharganizing Earth, with the process of tharganization about 25% complete.
Earth’s political system, in summary has the hidden emperor at the top. Immediately below him (or it) in seniority is a stratum known as "banking" and immediately subordinate to the banks come entities called "multinational corporations," among which the makers of drugs figure prominently.
The purpose of drugs, which we will cover more fully later, is to lower the IQ of and socially incapacitate what the elite refer to as "riffraff." This serves the useful purpose of preventing ordinary members of the herd becoming "too clever by half" or actually paying attention to the world around them and helps them enter a peaceful state of zombyism or (preferably) death.
Below the cartels come the regional management entities operating as herdsmen that keep the somewhat unruly (unless drugged) humans in check. These are known as "governments" and it is these that are headed by the pretend leaders and which are presented to the human herds as the ruling entities. As indicated above, the humans then act as if they believe that the regional herdsmen, the "governments," are running things and blame them for everything.
All governments meanwhile blame all the other governments for everything. It is a tradition or perhaps instinct for everybody on Earth to blame everybody else and to assign the cause of any trouble to people or entities a long way off and (preferably) unable to defend themselves.
We note here that humans have evolved a strange quirk we call "contradiction blindness," in which they are able hold two conflicting ideas at the same time, believing both equally without apparently experiencing any adverse mental reaction apart from a vague uneasy feeling that the planet is being run by idiots.
By way of example, all humans fully know that one cannot believe anything one reads in the newspaper, while believing everything they read in a newspaper.
As we are developing a headache we pause here for a shot of Euphoricon and a brisk walk around the observation deck. We will resume this report in the next telemetric burst.
To: Mission Operations, Arcturus IX
Subject: Summary of analysis of Earth’s political system.
There are four questions that have been bugging our learned colleagues back on Arcturus IX.
The first is:"Who is running Earth?" The second is "How are they doing it?" The third is "Are they sane?" The fourth is "Why do the people of Earth put up with it?"
Our year of study and survey of this planet has enabled us to throw some light on these questions, although the answers that have emerged do admittedly require some suspension of disbelief. As the old Klingon adage goes: "You couldn’t make this stuff up!"
We feel obliged to stress before you start reading this summary or the 895,537 page report that accompanies it: we did not make any of this up and we are not cranked up on venusian hypers, neither is this a spoof in celebration of the forthcoming festival of Montee Pi Thon.
Our findings are the inescapable conclusions that derive from our year of meticulously documented observation and study. We are, in other words, dead serious.
We feel equally obliged to apologize in advance for certain quirks you are bound to notice in our narrative: after 365 geosynchronous orbits of this planet just twelve miles above a native settlement called Los Angeles there has been some inevitable brain damage.
The three most notable symptoms we have experienced thus far have been loss of the ability to spell, loss of ...can’t remember the second one, we’ll get back to you on that... and a shrinkage of our attention span down to a mere.
We are nearly out of toilet rolls so wish to remind Supplies to make sure a shipment of Blissful Rectum (yellow) goes on the next supply ship before we are forced to cannibalise the nappies built into the emergency space suits. Also a meteor strike punctured cargo pod 33, resulting on the venting of our entire supply of Scent of Chlorine air freshener into the interplanetary ether, so if you would tell.
Our conclusions about Earth’s political system are as follows:
Earth does indeed have an emperor or equivalent potentate. All evidence points to control or attempted control by a single person (or entity).
Humans prefer to be controlled anonymously, by someone they cannot see. If they see the real controlling entity they are likely to go mad and become viciously cynical and sarcastic and make his or her (or its) life not worth living.
Humans therefore indulge in a perennial game called "politics" in which the real emperor hides from view and ordinary humans of average or below average intelligence pretend to be the leaders.
Being without something called "scruples" is required of anyone who aspires to the status of pretend leader (known variously as prime minister or president). We are not sure what these "scruples" are as we have not yet seen any in the course of our studies of the planetary tribal elites. It would appear they are very rare even though they all insist they have them.
All the remaining humans pretend they do not know any of this and honor the pretend leader according to custom by either deifying him or heaping abuse on him.
The pretend leader responds by a customary breaking of sacred tribal laws and then starting one or perhaps two wars with another tribe (or his own tribe if the other tribes are too busy) and then rapidly turning grey, aging prematurely, losing the ability to tell the truth and engaging in the customary rewarding of his pals known as "messing up the economy," before finally making way for a new pretend leader so the ritual can begin again.
The ousted pretend leader then spends time writing memoirs and "speaking after dinner" in which he pretends he was really a great statesman after all and "right all along" about almost everything.
The remaining humans meanwhile engage in a game called "Political Debate" in which they insult one another, hurl false facts at one another unencumbered by any obligation to know what they are talking about and explain how they could have run the planet better than the pretend leader (or the real leader, were they to admit his existence).
One of the evident advantages of this system is that the pretend leader and his accomplices give all the other humans someone they can feel superior to.
Once a pretend leader has been supplanted by a new pretend leader, the mass of humans then forget all the crimes committed by the ex-pretend leader while he was in power and "let him off" or give him lots of money, directorships and so forth.
The real emperor meanwhile continues to run the planet in peace. It would appear however that the real emperor is in fact a lunatic because, although allowed to run Earth’s affairs without interference, he is evidently running the planet into the ground and trying to kill most or all of its population.
He appears too to amuse himself by inducing various large groupings of humans to fight and kill one another or he creates bad situations and watches the humans run around hysterically and somehow muddle through and keep the show on the road, rather in the way one pokes a hive with a stick.
This leads us to suspect that the hidden emperor may in fact be a god (albeit one in need of counseling) or perhaps a representative of another, alien, species that plans to settle the planet once it has gotten rid of the humans.
If the latter is the case, then we suspect a being from a planet with a hot, methane/carbon dioxide atmosphere such as Tharg, as much of Earth’s industry at the service of the emperor appears already devoted to tharganizing Earth, with the process of tharganization about 25% complete.
Earth’s political system, in summary has the hidden emperor at the top. Immediately below him (or it) in seniority is a stratum known as "banking" and immediately subordinate to the banks come entities called "multinational corporations," among which the makers of drugs figure prominently.
The purpose of drugs, which we will cover more fully later, is to lower the IQ of and socially incapacitate what the elite refer to as "riffraff." This serves the useful purpose of preventing ordinary members of the herd becoming "too clever by half" or actually paying attention to the world around them and helps them enter a peaceful state of zombyism or (preferably) death.
Below the cartels come the regional management entities operating as herdsmen that keep the somewhat unruly (unless drugged) humans in check. These are known as "governments" and it is these that are headed by the pretend leaders and which are presented to the human herds as the ruling entities. As indicated above, the humans then act as if they believe that the regional herdsmen, the "governments," are running things and blame them for everything.
All governments meanwhile blame all the other governments for everything. It is a tradition or perhaps instinct for everybody on Earth to blame everybody else and to assign the cause of any trouble to people or entities a long way off and (preferably) unable to defend themselves.
We note here that humans have evolved a strange quirk we call "contradiction blindness," in which they are able hold two conflicting ideas at the same time, believing both equally without apparently experiencing any adverse mental reaction apart from a vague uneasy feeling that the planet is being run by idiots.
By way of example, all humans fully know that one cannot believe anything one reads in the newspaper, while believing everything they read in a newspaper.
As we are developing a headache we pause here for a shot of Euphoricon and a brisk walk around the observation deck. We will resume this report in the next telemetric burst.
