A few months ago, a friend of mine saw pictures of militant protestors outside the Michigan statehouse. After some arm twisting they convinced me to go in for a closer look. I mean it looks weird and scary and different from the way things are here, but I’d much rather find something stimulating to do next to home, on my own planet, then venture millions of miles away just for a dose of pure spectacle. I like comedy as much as anyone, but this was absurdity bordering on macabre. Here we don’t glorify or revere spectacle the way they do on Earth and America more specifically. It’s generally regarded as shameful.
So, we get there, and I regret it immediately. It’s a bunch of mostly white human men armed to the teeth with assault weapons and stockpiles of ammo attached to their pseudo-military vestments. It’s Mad Max meets Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but not ironic at all. No, these people were completely sincere. They were free to gather in protest, with military grade weaponry, allied against what they perceived to be tyrannical policy. Think about that for a second; let it sink in. You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. They have the freedom to dress up like biker-gang revolutionaries and scare the heck out of the average citizen but were mad that the government they elected as their representative was acting in their best interest to mitigate a medical disaster. It was more sad than comedic. It was kind of like misery porn, which I guess is also shameful in its own way. The legislature wasn’t in session and the governor was out of state so there was no point in being there. It was a show coup, something we could just watched via interplanetary satellite instead of making the trip to see it up close. The American people are interesting in how they’ve appropriated the mechanisms of media to distort reality. They create realities instead of reflect them. It’s something we’ve never really done at home. At least not in my lifetime. We still plug ourselves into different forms of entertainment like everyone else – food, media, drugs, etc – but we’ve managed to keep life and entertainment separate.
Fast forward a few months and I get a visit from my friend’s avatar. Yes, it’s the same friend and this time they want to go to the United States Capitol to watch a riot. It’s a school night so I lie and tell them I can’t borrow the family shuttle or leave the planet. They get upset, of course, but not too upset. We both sense it will be same thing we saw on our last visit.
Later that night I unplug from my entertainment dock and what do I see; the “demonstration” my friend wanted to visit was actually different from the first one. This time the rebels had stormed the entrance and were close to attacking actual government officials. Some of the resisting police officers were mortally wounded. It was a really big news story here, though as I mentioned a little shameful as pleasures go. Anyway, the more images I saw the more it seemed like that first event. The marauders were smiling for the cameras, taking souvenirs, making mobile phone memories, and using the scene as props for their own political dreams. They were more violent than the Michigan crazies, but just as divorced from reality. This was their moment in the spotlight, on camera, waiting for someone somewhere to yell cut. I’ve been studying this whole topic for months now. I plan on writing an essay on it for a class of mine, and I still haven’t seen the director of the show step in. Maybe it’s one of those never-ending shows they love in America that jumped the shark as they say but lives on anyway. I’m not sure. I’ll keep watching to find out.
