Thanks Doug. I think Bill Maher had it right. (Does anyone have the URL for his HBO rant about this?)
The real exit strategy for the US in Iraq has already begun. Because W has begun to get bored with his latest Fantasy Job. Come on, guys, face the evidence. Science fiction (starting with my own stories "Reality Check" and "Stones of Significance") has been toying for some time with the notion that we are living in a simulation. Possibly inside someone else's Start Trek Holodeck dream. But whose simulation? Some vast future Omega Point consciousness? Aliens simulating weird alternative life forms. (Plausible, since human beings are so crazy.) Naw, it should be simpler than that. Simply look around and see who has been impossibly fortunate, vastly out of all proportion to personal talent and competence, or even any possible intervention by luck alone. Next, consider that a Holodeck experience is not just about being lucky... that's boring. SItting around in a harem on a pile of jewels? feh. Gets tired quickly, take my word for it. Anyway, it's hard to forget that this is a simulation. If THAT is your aim, you want all the cool stuff to happen is ways that at least marginally let you fool yourself... that you earned it all. Because you were better than everybody else. Yeah! Real opponents, smug assured brainy types. And your allies? Fun guys who know how to party and give wedgies to those smug nerds. Yeah! As for luck? Well, set the game to easy, but with LOTS of nerds to overcome and lots of rules to flaut. And gradual enough to avoid the real enemy. Boredom. Can YOU see anybody whose live we must all be revolving around, in his personal holodeck program? Come on! A youth spent in unbelievable frat boy party-stupor mode, with plenty of geeks to write your term papers while you torment em. Then... jet pilot! Screeching over the Gulf, taking free flying lessons and bravely defending your land from Fidel while a million other sons go off to battle Charlie... ...till that got boring. SO then there came political operative, cowboy, oil executive... oh!... and then baseball team owner! (The fantasy can't be baseball *player* since that's real work.) ...then governor of the great Lone Star State of Texas. Yee haw! SO each of these jobs palled after a while? So each time you leave a train wreck behind you? A trail of steaming failures for other to clean up? Isn't that what nerds are for? Oh, this inevitably taxes the Holodeck. I'm sure this kind of extreme improbability has its costs. How to explain the string of luck? Within the simulation, smarty-pants pundits point to cronyism and Daddy's Friends as the agents for this amazing string of events, for a fellow who frequently cannot even pronounce the name of his latest fantasy job. But really, isn't God a better explanation? Or something a whole lot like God, in the present context? (In that case, haven't you been honest with us all along?) If we needed a QED for this hypothesis, just look at today. The Presidency is the ultimate fantasy job. Especially if there's no duty, no hard work, none of the responsibility or care that has prematurely aged so many other occupants of the office. Instead (since you wrote the holodeck program) YOU take more vacation days than your four predecessors PUT TOGETHER... and have fewer news conferences in 5 years than McKinley had in one. So you take all the money and give it to your friends. So you win through the weirdest series of accidents and blatant tricks that anyone has seen since cemeteries voted in Chicago. So? Accountability? That's for real life, not a holodeck fantasy! (In fact, didn't you tell the Holodeck Computer not to let anybody notice stuff like that?) Anyway, what's the point in being Commander in Chief if you can't have a cool war? No, not one of those prissy *responsible* wars, like Clinton's Balkans Campaign. (No US deaths and all objectives All achieved in two months? Where's the fun in that?) No, for THIS war you'll bring back one of Daddy's pals, the guy who oversaw our final humiliation in Vietnam and always muttered that he never really had a chance to prove himself. Good old Rummy. This time he'll SHOW all those wise-guy nerds that you don't need a plan, or have to use skill, or act responsibly, or study the enemy, or any of that boring professional stuff, in order to kick ass! All right, there's a limit to how much a holodeck can do. There are some basic rules of cause and effect in a closed system that even fantastic doses of "luck" cannot overcome. As Bill Maher points out, the treasury is empty, the Army is used up, the storms have arrived at long last (the Holodeck Computer is muttering stuff about Butterfly Effects or pent up balance...) ...so what next? Maher suggests that you appoint yourself to the US Astronaut Corps! But the shuttle seems so, well, constrained and limited. Not at all like Star Wars. So my best guess is that the next fantasy job will be Movie Producer! But not yet. There are still smarty pantses out there. In fact, they appear to be closing in. And Armageddon isn't scheduled in the Holodeck till 2028. So what to do in the meantime? Well, theirs always S&S... Sulk & Spite. When in doubt, start giving wedgies. And what better way to show that you don't care what smarty pantses think than to go eenie-meenie-miney-mo when it comes time to appoint a Supreme Court Justice! Well, that brings us up to date. The evidence is clear. We are all ciphers and background figures in the lifelong simulation-illusion weaved by a boy with a whole lot of quarters to drop into the Holodeck slot. It's the only explanation that makes any sense. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
