Vicarious Justice and Bread & Circuses

If 99% of people are basically good, why is it that the 1% who are evil invariably end up controlling your life?

Answer: Because you sit on your fat, plush-bottomed ass and don't do anything. Ever.

Oh, you'll put up a lot of HOT TYPE on the internet, and you'll vote early and often for one of several of your local political delegation's pre-vetted lying scum-weasels, and you'll submit scalding letters to your newspapers and congresscritters, and you'll put bumper-stickers on your fucking car and tape editorial cartoons and articles up in various places -- and through it all you'll indulge the pretense that you're "fighting for your rights" or some other similar self-delusionary horseshit. But that's not really true, is it? You're not "fighting" at all; you're just blowing stream though sanctioned pressure-release valves until your righteous, boiling-over rage has sputtered down to a low, harmless simmer. The actual truth is: You're a human sheep who does nothing but bleat. Meanwhile, the slimebags know, as Mao trenchantly observed, that power comes from the barrel of a gun. The power to regulate every square centimeter of your life from cradle to grave, taxing and fining you every millipede's step of the way, with implied threat of "dynamic, forced entry" leading to prison or worse backing it all up.

No medieval monarch dared tax his peasants more than 10% lest the whole realm go up in revolt; but today, when one and all are being annually, anally gouged to 40%, 50% or even more when all the hidden levies are accounted for, of the productive capacity of the one and only life they'll ever life, what do they do? Fight? For real? Perish the thought. Real fighting, as the FCC-regulated news is all too happy to incessantly remind, is a messy, sordid business with personal risks. So, much better to head off to that great Opiate of the Masses. Religion? Please.... We're talkin' 'bout MOVIES and TEE-VEE! Where justice can be obtained vicariously! That, and video-games and recreational drugs and so many other wonderful new techs which enable avoiding REALity entirely. (And, if you avoid enough reality, you may even come to formulate tendentious logical fallacy-laden philosophical defenses of tyranny such as: "It's better to be a slave in paradise than a free man in a Hobbesian jungle," or "Cops have a tough job!" or "If you don't vote, you can't complain!" or "The 'social contract' obligates you to pay through the nose to finance the shit I voted to fleece you for!" ...well, OK; I stretched out that last one a bit, but you get the general idea.)

What is "vicarious justice"? It is the "good feeling" you get when you watch entertainment like "Tank" With James Garner when the bad guys (fictional) get their just reward at the end? Wahoo! Yeehaw! That felt good! ....but the problem with vicarious justice is that it isn't real. REAL bad guys get away REAL outrages, and people who might otherwise be >this close< to doing something REAL in return....instead meekly head off to seek justice vicariously.