No More Mr. Nice Guy!

I am not a number, I am a free man!

For us liberals, life in Bush's US is increasingly like being trapped in "The Village" of the classic TV series, The Prisoner. Think about it.

One morning we wake up in an America we don't recognize. It seems to be full of Stepford-Wives people who outwardly manifest a cheery "all's right with the world" attitude. To them, the Village is the whole world, and it's heresy to suggest anything else exists. If you question them even a little, "What is this place? Who runs it? Why are you here?" they immediately get defensive and hostile. They have implicit trust in the unseen rulers of the Village. Trying to force them to think for themselves only makes them resentful, and they redouble their rote chanting of slogans and soundbites. "Questions are a burden to others, answers a prison for oneself."



We wander around the streets, trying to dodge the endless parades of oompah-oompah bands, the PA systems blaring in our ears. ("Welcome to another beautiful day in the Village!") We try to find out what's going on, but the only newspaper we can find is just a propaganda sheet and cheerleader (Tally Ho!) for the still-unseen rulers.

Finally, we make our way to City Hall and encounter the nominal leader of the place. He's an affable type with a faux-folksy style, but he's only a figurehead - he is Number 2. "Who is Number One?" we ask, but we get no answer.

We start to get concerned when we notice that anyone who asks too many questions suddenly finds a jeep load of goons appearing out of nowhere and hauling him off to an undisclosed location. And if you persist in asking dangerous questions, pointing out facts that embarrass the rulers, you will be dealt with by Rover.



Rover is the ultimate weapon. It is a mysterious, shapeless mass that can be summoned from the sea bed by pushing a button in the control room. Bouncing over sea and land, in a manner at once comical and threatening, it hunts down its targets and suffocates them, all the while emitting an unearthly roar.

But in the last few days, something has gone wrong for Rover. One of an endless series of dirty tricks from its past, outing a covert CIA agent and WMD expert for partisan reasons, has come back to haunt it. Amazingly, the White House press corpse (sic) - a collection of spineless windbags themselves - is suddenly growing a pair (not a pair each, just a pair, but it's a start). They're still not brave enough to face Rover, but they're hounding its dwarf butler, Scott McClelland, and he is squirming.

Rover is about to return to the slime from which it oozed. It's going to puncture and shrivel away to nothing. And nobody will be singing "I-I-I-I-I I like you very much."

Be seeing you!