Anti-Pacificanism: Opiate of the Masses
Entry posted by Vladimir
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A spectre is haunting the Cyberverse -- the spectre of Pacifica. All the powers of the old Cyberverse have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: idealist and opportunist, warmonger and peacenik, coward and feared.
The Order is not even out from under the yoke of Karma's imperialism, and already the printing presses buzz to warn the ruling classes of the danger and the town criers busy themselves amongst the downtrodden with tales of drunkenness and cruelty.
To the experienced politician this is neither new nor surprising. For generation after generation the ruling elites have used the spectre of Pacifica to scare their members into obedience, threaten their allies into subservience, and beat their opponents into ruin. Anti-Pacificanism is thus sold to the great mass of the population as a pain-killer, both domestically and internationally, so that any injustice may be ignored as either necessary for the great mystical cause or the fault of the spectre itself -- through its action to cause it, its lack of action to prevent it, or its 'imperialist' interference in acting to prevent it.
Cognitive dissonance is thus avoided, but what we find at the end is a population of drug addicts awaiting their next hit, and a ruling cadre eager to provide it lest the wool begin to fall and reality set in. It proved a significant problem, therefore, when Pacifica disappeared from the scene to rebuild, and cracks began to appear in the war consensus. Actions could no longer be blamed on the spectre, and slowly the underlying structures of the world began to reveal themselves; as forces turned upon one another and decadent leaders ran their alliances into the ground.
Yet even then, with Pacifica itself nowhere to be seen, the spectre was reeled out. Critical thought was shouted down as recreating it, the actions of opponents were shouted down as embodying it, and the actions of friendlies were justified by contrast to imaginary crimes of days past. But this was little substitute for the opiate which had proved so effective, and one by one the downtrodden began to see through the fear used to control them, examining and questioning the world around them.
It was therefore to be expected that, upon news of Pacifica emerging from the decaying Karma labour camps, the old powers would jump at the chance to reharness the opiate and pump it back into the blood stream of the body politic. But too much time has passed, and too much has happened. Too many leaders have shown themselves as corrupt and opportunistic, too many alliances have demonstrated their hunger for power and cowardice.
Karma has indeed ushered in a new era, but not the one it imagined.
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