I want to be Spider Jerusalem when I grow up.

This is a goal I've had for a while. However, I just realized the other day that I'm operating under a handicap that Spider's not. See, Spider's got to deal with a government that is acitively against its citizens, and citizens who don't take the time to understand what's being done to and for them. As he puts it, "I always thought people were essentially bright. Distracted, sure, and weak, and beaten, but never stupid."

He is, of course, forced to revise this opinion. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, for the most part, the things being done by the government are being done in contravention of laws because the people haven't realized what is happening. They continue to live their lives as normal, and think that things are fine. The government continues to get away with the various things they're doing, yadda yadda yadda.

In my case, though, people are the ones telling the government what to do. It's great to convince yourself that you could, eventually, be the voice of Truth, known to all, respected by some, but telling the Truth no matter what. That's a great dream. However, it remains essentially true that, in the case of reality, which I do operate in, the people are not being screwed by the government nearly as much as I'd like to believe.

Because I'd like to think that people were distracted, weak, and beaten, but never stupid.

I am wrong.

The sheer stupidity of the population of the US is staggering to me. We certainly have not merely idiots in charge, but also the dead, supporting them. I do not, of course, mean the literal dead - that would be messy. I mean the people who live their lives nine-to-five, who don't take the time to live. Whose jobs, objects, and fears define them. The sum total of their existence is their job and their television. These people think that they live.

They are wrong.

There is a difference between beaten and stupid. To me, the difference is that of reaction. If someone is beaten by the system, it's too difficult to resist - rather than overthrowing the government or impeaching the president or whatever, you just accept it because it's too hard to change, and there's no point to changing it anyway. Stupidity, on the other hand, is where you don't care what the government does, because it doesn't affect your dead status - no matter who's in the White House, and who's making the laws, the fact will remain that you will be able to afford all the latest toys, and the laws won't affect you, since you have the good taste to not be of Arab descent.

You are the dead. The pursuit of money, to achieve ever-stupider standards of material happiness, has taken over your life. When you're not at work, you're thinking about work. And speaking of work, are you doing what you want to do, or merely the job you've been offered?

A book is a foreign thing to you; television is much more informative. Additionally, it makes you feel better, because you'll never be like those idiots on The Real World. Anna Karenina is much too deep for it to make an impact on you, and besides, you'll never be a wealthy member of the Russian aristocracy.

You may think you have hobbies - I doubt it. A gym membership is not a hobby. Neither is shopping for ever-more material crap to fill the empty spaces in your life with.

You are the dead. And you fear the living.

In your fear, of course, you have leveraged all the power of your status as taxpaying, voting Americans to institutionalize your fear of the living. Skate parks? All-ages clubs? Non-corporate support for necessities? The Seattle Commons? All voted down by the dead. Merely to punish the living.

Because you don't understand the living. Fair enough; I don't understand you.

The living have something other to do than work. I don't define my life around material objects - they come in handy, sure, but I don't need the latest fashions or technologies. The living don't need TV to tell them they are, in fact, okay people. And the living sure as hell have hobbies and friends - we don't define ourselves solely in terms of what we do. What I do for money is not who I am, forever and ever amen.

And most of all, we don't punish. The living don't see the answer as being scared of life, or of other people in it. So terrorists attacked the US back in September. So they're still trying. So what? Being a member of the living means that you live. You don't live in fear. You live, on the presumption that you may die tomorrow, possibly horribly, but that doesn't mean that you should die today. I don't ever want to be so afraid of tomorrow that I'm legislating the actions and possibilities of others out of existence. Because you know what? If I'm going to die tomorrow, I'm going to die tomorrow. There is no reason to act like that means that I shouldn't live today. Or that I shouldn't let others live.

It must be horrible to be dead - you can't stand to see others living. So keep off the grass, no rollerskating allowed, and, by the way, did we mention the noise pollution laws that you're violating with that radio? You fear the living. And you don't even know it. You fear us, because we can live. Because we choose not to participate in the mindless orgy of buying things and sedating ourselves with possessions. Because we have friends we can talk to about matters more superficial than the latest scores. Because we feel.

And that's the biggest distinction between the dead and the living. The dead don't feel anything. That's what your search for ever-increasing material wealth and ever-growing penal and legal codes is about. The need - the craving - to feel something, even if it is the fear that you're generating. You don't feel anything.

The living do. And that is what you fear about us.

We feel, and you miss that.

I'm not dead yet,

Channon