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Several months had passed since I last heard from my favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, public-relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America. He said he had been busy with the Transition Team.
For the Bush inauguration?
I wondered.
No, of course not. We only work with significant
shifts. I've been with the Decade Transition Team as we go
from the 80s to the 90s. Every decade must have a theme and
a symbol. Did you think those things just fell out of the
sky?
I apologized and pressed him to tell me what was coming.
The key to a decade is what Americans feel guilty
about. Then you call in the Guilt Distributors, and thereby
manipulate public opinion.
Like the dogs and fire hoses that were turned on
civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama? Back in the
60s, that made comfortable white Americans feel less
comfortable, and so civil rights legislation started to
move.
Precisely,
Ziegler confirmed. In the 70s,
comfort and consumption put Americans on a guilt trip. If
you heated your house so that your toes weren't blue, you
couldn't enjoy the warmth, because you were wasting
resources. Ditto for driving anywhere, which also caused
more oil imports, thus weakening the nation. Don't you
recall that it was the moral equivalent of war?
I nodded. But then came Reagan and the 80s, and
nobody felt guilty about anything. Didn't he just say that
the homeless were homeless by choice?
Ziegler laughed. Like it was a career option, a
choice between arbitrage and underwriting. As if a so-so
kid wakes up one morning and wonders, 'Should I drop out
and go sleep on heat grates, or take up golf and become
vice-president?'
He continued. But people swallowed that during the
80s, because guilt was internalized then. If the mill shut
down and you lost your job, it was because you'd been
making too much money, not because it belonged to a
corporation whose executives all had golden parachutes, so
they didn't care a fig for their stockholders or employees.
Nobody got mad at society. We even developed New Age
religions. No original sin; bliss comes from proper
channeling of your attitude.
I interrupted. I get the picture. In the 80s, you
felt guilty only because you weren't rich enough or thin
enough. But what's coming with the 90s?
We're looking into that. This Sunday is significant,
with riots in the poor part of Miami on the same day that
the rich side of town exults in American decadence with the
Super Bowl. It's not a contest between the 49ers and
Bengals. It's a battle for America's attention. We'll go
with the winner.
You're going to control the next decade, just based
on today's outcome?
Not entirely,
Ziegler conceded. We're running
surveys, too. You want a sample question?
At my nod, he proceeded.
When you buy a hamburger for lunch, do you feel guilty because:
A. Some people can't afford to buy hamburgers?
B. You didn't get some tofu from lower on the food and consumption chain?
C. You can't afford a petit filet minon and besides, you're missing an opportunity to do a power lunch?
D. You're pouring deadly cholestrol into your system?
E. The beef came from cows with big brown eyes?
F. Your burger may have started as a cow that grazed in a slashed-and-burnt tropical rain forest, thus hastening the global greenhouse effect?
I pondered a moment. Those are all good reasons to
feel guilty.
Of course,
he said. If we get a lot of A
answers, the 90s will be like the 60s. If we get B, then
the 70s are back, alas. C and D mean the 80s won't end for
a while. At the committee, we're betting on E and F, those
promising new prospects for the guilt distributors. But we
want to be sure before we launch a new decade next
year.
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