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Lately the most routine matters have been elevated to significant statements of personal values. From breakfast until bedtime, you're under constant scrutiny by the new Ideological Police Forces.
Is your morning coffee Maxwell House because you believe
it's good to the last drop?
Or because it was on
sale? Or do you drink some other brand because you like its
taste or price?
The Ideological Police won't buy those flimsy excuses. They know you drank Maxwell House because you're an advocate of abortion. General Foods, which owns the brand, sponsored a TV special last spring which dramatized the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Further, Maxwell House has engaged TV personality Linda Ellerbee to appear in commercials, and she has favored freedom of choice.
But if you imbibed Folger's or Scotch-Buy instead,
you've just announced that you plan to join Operation
Rescue at its next non-violent
demonstration.
Come lunchtime, did you go to a fast-food hamburger stand because it was convenient?
That constitutes a confession to the Ideological Police, and they don't even read you your rights first. Perhaps they'll let you go with a warning if you explain that you really didn't mean to destroy several acres of tropical rain forest while burying America in styrofoam.
Or did you send out for a Domino's Pizza? Forget price and service as considerations. The Ideological Police will set you under bright lights and brandish their rubber hoses until you confess that you ordered Domino's because Tom Monaghan, the chain's founder and CEO, donates money to Right-to-Life causes, and thus you're in agreement with him, and you really ordered that pizza, not because you were hungry, but because you wanted to see poor women skulking down alleys to die horribly at the hands of illegal quack abortionists.
Stop for gas, and if it's an Exxon station, you filled your tank there because you believe in drunken captains polluting Prince William Sound, not because the Exxon station was on the way.
All those run-ins with the Ideological Police have made you edgy, so you decide to relax with a cold one.
You can't order a Coors because it's on draught or because it's the cheapest beer in the saloon or because you happen to like the stuff, though.
The Ideological Police will insist that you ordered Coors because you support Joe Coors' right-wing politics. If you ordered another brand, it won't be because you liked it for reasons of price or taste. You did it just to send Joe Coors a message about Ann Gorsuch or James Watt or unions.
To some people, the two are separate matters. If you don't like Joe Coors' politics, you should boycott his politics, and if you don't like his beer, don't drink it. But the Ideological Police won't let you think that way.
Watch TV after dinner? You can't just turn off a show if
you don't like it. The Ideological Police insist that you
watch the offending program quite closely, so that you can
note all the sponsors, and then start boycotting them.
That's the tactic used by Terry Rakolta, the founder of
Citizens for Responsible Television, and now she's a power
in the nation, able to keep major corporations from
sponsoring episodes of Married...with Children.
Few of us ever really think so deeply throughout the day. Generally, you're buying a product or service, not a preparing a political message. But to the Ideological Police, every purchase is a deliberate statement about abortion, rain forests, South Africa, labor relations, pollution, export-import balance, or a dozen other issues.
The ideal solution might be to boycott everything. The economy might collapse, but at least then we wouldn't have to worry about the Ideological Police hovering over our shoulders, billy-clubs poised, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation.
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