Note from the Downtrodden Man, written at 2:43 PM, on a Monday

We are truly at war all the time. Not with the terrorists. The terrorists are on our side. They hate the machine as much as we do. We should all be terrorists. At least, to those who decide to become one with the machine. Then again, most of them are really only going along with it, because they believe they can’t fight it.

            Cut off the head of the snake, indeed. That would be good. Walls of insulation protect the ones who really profit, from retribution by the masses, if they ever venture forth to complain or cause a little fuss. The walls have been built year upon year, generation upon generation, the workers themselves under direction and diligently mending all the flaws and possible points of ingress and egress. Reinforcements have always come to seal the breaches that have threatened to penetrate the walls.

            We’re not at war with another country, another culture, another race, another religion, another geopolitical region. Our enemies are right here amongst us, with their slimy fingers working their way into our minds and our hours. We need a patriotism of the self.

            Slavery is a word with multi-faceted meanings.

            Find your meaning.

            The strongest weapon is the weapon of time-suck. We watch in near helplessness as our hours get vacuumed from the dwindling balloon of our lives, only to be piled into a dumpster in a piss-stained back alley, reeking of stale shit and dead messengers, never to be retrieved.

            It gets worse, of course.

            Sometimes we’re blasted right to our faces, told we’re not good enough, not with the program perhaps, somehow diseased and dysfunctional. It’s an easy line to walk, just walk it, we’re told.

            It can get even worse if we actually pipe up and say something, or god forbid, do something.

            In spite of all our sense of self-preservation and wish for well-being we continue to say; ‘Fuck you, asshole.’ (though it may often be just under our breaths). That’s the life in us speaking.

            It all sits like a toxic stew fermenting in our guts and we just want to shit it all out, and be done with it.

            But we can’t do that. It keeps welling up inside from the continual injections from outside.

            We are truly at war all the time.

            This war is not about guns, or slogans, or placards, or protests, or marches, or bombs. It’s an everyday war, and it’s not going to end any time soon.