BBX
reporter Baldy Maxwell caught up with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson
outside a conference room in the basement of Parliament and managed an
interview---
Sir, how do all your lockdowns work together with your Brexit campaign? Is there a connection?
Of
course, Baldy. The plan was to leave the European Union and then
establish ourselves as a floating Prison Island. I thought I had made
that clear from the outset.
Apparently, sir, most people missed it.
Well,
then, let me go on the record. Brexit had nothing to do with
freedom. It was always about future lockdowns. I suspected that the EU
might object to a member country sentencing its entire population to
in-house arrest…so the UK had to sever its tie to the EU.
In other words, the plan for imprisonment predated COVID.
Of
course. When COVID came along---and by the way, it’s no more troubling
than a flu season---I grasped that pretext. People always want a reason
for new policy implementation. I gave them one.
However, this leaves the real explanation for the lockdowns hanging. Why? Why put the country in jail?
It’s
the logical extension of decades of increasing government
regulation. In for a penny, in for a pound. Obviously, the population
has wanted greater government control. I made the extra leap. I saw the
finish line and I took us there.
So the lockdowns will go on forever?
In
one form or another, yes. Immunity passports, cell phone apps,
tracking, surveillance, police break-ins, universal guaranteed income
tied to behavior. If a person wants enough money to survive, he must
obey all rules.
What about people who want to work for a living and earn their money the old-fashioned way?
That’s
an extinct system, Baldy. It’s unsupportable for many reasons. We’re in
the age of robotics and AI. This is where all the jobs are
going. Humans have one indispensable function; they consume. They buy
products. They can do that from their homes. They don’t need to be out
and about.
Sir, for some time I, and many others, have been wondering about your hair. How it’s done.
Done?
Do you wake up in the morning and get out of bed---rumpled---and leave your hair that way all day?
Again,
I thought I’d explained that. Goodness, no. I tried the random rumpled
strategy and it didn’t work at all. Variations of an unpleasant nature
result from the anarchic approach. I have a stylist. She’s very good.
What does she do?
Before breakfast, she handles my look. She more or less copies yesterday and the day before, and so on. Nothing is casual.
I
ask, because it seems to me your presentation is on the order of
“oppressed English schoolboy.” You know, the lad who’s mocked and beaten
by his mates on a regular basis and is deeply ashamed. And at moments,
I’m reminded of a child who’s stolen a plum and been caught.
Right. I fancy that it’s straight out of Dickens. I’m a regretful little thief. I’m brooding over my fate.
Obviously, you like the look.
When
I slam the hammer on the population---the fourth or fifth
lockdown---it’s always with a certain degree of sadness. Guilt. I want
people to sense that, to see it in my hair, face, and manner. At any
rate, we all serve the cause.
What cause is that?
Since
the end of the Empire, aside from brief respites of heroics, our way of
life has been: Suffering. That’s the theme. It’s deep, and runs through
all classes.
You’re saying there’s no---
No
way out. We stand in line. We huddle. We bitch and moan. Occasionally,
we erupt into violence. Our art is making something out of that
suffering. I’m the whipped schoolboy in all of us.
Sir, isn’t that in itself a rather pathetic cartoon with which outsiders have characterized us?
Yes
and no, Baldy. But you see, now we have a new chance. There is light at
the end of the tunnel. We can remake our society in the form of a
brilliant machine.
A what?
The
New Normal is going to be a functional slot for every person, and a
person for every slot. No citizen or immigrant left behind. Technology
demands a civilization that, step by step, is planned to provide
specific duties for each human---and altogether, those duties integrate
and add up to a whole clicking and blinking and whirring Organism.
Orwell? Huxley?
But
first, we must break every person down so that his independent impulses
are squeezed out of him. Hence, the lockdowns. And that is why I wear
my hair the way I do. To register a note of grief about the pain of
necessary imprisonment.
I see.
I
am a symbol, as it were, of both regret and joy. Because the future
will shine. It will contain, after several generations, no scabs or
scars. Its perfect surface will reflect our commitment: all for one and
one for all and all for all.
Slavery.
Willingly, freely, pleasurably lived.
And if you’re still remembered in that future, sir?
Sipping
a glass of tea or whiskey on a quiet afternoon, someone will look at a
photo of me and chuckle at my hair and my demeanor. And since all memory
of the past will have been deleted by then, that someone will have no
idea why I was the way I was.
Just like now.
Perhaps.
You’re Big Brother who’s made himself up to look like Little Boy.
Bingo. You win the prize.
What’s the prize?
Locked
down in your home---a delivery of something indispensably British: a
watercress sandwich with a whisper of butter on white bread with no
crust.
~~~
(The link to this article posted on my blog is here.)
(Follow me on Gab at @jonrappoport)
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