Prologue
“We are not a complicated people. But these are accelerated times. It’s kind of hard to imagine now. John and Paul driving across London just to find the one kid who knew this particular D chord. But that was back then, decades ago. Nowadays, everyone you know can play three different instruments. We’re not bad singers, either. Everyone you know can dismantle and rearrange a personal computer at will; we’re competent skiers, we rock climb, we mountain climb. We can handle a 40 foot yacht like nobody’s business. Half the people you know can pilot an airplane. File their own taxes, construct their own web pages. Most commonly, can not only steer their own vehicles down the highway at 80 miles per hour while simultaneously fiddling with the radio, talking on a cell phone, and checking out their appearance in the drop down visor’s mirror, but can repair whatever inevitably goes wrong with said automobile. Thanks to a glutton of police procedural television shows, most of us know if not every last protocol of forensics and crime scene investigation, then nearly so, and doubly so the language. Most of us speak more than one language. Most of us have visited more than one foreign country. We’ve explored a little more than ever before that which is closer to home, too, meaning each other. Sexual partners in numbers that would have seemed eye-popping even in the supposedly swinging decades of yore, commonplace now. And forget those old jokes about not being able to program a VCR. More like hooking up a complete entertainment center blindfolded, surround sound and digital television, six different remotes all cued in together - no problem.
We are not a complicated people. Small town people, sure, okay, and all this, this is just what it takes to get by these days. Even in our small towns. As ordinary as postal service, these functions by rote. Accelerated times like these, though, it never fails to fascinate where the fault lines still are. The breaking point at which a cluster of people will part for an automobile creeping in their midst, that magic number where it becomes a big enough mob they don’t have to budge, and don’t, they stand and stare doing whatever it is they’d been doing all along.
And sure, a similar breaking point in relation to the government, and the control it exerts. Apathy gives way to carte blanche, for awhile. Government turns its screws harder and harder, and the common man stands for it up to a point. Or rather, sits down with a six pack up to a point. Eventually, however, the same bright idea seizes most at roughly the same instant, like a chorus of insects - strength in numbers. Meaning, your neighbor across the street appears to be doing whatever he feels like doing and getting away with it and most of your coworkers do whatever the they want and get away with it, so will you. Because the masses are just too great to control. And those allegedly in power, you turn their lassitude against them.”
