I tell you I can visualize it all
This couldn't be a dream
For too real it all seems

But it was just my imagination, once again
Running away with me
I tell you it was just my imagination
Running away with me.

—The Temptations

When the solid institutions we once relied upon as the bedrock of our republic abjectly fail us, as the Supreme Court has done in the last six months, I want to understand why, and to look for a means to rectify the problem.  My lack of expertise in these matters frustrates my efforts; luckily, there are writers here who address the subject from a place of real knowledge, at least in terms of validating my conclusion that this has happened.  The solution, I'm not so sure of.

In the meantime, here's my imagination's wild theory on how we got to such a dire place.  It's an easier one to accept than the pure, evil intentions of some of our populace.

In the sci-fi book I'll never write, the alien spaceships we've been observing on government videos, zipping around our military installations and equipment, are responsible for all the nonsense going on in the U.S.  They've set up a long-term strategy game — it's their high-tech version of Risk — and we're the hapless pieces on the board.

In this game, they decided to plant a varying amount of really screwed up alien consciousness "seeds" into about half the citizens of our country.  These people subsequently lose, in varying degrees, their ability to reason like normal Americans.  Symptoms are loss of self-respect, brazen lying, an inability to self-direct to logical conclusions.  These "seeded" beings have unlearned how to think logically, and therefore, they can act in ways consistent with the game parameters the aliens set up.

You can guess who some of these chosen folks are.  They are the most heavily "seeded" ones: Biden, Kamala, Talib, AOC, Maxine, Schiff, Nancy, Schumer, Stacy, et al.  Other seeded people are a bunch of the teacher's union folks and some district attorneys.  You could easily add to the list some of the thugs who burn it, bash it, and steal it nightly.

There is a variety of specimens from which each alien gamer can choose an avatar.  Part of their gamesmanship is figuring out what types of personalities are most susceptible to mental manipulation, then providing the impetus for their avatars to act irrationally, destructively, and brazenly.

As with any videogame, the alien players divide up.  Each group needs an enemy to fight.  Some of the alien players choose to root for us normal people.  The ones who love the USA.  Those people aren't "seeded," and they keep their free will.  The alien players win the game if the unseeded characters overcome the seeded characters' evil manipulations.  It's a giant experiment in mass psychology, a strategy game, and a heck of a lot of fun for obsessed aliens, perhaps bored with watching our world tick on while they miss home and family and live above us in their lightning-fast craft.

This game, like all games, has an objective.  The prize is our civilization.  If the "seeded" ones win, their alien masters get to do what they will with us, even to the extent of dumping the North American landmass right into a black hole, leaving a void that can be filled by another culture (although this may take a modest chunk of years).  Or maybe they'd leave us weak enough that China could take over.  The aliens might then go find another civilization to play their game with, or, if they're lucky, go home for a while.  If the good guys win, we're saved, and the aliens must leave us alone, giving us a chance to lick our wounds and reconstitute rationality.

The manipulative aliens can't make their avatars do specific things.  They can only provide traits, to how characters use them.  They might bestow an inability to analyze world affairs, for instance, on players who have a lot of responsibility for international relations.  Or maybe they just give them a total lack of self-awareness and a strong narcissistic tendency.  Even though the avatars still have self-determination, the traits they are given make them less conscious and less cautious, perhaps enough so they might start a war.  The same traits would mean they couldn't strategize and win it.

Can the good guys stop the destruction?  Can they save the day?  Perhaps, but they'll have to do it repeatedly because like all good games, the bad guys are coming at them from multiple directions at once.  Virus, climate manipulation, executive orders with hidden agendas, border catastrophes, unequal justice, cancel culture — it's almost too much to keep up with.  The good guys must persevere, see the world and the game clearly, learn to work together, and become a force for good in order not to be defeated.

I find it easier to think of what we're going through as sci-fi because the reality is tough to watch.  The fools running the show are trying their best to ruin us permanently.  I just hope that, when it comes to finding the means to fix our problem before we face the obliteration of the country as we know it, there are wise, patriotic people quietly working on the solution.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash (edited by ARW).

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