2048
By Hunter
Sunday Feb 04, 2018 · 9:20 PM PST
In the waning days of the empire, banners flew in every town square; the people celebrated their patriotism loudly and with store-bought merchandise shipped in for the occasion. In the arena, the gladiators battled each other; for the entertainment of the crowd a select few hundred of the country's strongest and fittest slowly bled their remaining lives out, week by week and victory by victory. The dead heroes of the nation appeared on enormous public screens, the meaning of their words washed and scrubbed away until only a single impulse, buy, remained. The papers took note of each effort in turn, and were giddy for it, and graded each according to which buy was the most inspiring, or the most amusing, or the most unexpected.
The arena was the nation, and the nation was the arena. The gladiators' mock battle was treated with the reverence of the real thing, and citizens asked to pay heed; the nation's leaders declared the spectacle to be a homage to the empire's military might, whether the spectacle-goers intended so or not, and with that it became so. Dissent was frowned upon; participants were asked to suffer for the nation, but not speak for it. Those who remained silent were rewarded; those that did not were expunged.
The singers sang, and the nation's most distinguished critics graded each song and raised eyebrows at any whose themes suggested unpleasant things; the dancers danced, and the nation watched in anticipation to see whether the choreography would offend.
It was, all of it, a set piece. A music box, effortlessly opened and effortlessly closed, a mechanism self-contained and immaculately crafted. The empire's elite owned the arena and the gladiators both; they owned the songs the crowd sang along to and the food the crowd would eat; if the nation was in need of a hero, the empire would provide a seat for one that the crowd could gawk at; when gladiators fell on the field and were unable to continue, the big screens showed their contorted faces so that the crowd could roar in appreciation for the injured. The big screens implored buy, again, and the empire's elite owned both the screens and the merchandise that appeared, larger than life, larger than even dreams, upon them. They owned the history and the future; they owned those that performed and those that watched them do so; they owned the flags, and the military they proclaimed the flags paid homage to, and the speakers on which they did the proclaiming.
Everything that was once held dear was held more dear now for the memory of itself; everything that was once celebrated was celebrated again, but through a haze that dulled the senses, obscuring edges and fading the words. The lights seemed to get brighter each time, and the voices on the large speakers more urgent, and the flags larger, and the things to buy got smaller and the reasons to buy more urgent. The nouns receded, and the verbs doubled; the ideas muddied; the heroic corpses multiplied, and sang and danced without a care in the world. They danced like they no longer cared; they danced like the world was new again.
It was all a set piece, but it was loud and happy and cheap and drunk and, above all, important. It was critically and monumentally important; it was order made from chaos, and national pride dissected and respun into something that could be celebrated from the tight confines of rented chair. The gladiators were carted off, one by one, to be retired to a place their loved ones could never quite find; the corpses were restitched and remade time and time again until nobody could quite remember who they were beforehand or whose words they originally spoke. It was important, and loud, and in the waning days of the empire it brought solace. It was important at a time when few things were; it was important at a time when the empire allowed few other things to be deemed so, and the crowds wept earnestly for something, at long last, that was.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/4/1738817/-2048
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