Posted on 03/28/2012 7:10:17 AM PDT by marshmallow
When I was a junior in high school, I read Shirley Jackson’s great short story “The Lottery,” and I will confess that her narrative still haunts me. You might remember the plot. The townspeople of a village in the American heartland are gathering on a beautiful summer day in late June for a festival. There is good food, lively conversation, and upbeat music. It becomes clear that the focus for this celebration is the annual lottery, and the reader naturally assumes that the winner of the lottery will receive a prize of some kind. But when the choice is made, the “winner” shrinks away in fear, protesting the injustice of it all, while her fellow citizens close in on her, rocks and stones in hand. As the story ends, they are upon her.
In medieval Mexico, the Aztecs would choose a particularly handsome and brave warrior from a rival tribe. For a year, they would wine and dine him, provide entertainment for him, and treat him like a celebrity. Then, at the close of the year, they would lead him to the top of a tall pyramid and rip his still-beating heart from his chest, and offer it to the gods.
In the arenas of ancient Rome — most famously in the Colosseum — young gladiators would engage in mortal combat for the entertainment of blood-thirsty mobs, and emperors would use these spectacles for cynical political purposes.
In the mythological story of Theseus and the Minotaur, we hear that the king of Crete obligated the king of Athens every year to send seven young men and seven young women to battle the Minotaur, who was hidden in a devilishly complex maze. No one survived the ordeal, until Theseus managed to outwit the monster and escape from the maze.
All...........
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Yeah, in Obamaland.
Except it is here. We have already made both the unborn and the old and infirm subhuman underclasses who may be sacrificec for for the convenience of society at large.
While I agree with the writer that things are certainly going to get worse, he writes as though that Rubicon has yet to be crossed.
The huge response to this book/film shows that most people have no knowledge of many other far better sci fi stories. P.K. Dick’s stories reached huge popularity in movies only after he was dead.
p.s. Sci fi writers of the 1950s and 1960s were typically paid 1-2 cents a word by sci fi magazines of the time.
Which of our rights are not now at the mercy of the state?
What is the clear line that federal power cannot cross?
Does the Constitutional Republic even exist anymore?
I read the Hunger Games series along with my children and discussed its underlying meaning in depth.
They are consistently discussing this Rubicon, but they’ve yet to find a safe place to cross. The problem, as I see it, manifests in American citizens’ distaste for overreach. There’s yet to be a politician brave enough to stand behind a gun confiscation scheme, because they know damn well that doing so would be the end of their career and possibly their life.
Once the enemies have set up camp on this side of the Rubicon, they will find a very angry electorate sniping at them from every angle. Many of us are willing to die for what this country stands for. The Progressives don’t have that luxury.
I read THE LOTTERY many years go and still remember it.
As for the Hunger Games....
Already been done a little differently.
THE 10th VICTIM (1965)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059095/
I could've sworn that was Chuck Norris...
You forget that they did it during Katrina. And people willingly handed over their guns. That was just a test run. All they need is a “crisis.”
That person got to live the high life for one night, and everything they wanted was available to them. And then the night ended with a lethal injection. Popular control.
It’s just the current incarnation of an old story, kids read it, as it was promoted and published by Scholastic, has female protagonists, all the ingredients to be a movie hit and at least a trilogy series. Just think Harry Potter.
er... “population control”, obviously.
Hence this administration’s obsession with contraception.
I intend to read the books, if only to educate myself enough to talk about them with my kids and their friends.
When the "Law Makers" and "Law Enforcers" become the biggest "Law Breakers", immune to and unencumbered by the penalties and restrictions of their own rules, THE RULE OF LAW CEASES to have MEANING and we enter the realm of the LAWLESS!
Welcome to the communistic dictatorship of Zero! The next few months will get very interesting indeed...
When people here post as if Islam is the only barbaric religion, they are mistaken. It’s only because they are used to Christianity that they think many or most religions are benign. History show that if your culture’s religion is not Christianity (or Judaism, since it comes from the same root), human sacrifice and all sorts of barbarities are liable to be practiced.
We have the system already it's just that like everything else in this society, both the lottery tickets and the final sacrifice are in large part media constructed fantasy.
Psychologically our lottery participants enjoy the same range of emotions and sense of participation and those who operate the system are free to be creative when devising various forms of execution that don't in any way end the utility of the lottery winner. First build up a media or sports personality participants can live vicariously through during their fattening up phase, then reward the participants with an "execution" that for many is even worse than death, the fall from celebrity status. Players even get to enjoy the private little hells the fallen go to after their "execution" and occasionally see one of the fallen return from the hell of dull normal to celebrity status.
True, some who aren't cut out for the role of executed winner end up killing themselves the way Whitney Houston did, but the majority of those chosen provide every bit as much entertainment value as they wallow in their personal hell as they did when they were being fattened up on magazine covers at every grocery checkout in the country.
Eventually, something will lead to a SWAT team having to remove one of the chosen ones from of their cherished home or favorite whore house and the ratings will be so terrific that we'll finally turn the corner and have actual fights to the death become an option for the operators to weave into stories from time to time. I'm sure that the majority of those who now own an under performing "property" they've invested heavily in know what great ratings every phase of the OJ series of events generated so how long can it be until someone figures out how to recoup their investment with a new approach?
Human sacrifice is the default religion of humanity.
Judiasm and then Christianity over turned it at least in the west.
All post Christian/Jewish societies return to it .
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