Dance Puppets: Who is the ‘man behind the curtain?’

Many years ago, when I was a very young teacher at Bourbon County High School, I had a bril­liant young man in class. He was bright, cre­ative, and excel­lent at crit­i­cal think­ing and abstract thought. He was an absolute joy to have in class, except for one slight­ly annoy­ing habit. Periodically, he would say some­thing real­ly provoca­tive or con­tro­ver­sial that would inevitably lead to oth­ers in the class engag­ing in a heat­ed argu­ment that I had to break up. 

I noticed first that he nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in the argu­ments. He only sat back and watched, usu­al­ly with a sly smile on his face. Second, I noticed that his state­ments var­ied great­ly in terms of polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, reli­gious expres­sion, cul­tur­al norms, etc. One day, when he had popped into class a few min­utes ear­ly, I asked him what he real­ly believed. He replied,

“What dif­fer­ence does it make what I believe? I just like to watch the pup­pets dance.”

And dance they did!

I don’t know where this young man is today. I don’t even remem­ber his last name. But I think it’s not insane to spec­u­late that he is actu­al­ly behind the scenes run­ning the entire U.S. Government. Notice: that is Government with a big ‘G.’ I am talk­ing about the exec­u­tive branch, the leg­isla­tive branch, the judi­cial branch, the left, the right, the mid­dle, the con­ser­v­a­tives, the lib­er­als, the sen­a­tors, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the whole kit and caboo­dle.  He is prob­a­bly sit­ting in a com­fy chair some­where with that sly smile on his face while all the pup­pets dance.

Are you famil­iar with the Wizard of Oz? I don’t mean the col­or­ful musi­cal fea­tur­ing Judy Garland, but the orig­i­nal book. In the book, the wiz­ard appears to each of the main char­ac­ters dif­fer­ent­ly based on what will fright­en them. He sep­a­rates them and scares them all so that they will not pay atten­tion to the fact that he is real­ly just a greedy, old man who wants them to do his dirty work for him. He keeps them afraid so that he can con­trol what they will do. 

He makes them dance like puppets.

I feel that this is the actu­al pur­pose of our elect­ed offi­cials. They know exact­ly what will scare each of us.

Are you a strong pro­po­nent of gun own­er­ship? They will scare you with tales of the far left com­ing for all of your guns.

Are you the par­ent of a gay child? They will scare you with threats to take your chil­dren away from you.

Are you a Christian con­ser­v­a­tive? They will scare you with tales of the trans­gen­dered lunatics out there try­ing to molest your children.

Are you a lib­er­al-lean­ing woman? They will scare you with talk of los­ing your access to birth con­trol and repro­duc­tive healthcare.

Are you white? They will scare you with images of mil­lions of brown peo­ple swarm­ing across a bor­der to steal your jobs.

I could go on and on. The fact is, the ones pulling the strings know what scares you, and they will go out of their way to make you afraid. Why? Because if you are afraid of this intan­gi­ble boogey­man, you will not pay atten­tion to them. You won’t notice that all the laws that do get passed seem to put more mon­ey in the pock­ets of the rich and take more away from the poor (I refuse to say “mid­dle class” since there isn’t one anymore). 

You won’t notice that you are work­ing hard­er and longer for less. You won’t notice that your children’s edu­ca­tion is slip­ping fur­ther and fur­ther behind the rest of the world (edu­cat­ed pup­pets are hard­er to manip­u­late). You won’t notice that your envi­ron­men­tal health is being erod­ed away (sick pup­pets are too weak to resist the pup­pet master). 

You won’t see that all of the fear-mon­ger­ing is an illu­sion to keep you from see­ing the man behind the curtain.