Sunday, March 2, 2014

By the Smart Phone's Early Light


Mack Hall, HSG
 
By The Smart Phone’s Early Light
 
Any nation is perceived both by its own people and by others through its symbols: the Star of David for Israel, the monarchy for the more-or-less-maybe-kinda-sorta United Kingdom, the maple leaf for Canada, the eagle and serpent for Mexico, the Byzantine eagle for Russia, and expensive little bottles of water for the United States.
 
A more accurate symbol of the modern USA might be bottled water in the hands of Americans being probed, patted, and frisked by other Americans.  No, not in a hootchie movie; it’s just the way we live now.
 
An old Viet-Cong veteran watching television news images of Americans with their hands up and being flushed out their own places of work in their own country by squads of uniformed men wielding M-16s must surely gloat as he yips “Back at ya, Yanks!”
 
But, by golly, we Americans surrender like nobody else.  We might give up our dignity and even our trousers so we can be fondled in public by some otherwise unemployable Homeland Security doofuss in a polyester uniform, but we never surrender our water bottles and our MePhones.  There are limits.
 
How might the symbols of history be different if bottled water and little Orwellian telescreens had been available long ago?
 
George Washington crosses the Delaware while looking for a geo-satellite signal on his MePhone while the lads in the boats search each other for contraband.  “Sorry, Private Winthrop, but we have to place you in a holding cell because of this one-inch Swiss Army Knife.  You are forbidden to board the boat, make the hazardous river crossing amid ice floes in the middle of the night, march miles through the snow to Trenton, and then risk being shot by German mercenaries.”  Or perhaps suffer a little traffic problem ordered by someone in the governor’s office.
 
Lady Liberty, faux pagan goddess, holds aloft over New York Harbor a plastic bottle of designer water enriched with Tahitian vitamins. While being patted down.
 
The Texas Army never receives the order to advance on San Jacinto because General Houston can’t get enough bars on his MePhone for texting.  While being strip-searched.
 
Abraham Lincoln with earbuds.  While being wanded.
 
Henry Ford, while texting, is run over in the street by the first Model T.  No one goes near the body because they’re too busy taking pictures with their little Orwellian telescreens and captioning the images with our new national anthem: “OMG! OMG! OMG!”
 
At the Battle of Bunker Hill Colonel Prescott commands his men “Don’t fire until they can see your underwear with their electronic glasses!”
 
Davy Crockett, age three, shoots an electronic image of a bear with his game console.  He then has to write an apology to PETA.
 
Indians give Sir Walter Raleigh an electronic cigarette.  And a cavity search.
 
Sculptor Gutzon Borglun receives a federal arts grant to render the images of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt as a photoshop image and so never gets around to carving up Mount Rushmore.  However, a TSA agent goes through all his stuff anyway.
 
Could we Americans sink any lower in subjecting ourselves to the humiliation of being interrogated, searched, frisked, prodded, patted, poked, wanded, and ordered about by menacing bullies in scary uniforms?  Well, yes, we could fly Air Canada.
 
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