Instead of ‘Pay No attention to That Man Behind the Curtain!’ A Better Question Seems to Be, ‘What Happened to the Curtain?’

“I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.”
~ Elvis Costello

Almost everyone is familiar with the genesis of the phrase, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” The Wizard of Oz, who uttered this famous phrase, had a scheme. That scheme was based directly upon an impression of omnipotence without any legitimate power. Surely that impression would be lost should anyone see him pulling levers and talking into a microphone. I can’t help but imagine that if an agent of today’s state were to switch places with the Wizard, he’d utter no such words. In fact, I suspect he’d just sit there, a nearly-naked pseudo-emperor, with no concern that we could see him. Instead of trying to be coy, he’d leave us with no choice but to exclaim, “Hey, what happened to the curtain?”

I admit that there was a time when I often found myself aghast with the naïveté of the “common man,” whoever that might have seemed to be. That was also the time when I figured that the primary reason, or maybe the only reason, that the state could so successfully infringe upon the rights of the very people it claimed to protect was due to a combination heavy smoke and mirrors, blind trust, and inexplicable deference. Voltaire is credited with saying, “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

In a similar vein, Dresden James said, “The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.” Certainly both of these sentiments are true, but I’ve recently begun to think it’s not quite that simple. Maybe it never was.

Who could blame a person for continuing to believe in his government when so much of its duplicity is obscured from everyone except crazy conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands or ostensible whistleblowers with apparent axes to grind? Well, so much for that. Right about now, a random viewing of almost any news channel will provide a veritable cornucopia of examples that illustrate, in great and gory detail, that hiding is the last thing on the minds of today’s bureaucratic rights infringers. Basically, they do whatever they want, and do so with brazen splendor.

Need proof? Let’s take a casual stroll though a few recent and maybe even not-so-recent examples selected at random. I’ll ignore stuff like Iraq or the election, since frankly, those are just too easy. Along the way, let’s ask a few (hopefully) relevant questions.