Have you noticed that a whole lot of people expect the world to end soon? I am not one of them but I am fascinated by them.
There was the young woman barrista in the coffee shop I frequent who had been destined for law school but instead went to Oregon to make a living raising and sheering sheep. Her reasoning was that since our consensus reality was soon to collapse, primitives would need wool not lawyers. Why do we need so many lawyers? But that's another diary.
Follow me below as we pursue the mystery of world enders and turn signals
Then there is Alex Jones of Austin. He's the internet radio shock jock of Conspiratorial Armageddon who believes that the best way to fight the New World Order is to stock up on freeze dried food, diamond gusset jeans, colloidal silver for your lungs, water purifiers and assorted survivalist gear. While Alex sounds totally convinced by his spiel, one is inclined to believe he has not traded a comfortable suburban home for a bunker. Indeed, rather than heading for the hills, Alex has built a new TV studio a sure sign that things are about to fall apart.
Alex is easily outdone by the Coast to Coast AM radio show and its guests and listeners. Here one discovers that UFOs are part and parcel of the day to day lives of Coasties. For instance, one learns that there are several different types of aliens; Grays, Repitilians, tall Nordic humans, monk-robed aliens who faces are never visible.... and that Reptillians are evil while Nordics are good and Grays are zombies of sorts. Moreover, there are delicious government coverup scenarios that arise naturally out of UFOlogy only to cross pollinate with Alex Jones' "Awake" audience and their anxiety over the New World Order. According to Coast's various guests & listeners, the world is always about to end; they are just not agreed on how, why and when. I don't mean to call people, who have seen UFOs or who've had close encounters of whatever level, liars. I, personally, have not had a sighting/encounter and so remain agnostic on the matter. Yet, that end of the world/alternate reality smell is all over this stuff and people just eat it up.
There are my Austrian Economics School libertarian friends on twitter who get the hebe-jebes at the very mention of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In consensus reality TSA exists to protect citizens who travel by checking the identities and belongings of passengers for items that once aboard could be used as weapons. But in the reality my libertarian friends inhabit, the TSA is a dark, threatening agency that wants to eat your freedom for breakfast and see you naked. All in all, tales of my libertarian twitter friends could be another diary as well. But I mention them to point out that they live in an alternate dystopian reality within the consensus reality.
They don't fear the end of the world as we know it (thanks REM); they look forward to it. Our world after collapse will afford them their big chance to fly the lead balloon of Austrian lessez faire economics and nail us all to Bryan's old Cross of Gold. Still it is entirely weird and not a little jarring to realize that they look at TSA and see threat where I see protection. (Now, in fairness, I do have to admit that TSA's parent agency the Department of Homeland Security has a creepy name; when do we ever call the USA Das Homeland eh?)
My usual response to Austrian-lib-terrier TSA hysteria is to point out that the TSA can be seen and is pretty much limited to airports; whereas I'm much more worried about the 16 Federal intelligence agencies that have more money than God and can't be seen. I get no takers; the beady eyes of my Austrian-lib-terriers remain trained on those "shoe-sniffin, junk-grabbin" former computer programmers of the TSA. So it goes.
So what does it all come down to?
Over the last year or so people have stopped using their turn signals when changing lanes on the highways. This is dangerous and a public nuisance. But, what's the use! the world is going to end anyway right? And I suppose if I'm following an Austrian-lib-terrier, I really don't have a need to know what lane that liberty-mobile will move into. But I still give them several flashes of my brights and gesticulate wildly; first to the left then to the right to convey I'm gesticulating about their lack of turn signal etiquette. The perps never seem to see or, if they do, they shoot me a very bored bird. Motorists who bother to notice me conclude I'm crazy and quickly move away...without signaling. Ah but the UFOs display the most highway courtesy; they just go over the top.