A caustic contrast in liberty-based or slavery-based thoughts and actions.
Ignorant Slave Aggressor (disinterested, smacking gum): Passport.
Ignorant Slave Victim keeps head down, avoids eye contact, and hands passport to aggressor.
Aggressor (annoyed): Where’s your exit card?
Victim: Uh, I don’t think I got one.
Aggressor (scoffs): If you don’t have one, you can’t board your flight.
Victim: Where would I have gotten one?
Aggressor: When you entered the country, immigration gave you one.
Victim: I swear I didn’t get one!
Aggressor: There’s no way we made a mistake, and even if we did, I don’t care. Ya gotta have one or you can’t leave.
Victim: Where can I get one now? Here at the airport?
Aggressor (snorts loudly with pleasure): Nope, gotta go to the immigration office on the other side of town. You’ll have to fly another day.
Victim: But I’ll lose my flight and hundreds of dollars!
Aggressor: Next!
Ignorant Slave Victim (groveling): No, please! I don’t have enough money to buy another ticket!
Aggressor: Not my problem.
Victim walks away, trembling. Another traveler approaches, looks aggressor in the eye.
Aggressor: Passport.
Conscious Victim: Do you mean a small tracking book, made compulsory by threat of violence?
Aggressor: Huh?
Victim hands passport to aggressor.
Aggressor: Where’s your exit card?
Victim: By exit card, do you mean a small piece of paper that I was given by a costumed order-follower when I crossed an imaginary, illegitimate line called a “national border”?
Aggressor: You getting smart with me?
Victim: Just speaking truth by way of questioning.
Aggressor: Do ya have the card or not?
Victim: So, to be clear, if I have the small piece of paper you’re referring to, then I’ll be free to exercise the natural right to travel. However, if I don’t have this particular piece of paper, then I will be physically stopped from traveling by people using physical power against me?
Aggressor: That’s a long winded way to put it, but yeah, something like that.
Victim: So you’re telling me that rights can be granted or denied by people and are contingent on pieces of paper?
Aggressor: That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying you can’t fly without your travel card.
Victim: We’re both saying the same thing, but your version is very deceptive because you’re using euphemisms.
Aggressor: You-fe-whats?
Victim: Euphemisms.
Aggressor: Do you have the card or not?
Victim hands piece of paper to aggressor. The paper simply says, in large, block letters, “OK TO FLY TODAY”
Aggressor: This isn’t it. You’re holding up the line.
Victim: Ah, you want a different piece of paper?
Aggressor: This is your last chance, pal.
Victim hands slave tracking card (exit card) to aggressor.
Victim: You mean this one?
Aggressor: Yeah, that’s it.
Victim: What’s the difference between the two pieces of paper?
Aggressor: One’s a travel card, and the other isn’t.
Victim: So one piece of paper, in your mind, magically makes it ok for people to travel. The other, in your mind, does not possess that same power.
Aggressor hands card and passport back.
Aggressor: Move on.
Victim: One last question. Do you control your own mind?
Aggressor: Of course I do. Now move along.
Victim: If a new so-called regulation were to be put in your mind tomorrow, saying that pieces of paper called exit cards were no longer necessary to leave a so-called “country”, then you would stop coercing people for those pieces of paper?
Aggressor: If the law changed, yeah.
Victim: But you control your own mind? Really?
Conscious Victim walks off, content that truth was spoken and resistance offered. A seed of liberty planted. Aggressor scratches head.
Thanks for your time and attention!
Just say "NO" to slavery!
Top image is from Flickr
