Another troop movement by the forces of satire...

If there is one thing I feel that highlights the millennium thus far, in my mind at least, it is a strange phenomenon that I often sum up in my mind by thinking back to the political satire of decades past. A common tactic of that satire would be to provide views of a future that would be an outrageous extrapolation of the world to come, done with the hope of scaring the bejesus out of the reader or viewer into acting responsibly in the present so as to help avoid a less hyperbolic - yet still unfavorable - development. I don't think a lot of satirists in the 20th century actually ever expected things to get as outrageous as they have in our recent times.

Perhaps I'm muddling it a bit here.

In one installment of Warren Ellis' best series, Planetary, he posits the idea of a universe governed entirely by the conventions of popular fiction (i.e. The hero always wins, villains have to explain their plot, if you see a gun over the mantlepiece in the first act then is shall be fired to devastating effect in the third etc). Several events since 2001, including a new proposal in British security which prompted this entry, have led me to imagine a more specific alternate dimension populated entirely by Political Satire - a universe which has occasionally bled through into our own and caused things to happen that people would have dismissed as wild conspiracy theories or bad jokes in the latter decades of the 20th century.

I mean, come on, talking cameras that chastise people on the street? What is this, Paranoia? Brazil?

Though perhaps I should just envisage a less specific dimension, simply "Satire", as the idea of someone becoming famous (as opposed to infamous and, you know, disgraced) by having most of the first world catch her being fucked in a hotel room while high on cocaine is something else I would have dismissed as hyperbolic farce in years gone by.

Man, just listen to me eh? An old man already, looking back across the Golden Years of the 1990's (which included: The Columbine Shootings and O.J. Simpsons Big Farce). Soon enough I'll be driving kids crazy in a similar manner to how many Baby Boomers got sick of their parents looking back across their Golden Years (I.e. The Great Depression, World War II).

Political Satire Addendum: People tend to either love or be totally indifferent to Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. Those who love him may have noticed that he keeps an exceptionally low profile and therefore may be as pleased as I was to find that he gave a lengthy interview, for the first time in about thirty years, in reaction to his recent storyline concerning B.D. getting his leg blown during a tour of duty in Iraq.