The Deuce and the Matrix

Looking back, it's hard to pinpoint just one moment or event that forced me to swallow the red pill and finally see the world for what it really is. Like most everyone else, I had no Morpheus to lay it all out for me. I had to figure things out for myself.

Maybe it was when my dad went off to Vietnam in 1968, and while he dodged VC rockets that rained down on Da Nang, I watched long-haired dope smoking dirty college kids around the country rioting to stop the "criminal war." In my then eleven year old mind I wondered what was "criminal" about trying to prevent the communist North from invading the democratic South. While one could then argue about just how democratic the South was, there was no question about how communist the North was. The South had freedom in all its messy chaotic goodness; the North was enslaved in its communist straight jacket. What was good and what was evil was pretty clear in my young mind. But I wasn't then subject to the draft. We lost the war and South Vietnam fell into the pit of communism because young American men saw no good reason to risk their lives in jungles on the other side of the world for the benefit of an alien people. I think they had a point.

Red Pill Lesson: sometimes it sucks to be the other guy. Do what you can to make sure you're never the other guy.

Maybe my Red Pill moment was the race riots in L.A., Detroit and Newark. I was still a kid and I couldn't figure out why people would loot and burn their own neighborhoods. Racial prejudice may have been the most obvious cause of the riots, but there were other forces at work. Drugs; a festering welfare state that robbed men of their roles as husbands and fathers; a people who didn't feel like they were a part of America.

Red Pill Lesson: rage doesn't give a shit about logic.

I'm sure the late '70s had a few Red Pill moments. Besides the economic "malaise" the then president Jimmy Carter so famously described, it was the Iranian hostage crisis that defined the time. Iranian militants overran the American embassy and took the staff hostage. They held them for over 400 days and our attempt to rescue them disintegrated at Desert One when a helicopter collided with a C-130 transport plane during a sandstorm. America seemed helpless. When a newly elected president, Ronald Reagan, made it clear that there would be hell to pay if Iran still held the hostages when he took office, the hostages were released at the very moment Reagan was being inaugurated.

Red Pill Lesson: act like a pussy and you're going to be treated like one.

There are lots of more personal Red Pill moments that most people experience. A friend stabs you in the back; a girlfriend cheats on you; you're blamed for someone else's transgression; a person you trust betrays you.

Red Pill Lessons: people are deeply flawed and do what they perceive is in their best interests, you're interests be damned. Be very careful who, and what, you place your trust in.

In the Matrix movies, the Machines grow human beings like a crop, keeping them warm, fed and asleep, entertained with dreams that pass for reality, all the while using them for the electricity their bodies produce. Humanity is a resource, nothing more.

Yesterday, March 23, 2010, the Machine that we know as Communism passed into law the so called Health Care Reform Bill. It forces people, mostly the young and healthy, to purchase health insurance so that the risk pool is big enough to cover the poor who will have their insurance paid by the government, that is, paid by the premiums the young and healthy pay. This is the forced redistribution of wealth, also known as Marxism. Never has the government mandated that citizens purchase anything from private businesses or face fines and possible imprisonment. The law also forces small businesses to purchase health insurance for their employees. No business owner really owns their business any more...the government dictates how you will run your business and what benefits you will provide your employees. This is known as fascism. Also, no health insurance company can reject an application for coverage due to a pre-existing condition. This will drive insurance premiums through the roof as insurance companies struggle to cover this new risk foisted on them. As premiums sky rocket, more and more people and businesses will cry foul, and then the Machine can come to the rescue by instituting a single payer plan, the government, and private health insurance companies will disappear as their premiums are undercut by a wholly taxpayer subsidized "public option plan." The Machine's takeover of America's health care system will be complete. Most everyone will be covered, but by a health care system gutted by costs, bureaucracy, shortages of health care providers and the inevitable rationing of health care. Think the disastrous systems in Britain, Canada and Cuba.

Why? Because it's not about providing health insurance to people too poor to buy it. It's about control. When the Machine controls health care, it controls EVERYTHING. It will decide who gets treatment, what kind of treatment and for how long. The Machine will have your life in its hands. Control. Better do what they say or else find yourself denied treatment. Don't like amnesty for illegal aliens? Better stay silent. Think Cap and Trade is a mistake? Better learn to embrace it. Think schools are little more than communist indoctrination camps? Keep your mouth shut.

Red Pill Lesson: there are a lot of people out there who crave power and will do ANYTHING to get it.

Are you willing to be nothing but a resource for the Machine? Are you willing to be kept warm and fed and entertained by living in a dream world? Are you willing to be enslaved because it's just easier?

Now the questions are, how many Americans received their Red Pill moment yesterday, and how many are ready to fight?

Red Pill Lesson: sometimes, you've got to fight, no matter what.