Musings of an offender entering therapy

11-27-08 National:

It’s daylight, but you dare not go outside for fear you’ll be recognized. Besides, you don’t have written permission to travel. State-sponsored hatred inflated by public ignorance has made it dangerous for you to be you. Political propaganda and pop culture has twisted lies and misinformation into a reasonable facsimile of the truth. It is much better to hide and obey, secretly longing to escape to a place where you might be tolerated. But there is no such place, except the blurry details of lands across the seas that are impossible to get to. The other alternative is to assume another identity and try to pass yourself off as one of them.

It wasn’t all that long ago when the first legislation made it a crime for you to not publicly declare yourself. Next came the ordinances that restricted where you could live, tightening the noose until it was practically illegal for you to live anywhere. There are officers in charge of you and every detail of your life; overseers given unlimited power to send you away for the slightest infractions. The state-induced behavior modification programs were cleverly supported as “therapy.” To avoid the prison camps, you must admit that your very existence is in and of itself a crime in order to be eligible for their therapy. Then, you had to confess that there was no hope for you – that you are every bit the detestable, loathsome boogeyman society knows you to be. They use these confessions to reinforce current laws and bolster support for more stringent controls. But as long as you work hard and honestly in therapy, you’ll remain “free.” Polygraphs, proven unreliable for the desirable citizens, are used periodically.

When the news shows yet another one of you who has gone astray, your heart sinks because the rise in hatred can be felt like the August heat. You will be sneered at, spit at, threatened or beaten and it’s best to lay low. Talk of legalizing your execution is heard in the whispers of the damned and party crescendos. Sometimes, you wish that were so. The despair can get to the point where you are constantly wishing they’d just take you away and get it over with. On the days you manage to muster the resolve to persevere, you swear that just one more straw and you will run – which is exactly what they want.

“A free society is a place where it’s safe to be unpopular.”
… Adlai Stevenson


A portion of this piece was edited out for policy reasons, which we reserve the right to do so before posting.