Panicked Sheep?

So, why the title? It comes from a Hunter S Thompson book called The Great Shark Hunt which I am not going to pretend I have read (but do check out Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and also Kingdom of Fear, they're great). It goes like this:

"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep."

He wrote this in 1979 and still, if not more than ever, the USA is a country which is seen to be manipulated by fearmongering figures of power. When Bush declared the Iraq war over in 2003, he also declared that "the war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless". Not only was the War in Iraq not over, but the suggestion was the wider war against a perceived threat would continue indefinitely in whichever country the US Government decided to choose.

Indeed there is still a threat. But threats must be dealt with rationally, and with purpose. There cannot be a war against an idea. Show me how to put terror in a headlock while I am punching fear on the nose. It's a rhetorical fallacy, and it is therefore hard to trust those who use it to convince the masses as the justification of their actions.

Standing up and challenging the 'swine' in power must be one goal of any serious writer. It's not just about Bush bashing- that's easy- but about recognising greed, corruption, indecency and manipulation, and revealing it to the naked eye. This is not about the USA as a country, but about us as people.

Mostly it is about honesty. Perhaps the challenge of writing is to expose ourselves as we really are; to strip away the bravado and disingenuity so we can confront the truth. Look for lies and show them to be false. You don't have to change the world but you can at least 'keep from losing completely'.

For me it's anything from aggressive gangster culture to people who are so hospitable they won't tell you the truth. What is it about us as humans that leads us to deceive each other so readily?

As Thompson says, it's a strange world. Don't be one of the sheep who do as they're told. Write something.

More Hunter quotes here.