My acquaintance with the works of the late Michael Crichton isn’t deep. However, I have read what many consider to be his best novel, State of Fear, and was greatly impressed by his insight into the desires and methods of contemporary power-seekers.
A fearful populace, that shrinks from terrors real and imagined, is the most fertile sort for the would-be totalitarian. And don’t kid yourself: there are always aspiring totalitarians among us. They may be harmless enough in appearance. You may be incapable of imagining them doing harm to an insect. But given a sufficient population, they will be there.
I’ll pause here for a striking snippet from the recent movie American Sniper:
If I may further exploit the analogy, totalitarians are friendly to wolves. Indeed, they seek to hire as many as they can, to enforce their will. But the typical wolf, whether he’s aware of it or not, is a bully and a coward. Sheepdogs – those who are ready, willing, and able to respond adequately to a threat to others – being inherently un-cowardly, are a threat to them.
Among the tragic truths about our species is the paucity of sheepdogs. My estimate, based solely on my own acquaintance with Mankind, is that it’s less than 1%. Still more tragic is the recognition that the totalitarians of our kind have targeted them for extinction.
One recently revealed sheepdog is being shamefully abused by a notoriously abusive “justice” system. Darleen Click has a few thoughts about this:
The wolves, sheep and sheepdog social metaphor is an old one…. We can nit-pick the metaphor all day long, but the framework of the narrative is sound. The percentage of human beings who run towards the fire is very small. Most people have a really hard time grasping evil in the world and when confronted directly by it, avert their eyes.
[…]
The question now should be why the Alvin Braggs and Merrick Garlands are out to shoot the sheepdog. Why do they want more of this?
Because sheepdogs allow the sheep to go about their daily, peaceful and productive lives. It allows them to feel safe from being the victims of random or targeted violence. It allows them the space, too, to be concerned with more than just their lives.
And the Ruling Left cannot have that. A population in constant, irrational fear is easier to control. Totalitarians find macro-power not enough. They want micropower — the power to direct your life down to what you eat, cook, how you’ll wash your clothes, where you live and even your leisure time is to be regulated.
Dead-center bull’s-eye.
A State of Fear requires that sheepdogs be eliminated, penned up, or inhibited from acting on their protective impulses. The wolves who serve the totalitarians must have no fear of being called to account. If ordinary people are confident that there are others who will act when action in support of justice is necessary, the wolves cannot ride roughshod. Their fear of the sheepdogs will keep them at bay.
Daniel Penny is a sheepdog. Kyle Rittenhouse was a sheepdog-in-embryo. George Zimmerman aspired to sheepdoggery; when the moment arrived, he found what he needed. Note how brutally the media have treated all three of these men. It’s a huge giveaway, especially when “supplemented” by the orations of such as Al Sharpton.
Time was, the sheepdog was the sort of American who sought a career in the military or the police. With the recent degradation of those professions, many sheepdogs no longer find them attractive. The legal and media environment of our time is not favorable to the protective actions that come naturally to the sheepdog. They’d prefer to put him in a dress and high heels.
If one of your sons strikes you as a budding sheepdog, watch over him. Others will notice what you have noticed, and they might not approve as you do. Nurture his protective impulses. Teach him the virtues, especially the virtues of courage and justice. And for the love of God, keep him away from the “public” schools. They’ll drain away his courage and teach him never to “get involved,” for they too are in service to the totalitarians and their State of Fear.
Tangentially related to this subject is this striking piece from Lincoln Brown. As our personhood diminishes in others’ eyes, predation tends to increase and protection tends to diminish. Please read it all, and combine its thesis with that of this recent essay. And do please have a nice day.
3 comments
If you are a fan of the late great Michael Crichton, then you owe it to yourself to read “Timeline,” his late 1990s techno-thriller which appeals both to the historian in me and the science & technology nerd as well, in about equal proportions, too. Crichton was a bloody genius in my view, one of those rare intellects and souls who could understand complex scientific and technical subject matter, but relate it to the common person in a manner which was both entertaining and free of patronizing and ideological posturing.
Regarding the use of fear as a tool for the enhancement of power, of course the elites benefit from it and this is nothing new. Acerbic journalist and early-mid 20th century commentator H.L. Mencken once said, “The whole purpose of practical politics is to keep the population alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety… by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Indeed, the social engineering of fear – in other words, its deliberate creation – is a high crime and ought to be regarded as one, for it is an insidious form of abuse and an attack upon one’s person and society. Or, if you prefer, psychological warfare. And that begs the question of why anyone or anything – such as our own government – would want to deliberately inflict fear and hardship upon its own population?
And as for the question of why the power-brokers and the deep-state don’t want “sheepdogs” around, just look up the Battle of Athens, which took place in 1946 in the town of that name in Tennessee.
Could it be a coincidence that KimDotcom chose the same day as your essay for him to try and rekindle the big fear of the second half of the 20th century?
As he practically begged his followers to share this tweet, whose side is he really on?
Look up Michael Crichton’s bio sometime. It’s bizarre.
He was originally going to be a doctor. While he was going to Harvard Medical School he found the time to write half a dozen pretty-good adventure novels under various pen names. When that palled, he signed up for a minor in Computer Science, specializing in computer graphics, which was basically math back then.
After receiving his MD he interned at Mass. General in Boston, didn’t like the bureaucracy, and decided to go off to Hollywood and make movies. So he did. As well as finding time to write and sell some computer games and studio management software. And a bunch more books, under his own name, most of which hit the best-seller lists.
He blended medicine and computers in many of his later novels and movies. His movie “Westworld” was the first to use what we now call “CGI”, computer graphics.
Best as I can tell, “Michael Crichton” was actually triplets or quintuplets. Or maybe twins who didn’t need sleep.