As usual, Halloween and the election are in conjunction. Demons are on the loose. So is candy, even if it is only supplied at home.
Halloween is our most popular holiday, which is not surprising, because horror is among our most popular cultural preoccupations. In the hierarchy of ghouls, vampires are by far the sexiest. Vampires enjoy eternal life, but their lifestyle is sustained by the blood of others—a small price to pay for immortality.
Many movie vampires have to put up with cramped coffins in dusty cellars away from daylight. Those depictions pay homage to earlier conceptions of the archetype. Modern vampires have risen above such limitations. After all, those earlier writers were looking backward to medieval European folklore, rather than embracing all the richness of modern life. A contemporary vampire would not be caught dead in a dusty cellar, or what’s eternity for?
Your vampire of today knows that the life-force is not blood but money. So, what would you do if you were immortal and needed to batten on others to maintain your standard of living? Would you not do everything in your power to sink your teeth into cash? Would you not sell your “soul” to those in power, those who have the ability to get you the sweetheart deals, the tax cuts, the write-offs, the insider tips, the appointments, the sinecures, the elective offices? Would you not suck up to them? Of course you would, especially if all you have to do is siphon off some of the lifeblood from the less fortunate. It’s not your fault they stick their necks out.
Who are they, anyway? Well, they are us—zombies lurching from paycheck to paycheck, always wanting more but never getting enough, dead to any understanding of how the system really works, ready to believe the vampires who blame others while they put the bite on our livelihood and convince us that our health insurance is not as good as what they’ll give us, because ours came from a Black man. They promise we don’t need protections for our air, our water, our land. They seduce us into believing that we’re the greatest, even though nations of the world, including our former allies, have written us off as a second-rate power bamboozled by the Russians and superseded by the Chinese. They siphon off the money that should have gone to education, healthcare, infrastructure and fighting the pandemic.They have hoovered our lifeblood, but we love them. We admire their cool, their lifestyle. We identify with them. They give us power by association, and they encourage us to emulate them by holding down those who have less power than we do. We are always on the hunt for people to put down, to make us feel better and feel more like those we admire.
The vampires take from us and promise us a share of the good life. We zombies fight among ourselves, some believing the vampires and some not. But neither vampires nor zombies are secure in their predations unless the government is theirs. The vampires can buy the senators, the representatives, the judges and justices, but until they can succeed in doing away with the requirement, they need the zombies to vote. That’s their weakest link. Zombies must agree to keep them in power. That is the only hope of those who would throw off the domination of bloodsuckers who enslave us in a rigged system that allows them to sustain themselves on our backs.
Happy Halloween, and vote, zombies. Get a life!
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