[The Crackpot comments are in brackets.]

From within

Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 7:19 PM (5 days ago)

James,

From a creative writing perspective, how could one go about compromising a tyrannical system from within?

[Making fun of it is the most corrosive method, offers the most cover as comedy, is recognized as a pressure valve by the elite, and because the true reptilian masterminds who feast upon us have in general a poorly developed sense of humor.]

To be more precise, how would one use the system's weapons against it and make Its life and that of its complicit meat sacks as miserable as possible?

[Typically, the military turns on its manipulative handlers throughout history. For this reason the military is being purposefully emasculated. In Rome, the surest way to fall from favor was to be an effective military leader, with every expansion of the empire generating a counter-current within aimed at negating the key martial virtues. Emasculation is the main thing a truly subversive character should fight to preserve the chance of random revolt among the martial class. It is this fact that puts the lie to recent sham revolts against the gross police aspects of the obsolete system—this tendency for sissies and women and skinny-legged martyrs leading protests and uprisings. Any feminized civic unrest is a vaϲϲine against real civil unrest injected by the system itself into its own arm.]

For example, what if a protagonist pretended to identify as something ludicrous and weird to become untouchable and pressure the system's agents into walking on eggshells daily all the while undermining its inner functions by pretending to be its closer ally and a staunch proponent of its core values - the same values that are used to keep this hypothetical population under control?

[This would probably have to develop organically in the heart of a system functionary who fails in his assigned task to buy the lie he serves. This was the crux of my two dystopian novels Organa: the Malfunction of Tray Sorenson and Cube: The Redaction of Bronson Caan. Such a character is naturally doomed and a realistic treatment is unlikely to have a happy ending.]

Should this protagonist attain the highest rungs of polite society, wouldn't the damage done to any system be worth the trouble of such a travesty?

[Such a character did attain the highest rungs of polite society in 2016. He was outrageous and comedic and in the end was ousted, having done more damage to those who supported his coercive cause than to the system that gagged on his clownish elevation. The beauty of a fully evolved self-sentient system is that it develops instincts against colonization, especially by figureheads. Note that the highest offices in visible polite society are only symbolic and do not have high functionality, with real decisions made secretly and in relative silence. This gains the system blanket cover, as the meat-sacks vote for what they think is the shot-caller when he is nothing but a barker. In such wise, a system that is in itself a text-book study in far-ranging and nefarious conspiracy, is supported by its victims who have been conditioned to believe that conspiracy is impossible and worship such banal lies as rights and freedom and liberty.]

What could the potential dangers be for this character and how would they deal with the more cunning agents of the system?

[Such a realistic fictional character would be Roe Jogan, protagonist in my posthumous collaboration with Phillip K. Dick in the novel The Man Too High to Hassle. In this novel, a system shill, who is such a sell-out whore that he does not know he is a system shill, becomes colonized by his own psycho-phallic subtext and unwittingly revolts against his handlers...]

I know this is nothing new and that the whole thing reeks of Orwell's 1984 but I am eager to hear from you nonetheless.

Be well,

- Mike the Exile

Mister Exile, I am thrilled to find among my readers a true science-fiction buff, who is willing to under-attain the Post-American Dream. Our rulers have already cooked the aspirational post-human goose. Humanity will now be locked down on this planet awaiting the meteor strike that will send us back into the stone age and permit real humans to once again tread where now, only complaisant meat sacks dangle with lolling head.