The Blurt of Richard Davies

Chapter Two

April the 7th.

It didn't take them long! The local and regional Connie apparatchiks sneaked their congratulatory mails through our filters, wishing me well for the future, and looking forward to our maintaining our high standard of 'casting: In other words, we'll be watching you. The lairy buggers even offered the services of a Media Liaison Assistant at no cost to ourselves if we could find some space within our organisation for one; just to make life easier for everyone concerned... Of course I politely acknowledged their best wishes while declining their kind offer; the sooner we get Maggie up and running the better! Bippin, who has been busy helping to create her, claims she will be an utter bitch to crack. I hope so; anything that makes the lives of the Connies more difficult is fine by me.

I wonder though, for how much longer these supporters of the Consensus government will remain merely an irritation? Theirs is an authoritarianism which eschews mass public rallies, intimidating parades and worship of one leader. They do however swear allegiance to a new ideology bereft of old traditions and wear their uniforms in public, as well as displaying their symbol wherever they can with obvious pride. Yet their party remains a cloistered enigma; its organisation and gatherings hidden from public view.

Instead we live under a far more subtle, intimate form of a dictatorship. One which like its supporters is becoming more deeply insinuated into the fabric of public life through their community work and infiltration of public organisations. Connies have an ardent determination, bordering on the messianic, that theirs is the only way forward. There's no point in trying to argue with them; they're constantly training to deflect your arguments like those pesky religious doorknockers who used to call at the most inconvenient times; the ones you don't see any more. In fact I can't remember when I last noticed those earnest, sombre suited young men. I wonder what became of them? Perhaps they realised they were up against some unbeatable competition? Or like many others they thought it prudent to leave the Fed while they were still able to.

The Connies are starting to become more than an annoyance: They are determined, insistent, relentless; allowing nothing to interfere with their goal of moulding the Fed and it's people to conform to their way of thinking. In theory you can still express your opinions more or less freely; as long as you don't fall foul of the continually shifting bounds of the law, or influence others to question the prevailing orthodoxy or act against it. Provided you don't publicly demonstrate your opinions, or risk actually changing things against the Consensus' vision of the common good... Yes, the freedom of speech and expression we once took for granted still notionally exixts, but as what is deemed acceptable is ever more narrowly defined I wonder for how long we will be able to express dissent in a meaningful way?

There is something more which I find unsettling about them. Whenever I see Connies; either in the flesh or on 'cast I get the feeling that there is so much more to them than meets the eye: That they have barely begun their process of social transformation, and  they are becoming increasingly impatient with anyone they see as delaying or obstructing their mission. I wonder for how much longer they will be able to contain their zeal, and what will happen when they feel impelled to increase the pace of change and carry their ideology and sense of ownership still further into our lives?

I find their whole ethos - what I can understand of it - and their modus operandi creepy. No, sinister. And what makes it worse is knowing you are the object of their obsession; they want to change your life for the better, as defined solely by them, no matter what your opinion.

It's not a personal thing; they want to intervene in everyones' lives. They regard personal affairs as both public and political. A few years ago they would have been told to do one by society in general; but such has our world been turned upside down, so great has the shock to our collective senses been since then; that what would have once seemed incredible or unacceptable is now so routine as to be unremarkable, things having changed so far so quickly. Not only have people become grudgingly accustomed to these previously unreasonable impositions upon their lives; some of them have become so conditioned as to actually welcome them.