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Thank you, Negativland...
(Sobbing of an adult male)
(Electronic apparatus, possibly a drill or a set of electrodes)
(Female voice, agonized, possibly pleading)
"I was sitting there on Sunday morning, in the Chief of Police’s office, at a large table..."
Torture.
"He was listening to a football game..."
Let's be up front about it.
"...a football game..."
Torture. T-O-R-T-U-R-E.
"...on the small transistor radio."
That's the bottom line these days.
"And I began to hear..."
It's replaced death. Even teenagers kill themselves these days...
"And I..."
...along with the depressed...
"And I..."
...and terminally ill.
"And I began to hear..."
Death's a release from pain and anxiety and humiliation...
"...this very low..."
...a valued reward.
"...this very low wailing sound..."
But the threat of death just isn't enough to control people, so the ante's been raised.
"...coming through the walls."
Now...
(Cry of anguish)
...it's torture...
"Then it got louder..."
...and high-tech torture at that.
"Then it got louder, and it was a moaning sound."
As the technocrats say, it's "functional."
"The Chief of Police told the Colonel to turn up the radio."
That's why everyone who's intelligent and unanesthetized enough to care...
"Then..."
...has sort of put their life on hold.
"Then the sound got louder..."
Underneath all the defensive layers of denial...
"...and turned to..."
...we're all afraid of being tortured...
"...anguish..."
(Male gasping for air)
...or homosexually gang-raped, or having it happen to someone we care about.
"...screaming..."
We're all self-consciously living a lie.
"And I knew what it was."
We're all happy Joes.
"And I knew that this man was being tortured with..."
How did it happen here in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
"...tortured with electricity."
(Male sobbing)
I mean, in some banana republic...
"Well, it kept getting louder..."
...some distant past like the Spanish Inquisition...
"...and more horrible..."
(Agonized female voice)
...World War II, the Nazis and the fanatical Japs.
"And each time..."
But not us Americans.
(Male screaming)
"And each time..."
GI Joe.
"And each time..."
Frank Sinatra.
"And each time..."
Jerry Lewis. Autumn in New York.
"The Chief would tell the Colonel..."
Baseball.
"...to turn up the radio."
(Pleading female voice)
College football. Glenn Miller.
"Pretty soon..."
Somehow, it doesn't fit with torture.
"Pretty soon, the radio was very, very loud..."
But it does, of course, does.
"...but I could still hear those sounds."
Because it was always a façade, the image of America. And now, the façade has finally failed...
"...anguish..."
...like a burned-out clutch...
"...screaming..."
...or a decayed tooth that bursts open.
"...horrible..."
They both smell bad.
(Agonized female voice)
Strange.
(Agonized female voice)
Ominous.
(Male sobbing and gasping for breath)
"Going back to the office in the Embassy, naturally I was speculating who that possibly could have been."
(Male screaming)
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