I wrote in this morning’s post that I’d thought of another angle to the Ragtag Daily Prompt, which is WHAT THE EYES DON’T SEE. This is a longer tale, but I hope you find it interesting.
In an unmarked room deep in secret service HQ, Chief Agent Bodkins meets with his top agents and lays the problem before them:
“This situation with the Tritonians is getting away from us. They’re gaining international support; next thing they’ll be demanding a say in how we run the country. We can’t have that. I trust you have some ideas on how to deal with this problem?”
“We could just obliterate them,” Agent Grey suggests.
“And good riddance,” says Agent Lime. “But we’d be accused of genocide; there may be embargoes; even UN peacekeeping troops, yada yada. No, we need good PR with the UN.”
“Agreed.” CA Bodkins spreads out his hands. “We have many agents working around the globe and so far they’ve done a great job to portray the Tritonians as malcontents and us as a peace-loving and charitable bunch. We need to maintain that image and still find a way to crush the dissidents.”
“That may be tough,” says Agent Grey.
“Let me give you an object lesson.” Bodkins pulls a box of dominoes from his desk drawer. As he lines them up, he explains. “If you arrange the dominoes in a straight line, and then knock them over, everyone can see whose finger gave the first tap.” He demonstrates.
Now he picks the dominoes up and sets them in a long S-curve. “If we make the trail so winding, the world will have a harder time tracing the beginning back to us. It could even look like another finger gave the row its initial tap.”
Agent Orange catches the drift and smiles grimly. “So we should find a way to tap the Tritonians, provoke them to violence without anyone knowing it. Then we can suppress them and let it be known internationally that we only acted in self-defense. Halos intact.”
Agent Lime nods. “Great idea! If they attack us, we can send in riot police, execute the leaders for insurrection, and throw the followers into prison, where they may conveniently disappear. Voila, mission accomplished.”
“Precisely,” says Bodkin. “And since we are able to feed details to the international Press via our own agents, we can make the report look like our action has narrowly averted a bloodbath for both sides. The Tritonians will lose all international sympathy and be forced to go along meekly with their subservient role.”
“But we don’t want them attacking us,” Agent Grey protests. “Our own people may be killed.”
“Collateral damage,” says Agent Orange. “You win a few; you lose a few. We need to consider the bigger picture. The more Tritonians we can get rid of now, the less damage they’ll do in future.”
“I like your thinking, Orange.” Bodkin stacks his dominoes. “And if we set this up carefully, our own casualties will be minimal.”
“So how do we provoke this attack?”
Agent Orange smirks. “Every year they have their Old King Trillion Parade. This year we’ll call it a threat to national security. Send troops to block the parade route. Hotheads that they are, they’ll be livid. No one needs to know who fired the first shot.”
“Excellent plan!” Bodkin beams at him. “You’ll go far, young man.”
Agent Grey scowls. “International opinion is such a pain. It’d be a lot simpler to obliterate them.”
CA Bodkins shakes his head. “You can’t wipe people out and still look good. You need a behind-the-scenes scheme.”
The “seed” behind this sad tale:
Years ago I read Carol O’Connor’s autobiography, I’M OUTTA HERE. He lived and worked in Ireland for some years so he gives his opinion on the religious turmoil and violence in Northern Ireland during that time.
O’Connor asked the question: How does a majority keep a minority in suppression or even wipe them out? His answer: The majority attacks the minority. And what justification do they have in the eyes of the world if they do? You make the minority look guilty of firing the first shot. The majority does something repulsive to the minority, provoking reaction. As soon as there’s some resistance they send in the troops.
His opinion made a lot of sense to me – and still does in our own troubled times. When I hear of uprisings and violence, I often wonder, who’s really behind all this? What is the real motivation? As with the “Boston Tea Party,” situations and the people involved are not always what they seem to be.
It was Wednesday morning, February 6, 1952. I was nine years old and in Grade Five. When I got up that morning, the radio was playing solemn, stately, orchestral music. That was all we could get on any radio station. The eight o’clock news told us why – King George VI had died and his oldest daughter was now Queen Elizabeth II. At school that morning we all lined up at nine o’clock, but instead of singing God Save the King, we sang God Save the Queen.
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