By Situation Theatre 21/12/2015
Following news that Republican voters are dead keen on bombing the fictional Disney Kingdom of Agrabah, Republican Presidential candidates are now taking to the Disney filmography to finesse their foreign policy strategies.
Donald Trump cottoned on quickly and has already released a detailed plan for the everlasting “War on Mermaids”. He’s called for the immediate ban on mermaid immigration to the United States, demanded that President Obama “bomb the shit out of the sea”, and called on American forces to hunt down the families and friends of mermaids, especially the crabs.
Ted Cruz has broadened the war to other Disney inventions, arguing that carpet bombing the lions at Pride Rock would be a sure fire way to satisfy his curiosity about whether “sand can glow in the dark”.
Meanwhile Chris Christie has threatened to start World War Three by shooting down Wonderland pilots over Pleasure Island, and signalled his intentions for all out cyberwar with Neverland.
The new fictional approach to foreign policy has gone viral. The “War on Mermaids” has spread to Australia and Tony Abbott has called for a reformation within Disney. The Liberals continue vilifying the entire Disney imaginary to ram through even more restrictions on civil liberties and distract the public from non-fictional threats to civil society like neoliberal ideology, the conservative federal government, fossil fuel companies and the broader capitalist system.
Students of Disney like Michael Moore and George Orwell argue that this is a tale as old as time/capitalism.
Moore has said “The biggest success of the War on Mermaids will be its ability to distract the nation from the corporate war on us”. In his film Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore paraphrases Orwell:
It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real or if it is. Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not victory over either Eurasia or Eastasia but to keep the very structure of society in tact.
Pessimists predict a never ending story of future wars against lions, hunchbacks, dwarfs, dalmations, mice, muppets, pirates and tramps which will only entrench the power of the ruling classes.
Others look to movements like Occupy and mobilisations for climate justice and still believe a whole new world is possible.