Can we talk?

"Can we talk?" is the rhetorical question and the first line spoken by the non-stop talking American comedienne Joan Rivers as she enters the stage to perform her standup comedy routine.

I was talking to someone once dear to me, about some awful things, that we knew were happening somewhere right now to some we knew, and about how the quote you see below applied to that particular situation:

"The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."

-- Dresden James , In Freedom

I told her we (as a society) are doing this to ourselves, right here, right now. We are hounding each other, sicking the state and private institutions on each other, destroying each other, all of that in response to passing slights, faux pas, and real or imagined historical injustices against the group with which we identify.

It's not 1984, she said. It is, I replied, just use your imagination.

"Then why don't you and her go to Cuba!", she advised me, and that was the end of the conversation. Just like that! Can we talk?