The Sheep Look Up

by John Brunner

You don’t serve your country by sweeping unpleasant facts under the carpet. We’re not exactly the most popular nation in the world right now, and my view is that we ought to put a stop right away to anything that’s apt to make us even less well liked.

It is the typical white habit to ruin what you have and then go to steal from other people.

“You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl. You shat in it and boasted about the mess you’d made. And now it’s full and overflowing, and you’re fat and happy and black kids are going crazy to keep you rich. Goodbye!”

You can’t blame the people who can’t hear the warnings; you have to blame the ones who can, and who ignore them.

The government couldn’t go on forever bailing out mismanaged giant corporations, even though it was their own supporters, people who ranted against “UN meddling” and “creeping socialism,” who yelled the loudest for Federal aid when they got into a mess.

For example, there’s an ingrained distrust in our society of highly intelligent, highly trained, highly competent persons. One need only look at the last presidential election for proof of that. The public obviously wanted a figurehead, who’d look good and make comforting noises—

When the politicians claim that the public isn’t interested any longer in environmental conservation, they’re half right. People are actually afraid to be interested, because they suspect—I think rightly—that we’ll find if we dig deep enough that we’ve gone so far beyond the limits of what the planet will tolerate that only a major catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.