Choose Your Own Adventure: Chinese Spy Balloon

Readers of a certain age may remember the children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure which was popular in the 1990s. The unique feature of these books was that they put the reader at the center of the action and allowed them to choose among several possible options to advance the narrative. This created the situation in which participants could read the exact same material but arrive at completely different conclusions based on which path they chose to follow. Thus, there was no one correct interpretation of what had taken place and trying to explain the story in a coherent manner was virtually impossible by design.

Fast forward to our present day in which the recent media narrative of the Chinese Spy Balloon presents the exact same real-life scenario.

Just the headline – “Chinese Spy Balloon” – is an assemblage of words that seem simultaneously sinister and ridiculous.

China is a Communist tyranny that has murdered and enslaved countless millions since its inception. It suffers no consequences after unleashing a plague upon the earth because our home-grown tyrants bow in obsequious submission and admiration to its hegemony, Its very presence on our shores would be cause for alarm in a sane nation.

Spying is an act of war. In a time when China actively spies under the thin disguise of engineers, CIA operatives, military reservists, college professors, diplomats, businessmen, the spy app in your pocket and even Mar-a-Lago visitors, why resort to something as inconcealable and obvious as a gigantic floating bag of air?

That the object was a balloon just adds to the lack of seriousness and buffoonery of the entire episode. What could be sinister about a children’s toy and party decoration?

Thus, there are the endless possible paths of interpretation for this event.

We could follow the “Official Narrative Path” of “Nothing to See Here.” This was the line taken by Government officials who assured us they knew what was going on and had everything under control the entire time the balloon made its journey across the Pacific, into Alaska and through the Northwest, until it was finally reported by a local Montana station and could no longer be ignored. Yes, the balloon was being used to spy, but not “bad” spying. Just your run-of-the-mill Chinese Communist spying over the country they now own. It also couldn’t be shot down over sparse Montana because it might harm the children. Best to just let it finish its course. As for China, they claimed the object was nothing more than a weather balloon that had drifted off course. Echoes of Roswell anyone?

There’s the “What About-ism Path” of “Trump Did It, Too!!!!” This was the talking point of those who supported a Deep State who undermined Trump at every opportunity, leaked like a bottomless sieve, and are on record pledging to tip off China over any US interests.

There’s the “Path of the Neocons” who never miss an opportunity to remind you how much they loathe you Jesus worshipping racist knuckle draggers in fly-over country.

Just in time for Black History Month there’s the “Diversity Path” that manages to squeeze a D-I-E angle out of this scenario.

Then there’s the saddest path of all, that of the “Red Blooded American Cos-Player” who likes to live out the fantasy that one day he will actually use his 2^nd Amendment Right in the way the Founder’s intended.

In the end, does it really matter which of these paths we take? It matters only in that there IS an objective truth even though our media, our leaders, and we ourselves don’t recognize it. In a country where we pick whichever path we want for purely personal reasons, there is nothing holding us together. There is no overriding narrative – except that the narratives we are being fed are not to be trusted. And with each new week there is yet another chaotic Adventure to try to work our way through.

So, this is the way our country ends. Not with a bang, but a pop.

Wyatt Thomas

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