Cheaties, The Breakfast of Winners:

Shoddy, mass-produced, overpriced krap.

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

-Genesis 4:8

Los Angeles, April 14, 2005 (Reuters): A 13-year-old boy was charged with murder on Thursday for a fatal attack with a baseball bat on a 15-year-old who had apparently teased him about losing a baseball game. (News Item)

We read the story, cluck-cluck and “what’s-this-society-coming-to” without really bothering to think about the question. We may take an even easier mental path and chatter about the appropriate punishment for such a boy, more bread for our media circus.

The meaning of the story eludes us. We built a false god and gave it a false name: “Competition.” We parrot the dogma; “Competition is good,” because it is “Competition” that determines “Survival of the Fittest,” suppressing science in a cartoon concept.

Our dogma is not exactly true, but Truth in our world of make-believe is a fallen angel. We have built great graven images to our god, “Competition,” and we call them “Sports.” The stadium roar of the mob mutes the Truth, and here it is.

The only real “competition” is mortal combat. Everything else is a game. Games have multiple rules, mortal combat has but one. Games are play, and play is healthy. “Survival” is not a metaphor, it is life or death. We are uncomfortable with that.

In our world of make-believe, we pretend our games are real and reality is only a game. Our objective is not health but entertainment, we scream in the stadium to drown the still, small voice of Truth. Truth can be suppressed for a time, but it can not die.

Those two young boys, baseball players, are true reflections of each and every one of us. We have become a nation of cheaters living in a world of shoddy, mass-produced, overpriced krap. David Callahan (at cheatingculture.com) has written extensively about this in articles and in his book, The Cheating Culture.

“To be sure, the winner-take-all aspects of our economy and culture inspire great striving and the pursuit of excellence. But they also bring out the worst in people, producing envy, cheating and cutthroat behavior. These problems – the moral downsides of America's current brand of extreme capitalism – deserve more attention in the national debate about ‘values.’ “

Shoddy, mass-produced, overpriced krap: let’s call it SMOK. It’s shoddy and mass-produced and we call that “cost control.” It’s overpriced because we profit by charging way more than it could possibly be worth. And “krap?” That’s the special “K” of marketing.

Alter the appearance only slightly, few will notice it’s the same stuff that lies about in lawns and pastures, stinking on shoe-soles everywhere. Then we’ll pay for it in shiny packages in big-box outlets, even stand in line when it goes “on sale” for triple what it costs.

That’s “value-added,” that’s “today’s competitive environment,” that’s SMOK. Our “values” are SMOK. Our culture is SMOK. Our very lives are SMOK. It’s in us, all around us, ever-pervasive and invisible, like the Matrix. Here comes the Red Pill and the Rabbit Hole.

We believe what we want to believe; Truth, evidence, reason or rules aside. We manufacture our own “truth,” just like SMOK. We want to believe we are “winners.” We blow SMOK in the face of the entire planet and call it “freedom and democracy.”

Our poor little pony-league brothers did what we taught them to do; be a “winner” to taunt the “loser,” forgetting that we are “playing” a “game.” In our world of make-believe, reality and illusion taunt each other until the outcome is final and irreversible.

Truth endures, even if we hide it with our SMOK and mirrors. The world will be round, even if all the King’s horses, men, priests and pundits call it flat. We sold our Republic to global capital, swapped our brains for feel-good fairy tales and call ourselves “winners.”

We will taunt the “myth” of global warming until the planet strikes us into extinction. Same deal for anyone who challenges “we’re number one” as a nation of cheating, lying, stealing gas-guzzling greedheads.

If we consider them defenseless, and only when they least expect it, we will “go to bat” against the “evil doers” who are “jealous of our freedoms,” smiting their mote with our beam of SMOK. Packed with “cheaties,” we’re ready to “get our game on.”

We rise up against our brother and kill him.