Freedom Is Slavery

Is it possible that trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup are metaphors for modern American life?  Does the poison simply taste too good?  Do we live in such velvet chains that we are unable to recognize our captivity?  I never agreed to the social contract.  I was not given the option to sign off on romantic love, capitalist exchange, Judeo-Christian morality or an educational rewards system.   I believe myself to have been raised as more of a free-thinker than the vast majority.  I am counter to many of the norms that surround me in culture.  And, I don't think that, despite my many flaws, that I am an idiot.  Yet, I look around and find that I have fallen into each of those traps.  I'm sitting here at odds with, arguably, the McDonald's of higher education and I just keep gobbling fries and chugging icy cold Coca-Cola.  It's very possible that my original assertion is but a layer of the onion.  Perhaps we are not just distracted to the point of slovenly absenteeism.  Maybe this glaringly obvious pitfall is the Wizard and I've just noticed that there is, in fact, a curtain.  Off to re-read 1984.  Or sleep.  Or internalize all of the cables on wikileaks.org.  Hi DHS! ;-)