'The Sheep Look Up' and see … what?

There's an excellent science fiction novel from the 1970s called "The Sheep Look Up," in which John Brunner creates a bleak world full of pollution, corporate greed, governmental manipulation, technological inadequacy and mass deception. People are even fooled into thinking they run their own country.

I know, I know. It's science fiction! No reason to get too scared. There's no chance our world will ever really look like that, is there?

But perhaps, if Brunner is a good enough writer, we can learn something about what to avoid in the way of pollution, greed and government manipulation. No reason for us to become sheep, after all.

In Brunner's novel, you see, the "sheep" are people like you and me who go about their daily lives trying to feed their children, keep their families together and be good citizens, no matter how tough the times. And times ARE tough in the book. But good Americans just put on their gas mask before they go outside and make sure they don't drink the tap water when they are inside.

Good "sheep" do what they are told and they don't think about anything too much, especially nothing that might lead to anxiety or despair.

By the same token, Americans today (actually 30 years past the setting of Brunner's supposedly "science fiction" novel) have learned to accept our fate with nary a question or a plaintive baaa-aa-aa! Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline? You'll get used to it. X-ray screenings at airports that reveal naked bodies under clothes? No problem. It's necessary in these dangerous times. Fatal diseases in the food supply? No problem. You already got used to it, and didn't even notice.

It is somewhat amusing that in the novel, the puppet president (known affectionately as Prexy) blames a variety of environmental nightmares such as contaminated food and chemical spills on the work of terrorists. This, of course, presages the contemporary belief among 9/11 Truthers that President George W. Bush (known affectionately as Dubya) has used terrorism as the scapegoat to accomplish a widespread makeover of modern American society and global geo-politics.

Although I don't happen to agree with the 9/11 Truth movement that the U.S. government was complicit in the terror attacks of September 11, I do think there is plenty of reason to be skeptical of our federal government. Whether it's the Kennedy assassination, monetary policy, immigration policy or surveillance fears, we all should have a healthy supply of salt on hand to help make the government's whoppers easier to swallow. Swallow or be swallowed - that's the lesson of recent experience. Yet millions of Americans blindly accept whatever they are told by the government and the mass media. Indeed, they seem willing to believe what they are told even if it goes against the evidence of their own eyes, such as the checkerboard skies that periodically appear above Kalispell and other cities on bright blue days.

I wrote about those so-called chemtrails several months ago against the advice of one good friend who thought they were kooky. "Look," he told me, "it's just contrails - ordinary jet fuel condensation and exhaust." Then one day, a few weeks after my column had appeared, he looked up. He told me later what he saw: "It was crazy. There were a dozen lines in the sky going north-south and another dozen or more going east and west. What was crazy is I actually watched one of the jets turn and head back with a big trail of white behind it. Then all of those parallel lines started to spread out until the whole sky was covered with a thin cirrus-type cloud that just stayed there for hours. It was the darndest thing."

I was out of town when that one happened, but early last week, it happened again - unknown jets flying overhead and spraying unknown chemicals for unknown reasons into the air over the Flathead Valley. I didn't notice it first. This time, it was a reader.

"Frank, I read your column about chemtrails. Did you look outside today yet?" I hadn't, but the reader proceeded to describe the typical checkerboard pattern that can only be the result of deliberate spraying of the atmosphere. It usually occurs on days that start out as clear blue but, as a result of the spraying, often end up as cloudy from horizon to horizon. "Thanks for writing about this stuff, Frank," the caller said. "Don't stop."

By the end of the afternoon, I also had a letter from a reader who told me he had never noticed the chemtrails before, but saw them plain as day on that Monday. Another letter arrived the next day wanting more information. Just what are those lines? Who is doing it?

I don't have any answers to those questions, but you can do a Google search for chemtrails and read lots of theories, mostly revolving around climate control, but a few that are more malignant. And if you still haven't seen them for yourself, you can do a Google image search for chemtrails to have your eyes opened. Or watch the skies for a clear day, and see if you notice unusual flights going back and forth in parallel or perpendicular lines as if to make a pattern overhead. Most people don't seem to care.

In the TV reality show, "Big Brother," contestants are sent indoors whenever a plane goes overhead with a trailing message about the outside world. The producers want to prevent the "houseguests" from gaining too much information. In real life, Big Brother can fly overhead with a message as big as the horizon and the residents below just don't seem to care.

Like the characters in John Brunner's novel, citizens of the 21st century are hardened. They seem to be willing to accept any burden, any hardship, any setback, as if they have no choice in the matter. The idea of using your own brain to figure things out for yourself seems not to have occurred to a sizable majority of the population.

I've always liked the image conveyed by Brunner's apt title, which actually comes from a famous but lyrically obscure John Milton poem, where the full line reads "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed."

If there is any better metaphor for the naive citizenry caught in an endless cycle of expectation and disappointment, I don't know what it is.

And not getting fed is just the start. A few lines later in Milton's poem, we discover that the sheep "rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread." Then "the grim woolf" arrives on the scene and devours his daily share of sheep with "nothing sed." The next day, one supposes, the sheep again look up, and commence again the whole process of being devoured.

But there's no reason to get morbid. We can just think positive thoughts, smile to release dopamine in our magic brains, and drift off to la-la land. It's probably just contrails anyway.

. Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com