David Gilbert Keith: Turned into non-playable characters?

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Published: 03-21-2025 1:12 PM

Opinion Deerfield MA

To my Republican friends — congratulations, you have owned us libs. Eventually though, you may come to notice that you are also owned.

Kings pretty much claimed ownership of all and any within their domains because, they said, God said so. Trump is acting like a king, if not a smart one. He gave the keys to his treasury — formerly our treasury — to Elon Musk. Trump wears the crown, Musk has its jewels.

Trump is using government power as an extortion racket, as when he openly demanded a bribe of $1 billion from the oil industry in return for muzzling the EPA. Insufficiently compliant universities, businesses, and news media face punishment. And O, Canada!

From weather to economic indicators, health statistics to accounting of all sorts, we can no longer trust the hollowed shells of our former agencies. With troublesome regulators fired, we have the excitement of guessing whether our food or flights are safe, whether the medicine we pay for is what we get. Trump and Musk profit from the ultimate insider trading — only they know in advance what they are about to do to the economy.

Who better to pick winners than the people fixing the races?

Lies and uncertainty, along with active suppression of accurate information, removes from us citizens control of our government. That is what it is to be owned. To use Musk’s pet term, they are making sure we are ”NPCs,” which as online gamers know, stands for the “Non-playable characters” who just fill in the background.

In old America, laws were considered legitimate only by our consent. Can NPCs consent? Can they do anything but consent? Those in law enforcement and the military will increasingly have to decide on the legality of orders, or even what makes laws legal. They will have to consider the difference between protecting our freedom and complicity in our subjugation.

All of us face moral decisions ahead. I hope we can remember that the stripes on the flag to which we pledge allegiance stand for the 13 original colonies whose citizens refused to be NPCs. They refused to be owned.

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