The Great Impenetrable Wall

The 'good-times' economy had been a vague and distant memory. Now, this had pretty much been the state of affairs for the bottom half of society since forever, but the demise of self-regulating markets made news because it was the middle layer that was then experiencing profound debilitating pessimism.

The belief in unending material progress and socio-economic mobility had been shaken to the core. People were locked into what they had and what they could hold onto with 'tooth and claw.' Social consciousness had never been held in such disrepute and contempt. The name 'Hobbes' kept coming up in the political discourse of the day whether in Parliament or Tim Hortons or any place of gathering in between.

Often it has been the case throughout human history that a leader emerges during times of crisis or in this case extreme social lethargy. And so one did. And the people—his subjects as he benevolently referred to them—loved him, partly because they thought they had chosen him and partly because he promised an end to the grand funk the nation was in.

A wise leader, or, a leader who wishes to stay in power, understands the critical importance of managing expectations, and this one was a stellar leader by that standard. Always one or more steps ahead of the crowd, by his account, he set the agenda and changed it as it suited him—rather as it resonated with his subjects. He likened it to reading and exploiting the powerful vagaries of the winds and waves of a mighty ocean.

That was how these great walls came to be. The people needed a focal point for their anxiety, and the leader, ever sensitive to favourable opportunities, agreed to wall off the nation against outsiders. Outsiders—foreigners—were to be identified as the source of the nation's malaise. Now, for the ordinary person, foreigners had been those who wanted to enter the country and take wealth away from legitimate citizens or they had been foreign nations and their commercial extensions who sought to accumulate wealth at the expense of weakened nations.

Building the walls—north and south only, for large oceans buffered the east and west—became the grandest of all national development programs, far outstripping those of the empires to the east and west which had transformed their backwards agrarian communities to powerful urban and industrial societies in a matter of a few short decades. In these empires, few had questioned the orthodox histories of the transformative era, and so the famines, wars and their attendant casualties were regarded as the stuff of groundless conspiracies propagated by enemies of the nation.

The leader knew his history, rather he knew the secret history of powerful leaders who before him had not just changed the course of history but had created it according to plan, and he emulated them in their then-rehabilitated historical roles. Asked by an impertinent reporter—whose credentials were rescinded within the hour—whether he would entertain a transfer of power in keeping with the nation's traditions, he emphatically replied, "Never," hastening to add extemporaneously that a great nation on its knees could only be restored to greatness if directed by one person, who, with great vision and single-minded focus, could bring about the changes required if unhindered by opposition and its inevitable inefficiencies and delays.

And so today, tourists can visit these walls, as magnificent as the Great Wall of a much earlier time, and they can pass from one side to the other. However, visitors, to this day, are not permitted to enter the vast underground network of electronic surveillance that had distinguished this 21st century 'Great Impenetrable Wall' from its 'primitive' ancestor.