Free The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders Page A

populous fluid-nations examined during this so-called “Exoneration Studies” period included Men With Especially Large Penises; People Who Say They Hate Television But Admit To Watching It Now And Then, Just To Relax; Women Who When Drunk Berate The Sport Of Boxing; and Elderly Persons Whose First Thought Upon Hearing Of A Death Is Relief That They Are Still Alive, Followed By Guilt For Having Had That First Feeling.
    A watershed moment in the history of the discipline occurred with the groundbreaking work of Randall, Cleary, et al., which demonstrated for the first time that individuals were capable of holding multiple fluid-nation citizenships. Using the newly developed Anders-Reese Distance-Observation Method, the authors were able to provide specific examples of this phenomenon. A Nebraska man was seen to hold citizenship in both Men Who Sit Up Late At Night Staring With Love At Their Sleeping Children, and Farmers Who Mumble Soundless Prayers While Working In Their Fields. In Cincinnati, Ohio, twin sisters were found to belong to Five-Times-A-Week Churchgoers, as well as Clandestine Examiners Of One’s Own Hardened Nasal Secretions. An entire family in Abilene, Texas, was seen to belong to Secretly Always Believe They Are The Ugliest In The Room, with individual members of this family also holding secondary citizenships in fluid-nations as diverse as Listens To Headphones In Bed; Stands Examining Her Breasts In Her Closet; Brags Endlessly While Actually Full of Doubt; Makes Excellent Strudel; and Believes Fervently In The Risen Christ.
    At the time, awareness of our work among the general public was still low. This would change dramatically, however, with the publication, by Beatts, Daniels, and Ahkerbaj, of their comprehensive study of the fluid-nation People Reluctant To Kill For An Abstraction.
    In this study, 155 members of the target fluid-nation were assessed per the Hanley-Briscombe National Allegiance Criterion, a statistical model developed to embody the Dooley-Sminks-Ang Patriot Descriptor Statement, which defined a patriot as “an individual who, once the leadership of his country has declared that action is necessary, responds quickly, efficiently, and without wasteful unnecessary questioning of the declared national goal.”
    Results indicated that citizens of People Reluctant To Kill For An Abstraction scored, on average, thirty-nine points lower on the National Allegiance Criterion than did members of the control group and exhibited nonpatriotic attitudes or tendencies 29 percent more often. Shown photographs of members of an opposing geo-nation and asked, “What sort of person do you believe this person to be?” citizens of People Reluctant To Kill For An Abstraction were 64 percent more likely to choose the response “Don’t know, would have to meet them first.” Given the opportunity to poke with a rubber baton a citizen of a geo-nation traditionally opposed to their geo-nation (an individual who was at that time taunting them with a slogan from a list of Provocative Slogans), citizens of People Reluctant To Kill For An Abstraction were found to be 71 percent less likely to poke than members of the control group.
    The authors’ conclusion (“It is perhaps not inaccurate to state that, within this particular fluid-nation, loyalty to the fluid-nation may at times surpass loyalty to the parent geo-nation”), along with the respondent’s professed willingness to subjugate important geo-national priorities, and even accept increased national security risks, in order to avoid violating the Cohering Principle of their fluid-nation (i.e., not killing for an abstraction), led to the creation of a new category of fluid-nation, the so-called Malignant fluid-nation.
    At this time—coincidentally but fortuitously—there appeared the work of Elliott, Danker, et al., who made the important (and at the time startling) discovery that multiple fluid-nation citizenships did not occur in random