Alamo Utopia
I was an extra in The Alamo. Sure it was a terrible film, but I like it cause I’m in it. Clearly visible, in fact, standing near a cannon before The Battle of San Jacinto - the Texians’ gruesome revenge that ends Santa Anna’s tyrannical reign forever.
My friend Jon Holt was an extra with me, and we had different views about what being an extra in The Alamo entailed. His idea was that we should hide in a tent as much as we could, to avoid being filmed completely. I, on the other hand, wanted to “be seen.” The first few days, though, he shamed me into hiding with him; we talked instead of pretending to shoot guns at Mexicans, and it was absolutely worth it, despite all the precious “screen time” I lost.
One day, in the tent, he played with one of the daisies he’d picked (the extras weren’t allowed to touch the daisies) as he mused what it would be like if all of the Alamo extras gathered together, marched to the closest Walmart, robbed all the guns, stormed the Texas capital building and instituted a new utopia.
That night, I wrote down Jon Holt’s words to best of my memory. Here, now, is Jon Holt’s Alamo-inspired vision of a perfect world:
Once the capital city falls, the whole of Texas will fall with it, instantly transforming into a giant commune. Louisiana won’t have a choice. It will abolish its government, and soon after, New Mexico will see how great anarchy is, and will join right in. That gives us a nice buffer. Then, we will abscond all property, belongings, and means of production, and burn them in a 100-mile bonfire, eliminating the root of human unhappiness: envy. Everyone will be at zero, so nobody will care anymore.6 years agoThen we announce the first law: ‘There is no healthcare.’ That’s the easiest. The second law will be: ‘Everyone must have a gun.’ The third, and final, law, will be: ‘Everyone must post a copy of The Constitution in their home.’ You won’t have to memorize The Constitution, but everyone will anyway. It will be simple: ‘There is no healthcare. You must have a gun. And you must post The Constitution in your home.’ From there, the development of this most free of societies will never stray from its course.
We’ll abolish currency. Nobody will have anything to buy or sell at this point anyway.
Every year, you’ll be forced to go to the Capitol Building and get a physical. If you are overweight, you get a pink circle tattooed on your face.
Every time a couple has a child, each of them gets one finger chopped off. If that kid dies, that’s too bad, you don’t get your finger back. Once you have 10 kids, that’s it, no more kids.
Every two years, you have to switch houses, completely randomly. You’ll lose all the possessions you have in your house, and gain someone else’s. They probably won’t have been taking care of their house because they knew they’d lose it eventually. And you won’t take care of yours either. Maybe you’ll get lucky and move into a nicer house. But that’s doubtful.
There will be thugs, and we’ll have to deal with them. We cannot allow criminal menaces to terrorize the perfect society we’ve worked so hard to establish. If someone kills someone else, they must face the consequences of their actions. So they will be locked in a room with the body of the person they killed until that body has completely decomposed. They’ll be fed a subsistence diet, but even still, they may get sick and die before the corpse deteriorates.
There will be casualties. Yep, a lot of people are going to die. But nobody ever said utopia would be easy.
