Forbidden Foreboding

Waiting for the other shoe.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

— Edgar Allen Poe
The Raven

There’s that cinematic trope often found in those old private dick flix where the lover sneaks a peak at a packed suitcase in the Clever Dame’s bedroom, confirming that things are about to turn toward the final act’s climactic drama.

Something has taken place.

The witness of a crime.

An accomplice to a crime.

A fraud.

A con.

A murder.

An appraisal of fine furs and fox pieces and a reminder of the Napoleonic codes.

A discovery of something, often a mistaken ‘lover’ or significant other of familial relations.

Now calm down dear, it’s a misunderstanding you see.

Suspicion creeps into the characters’ facial expressions.

They do their best to hide it.

The Clever Dame moves in closer to distract him with a whiff of her pricey and seductive eau de toilette.

She gazes into his eyes. More suspicion. He grasps her upper arms and shakes her into confessing the whereabouts of the MacGuffin.

She tells him he’s hurting her. He doesn’t care because it’s a matter of life and death, or love and loss.

The guilty party will flee, or the innocent party will attempt to escape from the assumed guilty.

The fleeing party will take the MacGuffin—a keepsake, a Maltese falcon, a fake birth certificate, bearer bonds, an envelope containing letters of transit through occupied Nazi territory, or these days always a stupid thumb drive.

A hint of danger lurks.

Accusations fly. Counter-accusations are triggered.

A storm cloud of foreboding forms on the horizon as the audience makes predictions.

It either plays out with unpredictable twists and turns or the audience was right.

The Keystone Cops always show up late, after the confessions.

Final words are exchanged as the Clever Dame leans into her man and whispers, “We’ll always have liberty.”

Rick Blaine knows a lie when he hears one.

Sam begins to sing, “As Time Goes By.”

Rick rips a drag from his Gitane.

The smoke dissipates from his rugged face.

“What are you looking at, suckers? I can’t revolt. I’m just a statue.”

The road to tyranny is paved with cowards, conmen, corrupt bureaucrats, high taxes, debauchery, mass menticide, and the moral depravity of distracted and diseased materialists conned by chosen ones who monopolize control of information, media, spy agencies, war machines, and money.

The concrete mix that holds the pavers together?

Foreboding.

For the past two decades, the tyranny was incremental and rendered indistinguishable from liberty.

Today foreboding isn’t even permitted without a permit or some act of sacrifice and humiliation that can only be preempted with preforeboding.

A facial recognition scan. Removal of belts and shoes. Light groping of purple latex gloves on genital regions. A long swab laced with poison jammed up nostrils so high it connects with billions of prefrontal cortexes for lobotomization.

Did you pack your suitcase?

Did you have your retina scanned by the World Orb for five pence?

Do you have a permit for that speech?

Do you have a permit for your potential thoughts in the future?

The humiliation rituals are becoming more extreme. It’s no longer uncommon that an unapproved opinion leads to the permitted authorities knocking on residential doors.