Dreamy Banality

I actually drafted this some weeks ago. It's been sitting in my box, thought I might as well post it.

In the middle of the night, I shot awake from a nightmare. It was one of those falling down the tunnel Vertigo moments, and I'm glad I escaped it. As I lay there listening to the pre-dawn birds chirp and the stream below my window gurgle, I reflected on what had just scared me so much.

It would be almost impossible to describe the dream in cogent detail, but here is the executive summary:

The Brain had become a Republican.

Was the dream itself scary? No. Nothing awful happened. No monsters appeared. I was not chased down and eaten. In fact, everyone in the dream, which consisted primarily of documentary footage of a Republican senate campaign in Wisconsin, seemed nice and polite.

Apparently, my dream-self was some kind of reporter, or perhaps the forementioned documentary's maker. I followed the candidate, your typical grey-suit-slick-hair politico with a huge grin, through his daily paces on the campaign trail. At campaign headquarters, while the candidate and his campaign workers (all white, all over thirty) shared mint tea and sugar cookies, I would try to ask a few questions to nail them down on their positions and opinions -- Are you a fiscal or social conservative? Are you a federalist? Are you a neo-conservative? -- only to be offered empty platitudes -- Why, son, I'm a man who loves America! Don't you? -- or tea and cookies.

The Brain was mixed in with the campaign workers, laughing and chatting with them. Every now and then, he would come over and offer me the mint tea and cookies with the utmost sincerity. I'd refuse them -- I just didn't want them. The third time I refused them though, he frowned and asked me "Why don't you love America?"

I woke up in a cold sweat, panting "Oh, god! Oh, god!", so relieved I was that it was only a dream.

With nothing much happening in the dream to warrant being a nightmare, I wondered why it had shaken me so. Then it occured to me that my subconscious was attempting to show me, in exacting detail, the banality of evil.