> The average American has been
>reduced to a Serf working for their Lord(credit card
>companies, mortgages, taxes, etc).

>Basically democrats and
>republicans have divided the country so that each voting
>district will almost always keep them in power, and then we
>are given the illusion of choice with clown A or clown B.

I think you hit two key and critical points here, which are points I too have thought about quite a bit.

Those points are two things which I began thinking about in relation to the Matrix, two very important question which the film raised for me:

1) Can you be in a state of pseudo-slavery and not be aware of it?
2) Do we really have the ability to choose for ourselves?


In many ways, we're given the illusion of choice by our society and government. The perception of freedom boils down to having a choice, even if its not really a choice at all. The society we're in dictates a life for us, in many ways serf-like and punishes those that don't comply harshly (see the example of someone who doesn't obtain a social security number that Isildur brought up). As long as we think we have a choice, we don't get pissed off and think we're free, but in reality our society is engineered in a very specific way to create a very large herd of unthinking sheep.