Ever since I started watching The Walking Dead on AMC (so, since Halloween), I've been a little bit jumpy. You assume zombies will always warn you with a barely stifled moan of undead craving, but that never seems to be the case. Instead, zombies have a terrifying penchant for silent stalking and surprise snacking.
My jumpiness only increased with my recent devouring of Max Brooks' World War Z. I remember picking this one up off a Barnes and Nobles bookshelf about a year ago and getting completely absorbed in a random woman's story. Fast-forward a year later, and you'll find me feverishly needing more zombie (how's that for a role reversal?) after another oh-so-short 45-minute episode of The Walking Dead comes to an end. I found Brooks' book at the library and, in between Thanksgiving naps, had my first experience with the genre of zombie literature. Actually, I'm not sure if there is a genre, or more than this book about zombies, but I'm hooked. Now if only my two guilty pleasures, spy thrillers and zombie war history, could somehow be combined...
Anyway, that's just a long way of saying World War Z made a zombie invasion so realistic that for the past week I've been extra vigilant during my dark walks home. I walk through the darker corners of BYU campus ready to drop my satchel at a moment's notice and head for the nearest grocery/firearms store. Or the nearest LONG blunt object. Yesterday, though, I made it all the way home without once sniffing the air for any hint of rotten flesh. And while I can't help but think this threat-level detente is exactly what a zombie overlord would want to happen, it's human nature to relax once a threat overload has passed.
Which brings me to my beef with WikiLeaks, a beef informed almost exclusively by my poker skills. WikiLeaks can't bluff for anything. The threat of a "vast network of untapped resources" (not really a quote) and unleaked material they're using in a desperate attempt to leverage themselves out from everyone's bad side has about as much credibility as Mark Sanchez saying he's got something up his sleeve for the next time he plays the Patriots.
WikiLeaks went all in before anyone else knew there was a game going on. No one raised, no one matched, and half of the countries didn't even look at their cards. You can probably think of several other metaphors for what's happened in the past weeks, so let your imagination run wild.
That being said, I love the idea of what Assange and his cronies tried to do. While I understand the appropriateness of some secrets in diplomacy, I love the idea of leaders having to act as if anything they said or did could be leaked the next day for the world to see. But that's a huge amount of power. That's on par with the jealous Lord of Hosts (or the all-seeing eye of Sauron). And where the Lord of Hosts is still working, and Sauron lasted an epoch or two, WikiLeaks lasted a few weeks.
If they had leaked key cables with precision and delicacy, states would have stood up, taken notice, and followed the same pattern of aggressive damage-control that they're following now. The difference, however, would be that instead of placing their salvation on the threat of publishing a very non-threatening "mass of State Dept. cables" that probably say something like "Secretary Clinton registered a complaint about the lack of pumpernickel rolls at Foggy Bottom," they would have concrete tools with which they could continue fighting.
Instead, WikiLeaks has cried "Wolf!" It's a big wolf, and it was there, but after a week, we're going to feel safe again. We're not going to lose sleep because someone said nasty things about someone else or because a Saudi informant or Iranian professor was exposed and summarily executed. That's too far away. We're too callous. So the next time WikiLeaks unloads a huge package of sensitive memos, we're going to think, "Meh. I've already felt those feelings. I'm going to watch more Jersey Shore." And if in that box of sensitive memos there's a special cable delineating a possible zombie outbreak in central China, and if we ignore it because WikiLeaks jaded us too soon, I'm going to be royally pissed.
I'm impressed that you so eloquently tied zombies to the WikiLeaks.
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