Creating a Common Enemy for a Better World - (Original Short Story)

Kita had been waiting for weeks for this moment in her favorite tv show, the soap opera "Out of Our Lives." Finally after twenty hour long episodes it was culminating to finally finding out who had initiated the cruel plot to drive their family apart with deceit, lies and other methods of setting people against each other. She was on the edge of her seat, waiting to see if her belief that the Butler had done it so he could get his hands on their fortune...when the show was rudely interrupted by a BREAKING NEWS graphic that took over her screen.

Infuriated at the untimely interruption, she sprang to her feet while her jaw hit the floor. Her only thought was, "This can't be happening! They had to do this NOW?!?!"

Irrationally hoping to find her show on another channel, she found that every station had a similarly annoying graphic. She said to herself, "Really, what can be so important to intrude on everybody?"

Just then the graphic cut away to a two anchor news team with stunned looks on their faces. The duo quickly started reporting that the Earth was being surrounded by invisible hostile alien ships! Of course nobody answered how they knew the ships were there if they couldn't be seen.

Kita was unphased by this, since she purely thought that the National Enquirer or some other spoof magazine was behind this. She flipped through the channels again, hoping to catch the climax of "Out of Our Lives" show, she saw the same story being repeated everywhere. The only differences were the scifi movie graphics being used with the text overlay of Alien Attacks, Immanent Invasion, or some other cliche phrase we've all been exposed to.
Resigned that her soap opera wasn't going to come back on in time, she settled on a local news station to see what the big hype was. Still frustrated, Kita said out-loud, "Come on people! I can't believe this is on every channel! It's like nobody remembers the War of the Worlds radio show way back when. People freaked out that the end was near, panicked, and ran crazily into the streets, only to find out it was a hoax."

When Kita heard the loud commotion outside her window, she peeked through the blinds to see huge crowds of people taking to the streets, some running, some looking up into the night sky, others vandalizing and looting. She could only put her hand over her face in disappointment, only able to think one word..."REALLY?!?!" It's sad that there are people who when thinking the world is going to end, they think it's a time for violence, theft or worse. That really speaks volumes to the nature of some people.

Behind closed doors, on the other side of Washington, D.C., the group of Illuminati agents just smiled and laughed at their handy work. For decades they had searched for a way to finally do away with petty nationalism and drive the world into a cohesive whole. Wanting to see the human race progress faster than a slow snails pace, for years they have influenced various events to move the Earth towards a unitary community. Finally one of their newest recruits, Wilson Roberts, provided them with just the idea they needed.

On his first day with the group, 6 months ago, Wilson Roberts stood at the triangular table giving his presentation simply called "Us versus Them." He stated that humans have an inate sense of being included in something, whether that was a nation, family, team, friend circle, gang or some other distinction.

He went on to say "People make decisions on what is good for themselves and for their 'Us Group' as he called it. Anyone that is not included in this group is a part of the negatively viewed 'Them Group.' Everything that you guys have tried up until now has been directed as some subset of people, always leaving this Us vs Them mentality amongst the population. So what I propose is that we create a scenario that would force all humans to be viewed as a cohesive whole."

The shadowed man called Mr. Stang interjected, "We tried that, what do you think the rise of Nazi Germany or Terrorism was for? Creating a common enemy here on Earth may work in part for a short period of time, but sooner or later people just reverted back to their old ways, usually with countries causing themselves to be more isolated with security and travel restrictions. Not to mention the mass fear and dislike of others that came in the aftermath."

Mr. Roberts interrupted by stating, "That's where you went wrong, using other humans as the instigator and point of focus. But what if we made the world believe that they were being endangered by aliens instead? In the aftermath, the whole population would see themselves in the same boat, with the dislike being directed off the planet!"

For the next months the "illuminated group" carefully put together the leaks for the media that an alien fleet of invisible ships had surrounded the Earth to launch the immanent attack. They then sat back and watched their handy work come to fruition.

The Earth's population digested the however improbable news story, saw national governments merge together to deal with their shared threat. Unfortunately, it was unforeseen that the uniting of humans against a common enemy didn't quite move the race as wanted. Instead of coming together to grow, it merely put everyone in a defensive state, causing the arts and general creativity to become non-existent.

Image Sources:
Alien Ships