The impenetrable certitude of the semiotic drunkard

It is no longer a matter of speculation, but of daily spectacle, that our species has traded in the burdens of consciousness for the easier labor of delirium. We are surrounded by semiotic drunkards. Creatures who stagger through existence drenched not in wine or whiskey, but in the fermented runoff of slogans, identities, partisan catechisms, and whatever linguistic moonshine their favored prophet has poured into a camera that morning. Indeed, the modern citizen has mastered the art of maintaining a permanent, devotional stupor. He wobbles on the stilts of his convictions, slurs his secondhand certainties, and regards anyone speaking soberly with the same bleary suspicion a drunk reserves for the man trying to take his keys.