The Hunger Games... in technicolor

    A friend and I were having a debate on whether the events of the blockbuster film "The Hunger Games" could possibly occur in real life.  My friend argued that we are too civilized of a society to actually engage in something as barbaric.  I countered her faith in humanity by pointing out that our society is seemingly decaying by the minute.    Nothing is more true of this than the report of a shopper pepper spraying her fellow bargain hunters in a Best Buy in order to rightfully claim a fancy gadget on markdown.  If someone in this society is willing to pepper spray someone to get their hands on a discounted piece of technological utopia, imagine what would happen if said person was forced to fight for their very survival on this planet.  You can say that you wouldn't watch your fellow humans doing battle for their right to remain on this planet but you know you would.  You know you would watch and you know you would be on the phone voting for your favorite combatant to give you your requisite hunk of flesh.  And don't tell me there isn't some corporate giant who wouldn't be willing to write a huge check in order to profit from all the blood shed and chaos.  I can see it now.... Ryan Seacrest playing Edward R Murrow in a Brooks Brother special; the cool hipster putting the de evolution of society into a marketing friendly package of ad dollars and outright voyeurism. 
 

   If the Hunger Games were indeed real would they end up being cloaked in some semblance of partisan politics?  I imagine if the Hunger Games were held for real under a Democratic administration, the GOP would be threatening a filibuster to keep down the number of well to do tax payers competing for their lives.   And I imagine if the Hunger Games commenced under a Republican administration, the Democrats would be screaming into the heavens about how the middle class are taking on a higher casualty rate than their upper class brethren.  I imagine if the Hunger Games commenced for real, that the landscape, post blood shed, would be something akin to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."  I'm not talking about a world devoid of resources and I'm not talking about a world void of self restraint and society based etiquette.  I forsee a world post Hunger Games filled with opportunist.  A world where the power brokers sift through the casualties in an attempt to try and create a utopia in their own image.