John Whitehead comments, in the wake of George Romero’s death, on the zombie-fication of America.

Just take a look around you.

“We the people” have become the walking dead of the American police state.

We’re still plagued by the socio-political evils of cultural apathy, materialism, domestic militarism and racism that Romero depicted in his Night of the Living Dead trilogy.

Romero’s zombies have taken on a life of their own in pop culture, as well.

Indeed, you don’t have to look very far anymore to find them lurking around every corner: wreaking havoc in movie blockbusters, running for their lives in 5K charity races, and putting government agents through their paces in mock military drills arranged by the Dept. of Defense (DOD) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

In fact, the CDC put together a zombie apocalypse preparation kit “that details everything you would need to have on hand in the event the living dead showed up at your front door.”

Zombies also embody the government’s paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats that need to be monitored, tracked, surveilled, sequestered, deterred, vanquished and rendered impotent.

Case in point: in AMC’s hit television series The Walking Dead and the spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, it’s not just flesh-eating ghouls and cannibalistic humans that survivors have to worry about but the police state “tasked with protecting the vulnerable” that poses some of the gravest threats to the citizenry.

I’ve written about “The Walking Dead,” the TV show, over at FP a few times. But I’ve never seen any of it. I don’t have to as I live in modern America. I see zombies out and about every day.

Whitehead’s column is a short tour de force on the command and control accepted from them the police state.

I think what little he misses is the acceptance part. The people are more than happy to roll over or lie down for anything, no matter how egregious, so long as the TV, the phone, and the AC work and the beer and fast food flows.

A friend of mine is fond of saying, “We’re in the zombie apocalypse. It’s just not the cool kind.”

SHTF Plan.

Don’t be infected. Resist. Unplug and free yourselves. Be survivors.

They really do want your brains.