A Maryland Park and Planning Commission is holding a teen athletic competition advertised as the first annual “Hunger Games”.

As a science fiction fan, I found the Hunger Games series of films a compelling and highly plausible dystopia.

But it is a DYSTOPIA.

That means no rational individual would want to find themselves in that situation.

In spoofing the emphasis placed upon the love triangle in the story, Homer Simpson lamented, “When do we get to killing the children?”

Will this be the fate of those losing these municipal competitions?

For like it or not, that was the point of this fictionalized athletic spectacle as a form of social control and the only way to survive was to kill or be killed.

Any bureaucrat employing this name as part of what ought to be a wholesome youth activity either doesn’t understand the point of the narrative or are hoping to manipulate the population to the point where one day such blatantly homicidal bloodsports are accepted without question.

By Frederick Meekins