The Sky-Merchants' Dance: A Tale of Petty Fees and Lesser Men

Behold, O wanderers of the modern age, as the merchants of the sky gather before the temple of democracy, defending their right to extract gold from the pockets of the sleeping masses! In a spectacle most telling of our times, the chieftains of Air Canada and WestJet, those self-proclaimed masters of the clouds, stood before Parliament's transport committee, their tongues weaving tales of necessity and choice.

See how they dance, these merchants of mediocrity! They speak of choice while choking the very essence of freedom. They offer not wings to soar, but chains disguised as options - a masterful deception for the herd that knows not its own bondage!

Michael Rousseau, the grand architect of Air Canada's latest scheme, doth protest that his company merely follows the wind of consumer preference, claiming that travelers worship at the altar of the lowest price, even as hidden costs lurk in the shadows. What sublime comedy! The masses, in their eternal slumber, mistake the rattle of their chains for the sweet music of savings.

O how the mighty have fallen! These sky-lords who once promised freedom now peddle restrictions, parading their limitations as choices, their constraints as liberation. They are but merchants of mediocrity, selling comfort to the comfortable, ease to the easy!

In the grand theater of this parliamentary hearing, WestJet's sovereign, Alexis von Hoensbroech, proclaimed with pride that a million souls have already surrendered their right to carry their possessions aloft, as if the voluntary acceptance of chains makes them any less binding. "It's a choice," he declares, while the sleeping masses nod in agreement, never questioning why their "choices" perpetually diminish.

In this land of the sleepers, where the populace accepts each new restriction with docile acquiescence, the airlines have mastered the art of diminishment. They strip away what once was included, then sell it back piecemeal to those who know no better. The personal item - a purse, a computer bag - becomes the last bastion of free carriage, a meager consolation prize for the complacent masses.

Witness the perfect expression of our age: men who once dreamed of conquering the skies now haggle over the price of storing a bag above one's seat. Is this not the very image of descent? The eagle becomes the merchant, the soaring spirit transforms into the counting house clerk!

Yet amidst this carnival of mediocrity, these sky-merchants reveal their own chains. Von Hoensbroech rails against government fees and taxes, while Rousseau echoes his cry for reform. They are themselves bound by the very system they perpetuate, caught in the web of their own making.

The masses sleep on, accepting each new fee, each fresh restriction, with the placid contentment of cattle. They celebrate the illusion of choice while their wings are clipped, one feather at a time. They mistake the absence of protest for the presence of progress, the reduction of service for the expansion of options.

Look upon these proceedings, O ye who still dream! See how the last men smile and say: "We have invented happiness - and baggage fees." They blink and call it progress, they shuffle and name it dance, they bow and deem it freedom!

As the curtain falls on this parliamentary performance, we are left with a vision of our time: a world where the conquest of the skies has devolved into a quarrel over luggage, where the dream of flight has been reduced to a calculation of fees, where the very concept of service has been transformed into a menu of restrictions marketed as choices.

Let them who have ears hear: in the end, it is not the cost of carrying bags that weighs us down, but the weight of our own acceptance, our willingness to mistake regression for progress, limitation for choice, submission for freedom. The sky-merchants will continue their dance, and the sleepers will continue to dream, until the day when someone dares to truly spread their wings.