Art for Art's Sake

It was a rather calm day in the Confederacy. Workers worked, children played, birds sang. A young man, not older than 22, was walking to his job, which he had been working at for the past 2 years. On his way to work, he fastened his eyes on a piece of art which had been painted on the walls of a corporate building. It depicted a brutal scene from the early Confederacy's history which involved a woman and her child being detained in front of their burning house. This puzzled the man. He had never heard of such a violent and savage operation being carried out by the Confederacy, and especially not on what appeared to be an innocent woman and their child. He was aware of the great feats carried out by the incredible and ever loyal army, but to think about them being so cruel? It went against everything he was taught in school. Was he complicit in such a system? Was this painting a mere lie? Perhaps a work of fiction? At that moment, he couldn't know whether to feel betrayed by the bureaucracy or a fool for giving such interest to what could be simple slanderous lies of the great soldiers and government of the states. He knew spouting such a thing could get someone arrested, let alone painting something that depicted it. When he thought about it, many parts of civilian culture are almost smuggled. Illegal media from other countries, banned news outlets, and many pieces of technology from more advanced nations (though that was usually a luxury reserved for the upper class). It occurred to him how society, as it stands, is built off of what is illegal, and the only salvation is incompetence. Perhaps if he had lived in a world where the government was streamlined and highly efficient, there would not be an illegal society standing, but instead a tyrannical one. A culture of oppression.