I’m beginning to feel good, things are so bad.
If the Nameless One were less destructive, more temperate, sneakier, our danger would be greater. Lucky for us, he’s no political genius but a lucky monster, now convinced of his inevitability, even divine assignment. His vision of greatness is as preposterous as it is disastrous: Worship Him as the Infallible Almighty, bow your head or lose it. It’s hard to believe a supposedly sane electorate would fall for such arrant nonsense, but we did, and we – and all the world – must pay the price for our idiocy. There can be no compromise between the Nameless One’s vision and our Founders’ because they contradict each other. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is one thing; a government of the few, by the few, and for the few is another. When these visions clash, one must prevail, which must mean the extinction of the loser.
If the Nameless One were a gradualist, the American people might gradually accommodate themselves to his cruelty, mendacity, and predations. Slothful, indolent, and smug, we the people can easily dissuade ourselves from risking discomfort to do right. Prosperity, peace, and plenty have lulled us into an overconfidence many wouldn’t have believed possible if we weren’t witnessing it. In the words of Bob Dylan’s great anthem, “When will they ever learn?”
The Nameless One, brimming with destiny and a puerile avidity for revenge, opted for the shock treatment. Break everything fast, “flood the zone,” and by the time the nation wakes from its slumber, the damage will be done, democracy quashed. Those who predict the midterm elections or those in 2028 will change our course make my brown eyes boggle and gray hairs bristle. How can anyone believe the Nameless One will allow elections if he’s not sure of winning them? He’s already recommending that any legislator urging impeachment should be removed, maybe extinguished. Stop being a ninny, I feel like screaming – he wants to kill you if you’re in his way – and will if he can. Wise up!
Given the Nameless One’s aims, the shock treatment was likely his best bet. The good news about this ruckus is it’s impossible to sleep through. Thanks to his actions thus far, disquiet and calamity threaten on countless fronts – and it will be worse tomorrow. The economy, public health, education, foreign relations, supply chains, social welfare, individual rights, public safety, natural disasters, the justice system – any might pop like the weasel at any moment, and we the people, by wide majorities, will know whom to blame. And believe you me, will we blame! Public opinion in our wired moment responds rapidly and rabidly. No doubt the Nameless One and his courtiers have arranged comfortable dachas to retreat to outside our nation’s borders, for they’ll need them.
The sooner the better. The more precipitous our panic, the sooner we act. I root for the market to plummet, measles to ravage, rivers to rise. Go Xi, I cheer, stick it to us. Let Christmas be denuded of toys. The worst can’t come soon enough – to punish us for our stupidity and waken us from our sloth.
Is it evil to desire evil? Not, I’d argue, if evil is one’s only path to good. If the Nameless One succeeded, the nation might yawn, turn over, and resume our nap. Less liberties, freedom of discourse, individual rights? – who cares if one’s feeling cozy. We must be rousted out of sleep and forced to hustle to save our skins.
I pray for a convulsed, repulsed nation to eject these vipers like vomit. Bring it on.