There's a new strain of evil in the land and all we can think to do is check its birth certificate. As we move towards inevitable (and irreversible) revelation, our true faces can resist the light for only so long. For those who care to look, scary creatures can be seen walking among us - some even running for Supreme Leader! Many are those who lament this with much consternation and gnashing of teeth. "Can't you see? Look! It's the devil himself!" But I? I break into song about good ol' Raffy Cruz! Like Rafael said to me, "Heck, win a tea party election in this town, you get a song written about you! Except I said I wanted a thong, not a song!""
There is a man? But he's no man!
- We'll call him ma'am - - and such a ham! -
And to the poor he'll slyly lure He'll screw them all he can!
Who is this bum? Who acts like scum?
This bastard son! Canada from!
Just by his lying Has the Honest Speaking on the run!
Who loves to hate? His masturbate!
God's soul berate? An angry state!
Who wouldn't get a bit upset If you dated his mate?
So don't you snooze, Your head he'll bruise,
His words confuse. Your anger use.
I'll bet you five you're not alive If you don't hear his boos.
Who'll give us hell?
It's Rafael!
(Chorus: It's Señor Vain!)
He doesn't like that Señor He likes his white sounding name!
Who'll give a vote? For this cutthroat!
Who'll sink your boat! His lies don't float!
Who switches positions quicker Than a mountain slick goat?
Who is so rude? He's got a 'tude!
Whose shit don't stink? Loves to hoodwink!
Who thinks your dough was made to spend, And hides the way he thinks?
Who's Rafael? He'll never tell! (Chorus: He's just a flake!) I'll bet you ten you aren't men If you don't see a snake!
"Like, a total loser. Doesn't even know the answer for 2 + 2!"
The girls giggled at their classmate's woes for giving the incorrect answer. Correctness for them was very simple: whatever is accepted to be correct - and vice-versa. There is no mythical "truth" outside of that - unless you want to be laughed at! Social engineering at its finest.
The teachers too knew that which was correct: whatever put food on their tables. A few rebels would fight the new mandates but they were quickly ostracized and outcast. When word came down that the new answer to 2 + 2 is five, initial discussions quickly rationalized the new order.
"We have to keep an open mind. They're trying something new."
"There are no absolute truths. Only fringe radicals believe otherwise."
"What difference does it make what we say the answer is? One number is as good as another."
Some knew better but did not say better. Some did not care to know better. Some only knew what to repeat. But all who embraced the new order had one thing in common: they claimed they were being "responsible to society." "You can't eat ideals," scoffed one.
The king was very happy to hear about the mass corruption of his subjects. Had they been an honest people his rule would have ended in public outrage. He never could contain his spending and in doing so had vastly exceeded the kingdom's budget. But with the new way of counting, his reserves expanded overnight! Now when 400 coins were counted out the total came to 500. Budget balanced!
Malvin the Math Guy - he the ridicule of teenage girls - understood none of this. He saw no reason to lie and no reason to honor the king's destructive order. After all, no one has a say in the rules of math. They stand on their own. He could see that. What doesn't anyone else?
The Math Club - who had expelled Malvin - intellectualized in delightful conspiracy and hearsay the mysterious ways of the new order.
"I hear rumors that the latest research is pointing closer to six, not five."
"Amazing! This really is cutting edge stuff we're getting into nowadays."
"Yes, we can't be beholden to the old ways and old thinking. We must always be pressing forward. Some people can handle that. Some can't. Not everyone has the intellectual capacity to grasp these new concepts."
"Yeah, that Malvin is living in the past for sure. He's all sour grapes about this but he has only himself to blame."
"Indeed, with this new paradigm many previous mathematical impossibilities have been wiped away, unleashing new technologies of a brave new world!"
Malvin tried lying. He tried fitting in, but never could convince himself of the words he was instructed to say. He watched mournfully as the answer then changed to 5.5 ("First time ever two whole numbers equaled a decimal! Exciting breakthrough, this!") and then finally to Six (as the king's intoxicated spending accelerated). Malvin didn't know what to say or even to whom he could speak who would listen. He trudged along day after dying day in solitary confinement.
Part of him held out hope born of faith. Many times he'd heard the sneer: "Oh, so you're right and everyone else is wrong. What an asshole!" But he clung to his belief that even as a minority of one, the truth is still the truth. But the isolation wore on him. Malvin could never muster the confidence of expression of those who have wholesale social backing when parroting the latest "correct" answer. Malvin was simply dubbed the "Lonesome Loser".
In his darkest moments, even he had doubts hearing the eloquent and assured explanations from on high for the new formulas. These men couldn't just be making this up, going before the crowds without sound reason! That would be utter madness. What am I missing? From every angle I've tried I still come up with four. What Malvin was missing was that he painted others with his own brush; that others were fellow devotees of truth, and for them to derive a different answer concerned him mightily.
But the lies strained the kingdom as the new formulas were undone by reality. Three wheeled cars with four sides failed miserably. No one wanted to be "negative" or "betray" their rulers but life kept getting harder and harder as the doubts kept getting harder and harder to deny. As widespread panic rose to a fever pitch a reason must be found for their woes that did not include them. The answer was simple: Malvin.
The trial was attended by a packed courtroom and every word and action diligently reported. Everyone knew when to be shocked and outraged and acted their part on cue. The mass contempt for the traitor who spoke reason "fluently" comforted the liars who'd begun to fear the outcome of their wicked ways. "It's not us, after all! Whew! I knew he was no good. His nose is too big." This is what passed for insight.
Malvin was given a fitting death: he was burned at the stake. Sanctimonious editorials lamented his unrepentant soul with false remorse ("But Malvin must die for the greater good"). A parade was held to celebrate the "purification" of the land. "The future is ours! We are safe at last!"
But immediately after the murder splintering groups seized intractable positions against one another. "Six is OK but not 6.5. Now that's crazy" "Anything less than eight is absurd!" "You people who want to keep increasing it are going to ruin everything! No one will take us seriously!" "What are you? Some radical who wants to go back to Four?" "People! Be reasonable. The truth is always somewhere in the middle. We should compromise on six." Contentions flared into grudges which flared into new purges and more state sponsored murders.
Eventually the kingdom died off of it's own volition engulfed in self-fear and hysteria. But this gave little satisfaction to Malvin who sat in Heaven watching. What's the point of anything if everyone ends up dead?
"So they lie their whole life, destroy the social fabric, and vilify and butcher anyone who sticks up for the truth and tries to make things work. What's the point? I don't get it. Why did they get a free ride when I got the shaft??"
That's when a smiling Jesus leaned over and whispered into Malvin's ear: "You don't see any of those fuckers here do you?"
Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast,
for it is the number of a man,
and his number is 666.
If we really trusted God money wouldn't exist!
In Tarrant County (Fort Worth), the property tax assessor sends out his notices with "In God We Trust" stamped on them in large block letters multiple times. He does not do this because he trusts God! Rather, it's money we truly trust to "save" us. A man's religion in the truest sense is in what he places the safeguarding of his life. If God is love then when is the last time you saw someone trusting love? It happens, but rarely.
But of course we have to say we trust God, especially when we emblazon it on our very own golden calf. The total mass power of this mutual agreed delusion is equal to a million billion suns. The amount of energy bent to keep the fiction of money alive is not comprehensible at this point. But rest assured we are bending the universe and when we finally give out and the universe irrevocably snaps back into place, we will be in for the shock of a lifetime - all our lifetimes, that is. To admit we are committing this horrible sin of waste is too horrible to confess.
Yet we must.
"Let me know if the numbers work." It's a phrase we say without thinking. It's a comforting phrase for it implies we can boil life down to something concrete and finite. It also absolves us of responsibility as we pretend to be helpless before the numbers beast. Put pollution controls on cement kilns? Put food in front of every man, woman and child? Let everyone work as much as they need? Only "numbers" can answer those questions. If the numbers say no then we poison our land, air, and water in petrified paralysis while claiming purity of heart.
They called him an hippie communist anarchist - then had him crucified.
In Flint, the numbers said to poison the people. We are so contaminated by the beast we think nothing of it, only alleged radicals and anarchists are outraged. But it those who are not outraged who are the radicals and anarchists, destroyers of the world. So successful is the lie pontificating the beast gives us order and safety that causalities in that cause are acceptable. We poison for the greater good! Yet, were I to feed lead to a single child I'd be called a monster for the ages.
In the Sixties we dreamed the dream - but never lived it. When the dream does come for real, the unleashing of energy will be a supernova as we are no longer beholden to maintaining this binding fiction. Sauron's ring lives. Our rage and seething intensifies with every passing day, furious at our lack of freedom, fighting shadow monsters in mock resistance, waiting in agony for the dam to break. It's fucking excruciating. And only gets worse until resolved.
Still not convinced? Well, Nature always has the final say. It's funny watching us dictate to the universe. High priests of the economic religion spout infamous nonsense parsed from the soul. We bless our perfidy from on high, awed by the power of propaganda, thinking ourselves clever in worship of the number beast. If you think the lie only a small twist, unimportant and "understandable", perhaps even (laughably) prudent, then consider how you'd feel this is what our money looked like - and if you could even bear it.
Look at them. Stupid sheep herded along to their next assigned destination, fighting for table scraps from their masters who laugh as they scramble in dutiful obedience like abused children clinging to their abusers. Suckers looking to lottery wins as their only hope because each day is the same, stuck in the same rut until death, celebrating a life that never was. They don't care. They don't know how to care. This world gets colder by the day.
Asset 47 walked away from the window in disgust. He'd read about the poisoning of the Flint, Michigan water, a crime so vile and incomprehensible it should be an outrage heard around the world.
But it's not.
Because sheep don't care what you do to them. Especially in the name of the money god. Asset 47 was fully aware of the vile actions the government is capable of doing. He knew the secret spectator thrill the sheep got from looking the other way as evil is committed in their name, thinking that same evil would never attack them. The evildoers delight in this, knowing the rot it causes in the sheep's souls, guilt disabling them from fighting back. That's what gives the evildoers their edge: they know no guilt.
The more he saw of the world, the more Asset 47 took comfort in his path. You can't fight the government. You can't expect the sheep to fight - ever - even if their own lives are on the line. The game is rigged from top to bottom, from puppet peasants to puppet Presidents. But he was going to be on the winning side. Fuck the people. Fuck the assholes he worked for. They deserve each other. By burrowing so deeply inside the system, by being willing to do what others wouldn't, he had the power of the world working for him, not against him.
What exactly was everyone else thinking?
Asset 47 didn't know and didn't care. He got to live the Glorious Lie. Lying for a purpose is sweet. The Invisible Man. He was out of the sewer of poisoned politics, leeching layoffs, and the rest of the insanity careening ever further out of control. His fortress was impregnable. All of society would have to fall before his turn came to pass. The wrongs he committed were desperately denied by everyone but a few disregarded radicals.
Who is left to live? The Nazism of corporations silently creeps through soul after soul like the Angel of Death. At last, a holocaust no one will declare unholy! "Can this be true? Can it really be happening?" Thoughts too horrible for a sheep to bear. The bad shepherds have led the sheep astray from the lush lands until life is nothing more but a mad scramble for survival. That way no one notices the betrayal of the shepherds who are still hailed as good even as the flock dies.
To make his way of life work, Asset 47 knew he could have no vulnerabilities. No family, no pets, no dreams. Nothing outside himself to be used against him. Wholly self-contained. Half the world is trying to save the world from itself. Other half trying to destroy it. No one trying to save their soul. No, that would require stepping out from the pack, finding your own way, a life apart. And that's exactly where Asset 47 wanted to be, looking outside the window a man on the inside.
In movies, to create more interesting conflict, assassins are sent after each other quite often. In real life, it happens so rarely as to be negligible. They are a brotherhood in a club that values its aloof culture above all. Taking out a fellow member would be most distasteful. Even with the scarcity of contact, your fellow assassin is the nearest to family you have - and that need stays regardless of choices to the contrary.
Asset 47 had sweat stained dreams of which he would never speak. He knew his brothers in killing had those same unspeakable dreams. That was their bond. You could see it in their eyes. Asset 47 never forgot those faraway looks he glanced. The recognition. The sense of so many parallel lives kept him alive in the middle of the night screams. Every asset grasps onto those same lifelines.
But now they were to be broken.
Asset 47 never feared an attack from within. He was apolitical, apathetic, and unapologetic. Play games, he did not. But his masters were not so quite religious on those points. While loving and cherishing their assassin toys, the idea of feeling beholden rankled them on occasion, causing that rare order to go out: destroy a toy. A proper pretext was dutifully found, a necessary evil, no choice; their hands were bound. But really, it came down to the simple desire to kill and feed the insecurity to feel in control.
Asset 47 always thought if he were to be killed the most perfect time would be during his weekly walk in the countryside. But his calculating mind also figured that since that was so obvious, no one would dare take that chance lest they fall into a trap. Sometimes a psychological barrier is the most impenetrable. But this one he overvalued.
The first shotgun blast did not kill him. Wasn't meant to. Asset 47 saw his own blood for the first time. His killer was chosen for his quiet ruthless cruelty, one who wouldn't hesitate to rip the fabric of the fraternity; cold to the core. But every living creature has its appetite and the Cold One fed on the fear of his victims:
maim first.
In Asset 47 he found a gold mine of dread.
"No! No! Don't do it! Don't kill me!" The totality of terror of a wasted life hit Asset 47 in thundering avalanche. "I lied! I've been lying. I don't want to die like this!"
The Cold One could not repress the smirk that came to his lips. Stupid fool thinking of life! How pathetic. The idiot has done everything he could to sabotage his life. What was he expecting? A dream come true? Naw, man. Only thing you got coming is the nightmares you been hidin'. You really thought you could escape? Dumb ass bitch.
"You don't understand! She's not coming back. She's never coming back...Oh, God, this can't be happening to me!" This is turning into a mercy killing. Too late for love. How big a lie you been livin'? Time to die. "I don't want to die. Help me to live! Somebody please help me? There's nothing for me now. She won't talk to me. I can't live with this! I can't go on. I can't...I can't...," Asset 47 sobbed.
"You don't have to," informed the Cold One, finishing the job, more grateful than ever that his turn had not come.
But come it did - as he too entered the long line of Fatal Futile Men finding out too late what they really wanted in life.
The words echoed lightly around the captive audience in the cramped gymnasium. Charlie took an emotional swallow like he always did making these speeches.
"That's what I told myself. Bullheaded stubborn is what I was. Not wanting to admit to reality. I thought I was indestructible. I thought if...I though if I believed it hard enough it would be true. And I did believe it. Real hard. Still, it was creepin' up on me how it was getting harder and harder to believe. But I didn't listen. I didn't do what a man had to do. And that's how that bronc put me in this wheelchair...for the rest of my life."
An active soul since his youth, Charlie's existence in the wheelchair laid forth a cruel fate he could not understand. He loved his life growing up on the farm with its vast vistas over the flat plains of the Texas panhandle. A boy could dream anything he wanted out there and becoming a rodeo champ consumed his life. It was his destiny, in fact. All the breaks rolled his way; a natural on the circuit. The smells, the rhythms, the anticipation - rodeo life fed him and thrilled him in one long continuation of his boyhood dream.
But a dream come true can cut both ways. Stepping outside the arena back into the "real world" angered Charlie. There, the supposed golden child didn't get all breaks he felt he deserved. Over time the anger devolved into rage. As a famous champion, his tantrums and outbursts were tolerated and even hushed up. "The price of genius," some would say. Unhelpful friends made excuses for him. Those who rode his coattails only wanted to keep the party going.
He'd met Terri, a phlebotomist, in a hospital after an accident. She was everything he wasn't and her honest humor and thousand watt smile stole his heart away. Charlie figured marriage would be just like learning to ride a wild bronco. He'd already figured that out as the answer to life - only he couldn't rope his problems and tie them away so easily. Terri refused to be caged and since Charlie refused to see any other way things could work he misconstrued her actions as a refusal of his love.
The most maddening part of those years was his feeling of a grand but vague foolishness. Part of him felt like he was on the precipice of paradise and the other a step away from doom. The constant questions and unreality swirled in his head - made worse when a bottle was added. He withdrew more then ever into the ring, the only place of clarity. There he could "win". In so-called real life winning was a miasmic mystery.
When the marriage ended, seeds of doubt first entered his mind. Maybe he hadn't had life figured out after all. His sense of destiny started to crumble. He'd had it all for a while, right? Didn't that prove him right in his life's choices? Why had it stopped working? Charlie was so certain he'd found the Answer. So proud and confident. But now...
One morning he pulled up to the arena in whatever town it happened to be. Charlie stopped the truck but something kept him inside. It was as if he was lost, plunked down in a foreign land. He didn't even know what was doing there. His childhood sun was gone from the sky. The glistening railings didn't want him anymore. The pull to stay in the truck and not move was overwhelming. Just let go and never come back.
But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Charlie had never suffered a serious injury - until that day. Everything was off: his timing, his feeling, his heart. He wanted to quit the circuit and run back to Terri, to work on fixing what needed fixing until it was fixed. That scared the hell out of him. How could he commit his life to something that might never happen? How could he...fail? Nobody knew his need for her, they only knew of his glistening career. In the arena he was regarded as brave beyond doubt. He must stay in that cloud at all costs. To be labeled a coward would be to wipe out his life's work.
The force of will required for him to continue rose to draining levels he could never sustain. Charlie knew if he kept on that course he would die. His drinking got heavier and more violent, events so bad they could not be covered up. "I know I'm going to die. Just don't let it be today." Reduced to that final pathetic prayer, Charlie stepped into the ring one too many times; angry, unstoppable, unreasonable. But he didn't die. He got worse: a wheelchair for life.
The suicide attempt with the pills was feeble. But it opened the door for probing predators of the worst kind: do-gooders. They would run his life for him, filling him with false praise and delusional adoration. Firmly in their foul clutches, they put Charlie on display as an example of mock responsibility in a world obsessed with mocking responsibility. They told him his life could still have meaning as he lied for the "greater good."
That's how Charlie found himself paraded around to school gymnasiums like he was in now. His was to be a cautionary tale of woe, of how he'd found God, been a stubborn man, and changed his ways. The newspapers and holier-than-thou's ate it up. Article after article recounted his story and his "discovering a new kind of bravery outside of the ring." Even Charlie began to half-believe after a while. What he didn't do - what he could never do - is come clean.
"Truth is I'm a loser who ran away from his wife - and life. And I'm still running today. I'm angrier than ever and if I had a chance to get back in the ring I'd take it in a heartbeat. All these speeches you so heartily applaud are nothing but bullshit put up by these meddling assholes trying to tell people how to live their lives. If it was up to me, I'd just go ahead and die. That's all I really want to do. I've got nothing. Please let me go." That narrative wouldn't play so well in the papers. Ironically, it was the one speech that actually might do some good.
Rolled backstage out to the handicapped van that shopped him around the country, Charlie overheard two young rodeo-ers.
"That old man is a fool! He couldn't cut it and now he's whining about it. What a waste of time."
"I don't know. Makes me sorta scared..."
"If you're scared, don't get in the ring. That's how you'll end up like that has-been."
"I'm not like him. That was his whole life. Hell, I'd hate to have to spend rest of my life doing nothing but bulldogging and hangin' on to high rollers. Shi-it, I'd rather be hanging onta Jenny!"
The two boys let out a conspiratorial laugh, not noticing a self-propelled Charlie rolling furiously toward them having overheard the conversation.
"You gotta do it! You hear me? You gotta get in that ring. Prove yourself a man!" The two boys looked at Charlie in a state of disbelief - then contempt. Charlie's handlers raced desperately to wheel him away before he blew his cover and the entire do-gooder charade. "You can't just do what you want! You hear me, boy? Get in that ring! Get in that goddam ring!"
EPILOGUE: The pious woman who frantically wheeled Charlie away from the boys tried to drown out his words with profuse apologies of "This isn't the real him." and "Please ignore this tirade. He needs his medication." Skilled, practiced and vicious lies protected the perfidy. But that only reinforced the boys' idea the adult world was nothing but a hypocritical lie - and that helped them to resist joining that hypocrisy.
Charlie's hell lasted until the day he died, unrepentant and, frankly, unaware. "Losing isn't supposed to happen to me." He never accepted the idea he wasn't still on the winning track. In magnificent manipulation, the dreaded do-gooders played on his guilt, forcing the words out of him they wished to hear. Had Charlie awoken to his reality he could have shoved aside their treachery and broken free. But he was too afraid to do that, for then he'd only be left with his anger.
