“A remote temple in the Pennsylvania mountains,” sighed Adolph.
“A somewhat unusual place to talk shop? At least, so I would have thought, if you would excuse my plainness of speech.”
For the first time in months Deborah Mona Willow’s voice ran out like a silver bell.
“Our friend is well heard!”
As they splashed around in the river, their dialogue ran playfully as the water; and almost half as coolly.
There was no Cassie-Jane Helman here; any more than there was an Otis Spengler.
The big bossman of the Bubble Body Count had done for Sandy and Jane; and in some more or less meaningful sense, the star-crossed lovers Otis and Cassi-Jane also. Let us hope they are all at peace now.
In any case, that is none of our business.
For does not any man know his own business best, rather than that of another?!
***
PLATO
If you look up quotations sites, you can commonly find the following words attributed to the late Charles Kennedy:
Three simple words — freedom, justice and honesty. These sum up what the Liberal Democrats stand for.
Ultimately, the Liberal Democrats need to be a disruptive radical force and a protest party; but I just don’t see that now.
DIOGENES
… Go on!
PLATO
At the moment, UK liberalism is largely a disciplinary mechanism; it is orientated towards decency, respect, civility, conformity, and a mind-numbingly trite and worthy elite consensus.
DIOGENES
Oh, you poor thing! Don’t you realize there is nothing you can do? Just roll your tub, with me, and let the world burn. It’s the only thing for a man of noble soul!
PLATO
Well, as to that, I should be ashamed.
And yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet…
I don’t have the power to change this singlehandedly. I need people who will brave hellfire and brimstone, and be prepared to march all the way to the black gate of Mordor.
There needs to be a Freedom caucus in the Liberal Democrats; and radical individualists can’t stand alone. Because only an individualist truly knows the value of other people. If you think that’s contradictory, then you are also part of the problem.
DIOGENES
Oh, well, here it comes!
PLATO
No more wars.
No more anti-secularism.
No more sanctimonious cant.
Its time to quit ceding ground to the postmodernist revaluation of all values, should it take us our very last drop of blood and spirits to do so.
DIOGENES
All very fine and noble, young man! But aren’t you really running against the tide a little?
PLATO
Liberalism, properly understood, is about the value of the better argument; right now, however, the liberalism of today is fundamentally about coercion and violence.
The violence of language policing.
DIOGENES
Well, I daresay I can’t remember Voltaire or Stephane Charbonnier having a safe space; and I don’t think liberals in Iran or Myanmar have the luxury metropolitan luxury of sanctimoniously moralizing about microaggressions.
PLATO
The violence of the Anti-Islamophobia Industry and the religious double standard.
DIOGENES
Ever hear of a guy called Tim Farron?
PLATO
The violence of Humanitarian Genocide.
DIOGENES
Hear, hear! What is a ‘crime against Humanity,’ in comparison with a ‘crime for Humanity?’
PLATO
Now, the question is not, “what will happen if there is a fundamental change of direction?”
The question is more, “How much longer can the Liberal Democrats survive, if we don’t change completely?”
I give our party about 5 or 10 years to shift course, or else we perish to the uttermost; and rightly so, if we aren’t prepared to introduce fundamental reforms.
DIOGENES
Why bother. Come into this tub and roll along with me, young man; or I shall spank your arse, until you scream like a stuck pig!
PLATO
What are we lacking now, both in terms of a large percentage of our members, and our officially stated positions?
A serious and ruthlessly dispassionate weighing-up of the Dunblane Consensus (popular disarmament, a dogmatic resistance to defence equality in every respect).
A steadfast repudiation of all forms of Humanitarian Aggression, without exception; a ruthlessly principled, unqualified rejection of the hideous, Hollow Man’s monstrosity referred to at Nuremberg as the ‘Supreme Crime.’
An uncritical, unskeptical, evidence-free approach to the merits and demerits of global and continental institutions; such as the International Caucasian Court, NATO, and the European Court of Justice.
Pandering to regressive religious beliefs and practices; here, the problem is not only conservative Islam and political Islamism, but also reactionary and backward faith schools in a broad sense.
A weird and disconcerting mix of a flaccid and cowardly cultural relativism at home, and a highly belligerent cultural universalism abroad.
A highly cynical and brutally aggressive Realpolitik in international affairs, disingenuously masked by high-minded sub-Victorian humanitarian platitudes.
A reaction to pander to the commendably creative and imaginative ‘Reality Fan Fiction’ of the UK, US and global establishments.
DIOGENES
Ah, well, well, well. The Gods love a trier, as they say!
PLATO
Ultimately, there are many people in the Liberal Democrats who remember what liberalism is about.
However, there are far too many who are not Charlie, but who are perfectly happy to be friends or detached Olympian well-wishers of Salafism, Ultra-Haredism, or myriad Tibetan theocratic puff-peddlers like His Holy-Hollywoodness the Dalai Lama.
DIOGENES
Oh well fancy that! Too many elitist idiots. Well now, can you but imagine! Give my back a little rub now; now there’s a good chap!
PLATO
There are far too many among you who are devoted to the national interest, and not your interests.
There are far too many among us who serve the Good of Humanity, and not my good.
There are far too many who wax poetic and sentimental about inclusion and other politically correct shibboleths and nostrums, all the while jealously guarding the racial and class privileges of the Lib Dems as a party of self-serving, greedy old white guy warmongers.
There are far too many who have fully assimilated themselves into the Satanic death-cult of State-Worship, which is utterly inimical to the heretical and disruptive Promethean spirit of liberty.
There are far too many cultural sex tourists who voyeuristically ‘celebrate diversity,’ without having a care to which forms of differences are legitimate and acceptable for a sceptical, evidence-based liberal, rather than a straight white middle class metropolitan postmodernist intellectual.
DIOGENES
Hm.
Well, I daresay it’s not enough to say the status quo is intolerable, as a matter of judgement
It is actually utterly unsustainable, as a very real and inescapable matter of fact.
These are the days of Noah for Occidental liberalism…
And those who don’t labour on the ship of liberty are about to get carried away by the torrential deluge of popular rage and bitterness.
If you are bewildered by our low polling, then you are part of the problem.
There is no shortage of reasons why we have been getting such a shocking rate of attention.
To finish off, I will finally sum up, and give it to you clean and sweet:
Nobody wants to vote for a liberal party, in the UK of today.
Especially when nobody really knows what liberal politicians really stand for.
When we sold our souls for 30 pieces of silver, the Tories and the Red Top press have made an absolutely storming capital on our pitiful, mediocre investment.
This is a matter of existential urgency.
PLATO
Whose side are you on?
The Greater Good, or the Greatness of the Individual Good?
If it’s anything but the latter of these two irreconcilable paths that you have chosen to pursue, then prepare for the ultimate destruction and dissolution of our party in the next few months or years.
DIOGENES
I am writing these words at 09.56 am, 12 July 2017.
PLATO
Oh, you wag!
DIOGENES
No, I am writing them!
PLATO
I believe some of you will remember them in time to come.
DIOGENES
Wouldn’t bet on it, my lad!
PLATO
God grant it will be in the springtime of renewal, and not the bitterest, most everlasting winter of starvation and remorse
DIOGENES
Stuff and nonsense!
PLATO
I owe nothing to Humanity, and the national interest means absolutely nothing to me.
DIOGENES
I offer this freely and openheartedly to you all…
PLATO
In the Name of the Lesser Good.
***
And yet the darkness drew on…
And on, and on.
Adams and Willow left the water; Adams naked as his ancient namesake, and Willow as ruddy and gleaming as her ancient mother.
Adams gazed glumly upon the gloriously rich brownness of Willow’s ample curves. So much for white-passing! Willow’s broad, fertile hips shook as she cast off the sweet, sweet water of the holy pool.
Willow smirked coyly, as she noticed that Adams had not the slightest trace of lust in his eyes.
Closing her eyes, she imagined what it would be like for a much younger Adams to be thrusting greedily between the moistness of her thighs; she pictured her hymen finally breaking, and the torrential gusts of moisture and of warm, ecstatic stickiness flooding into her womb, and finally making her whole, and one…