He’s Back! America Plunges Towards Dystopia… Honest Adolph Volume II!

CHAPTER 1: LET FREEDOM BLAZE!

Senator Willow twitched nervously as she faced the camera.
‘Where is Otis?’ she wondered.
‘Thank God that tricksy guy isn’t here tonight.’
Thunder flickered in the distance. The storm was over.
Or so she hoped.
‘People of America,’ she coughed as she cleared her throat.
‘Oh, Charles Taizé fuckin’ Eddy on a fuckin’ prophet-stick,’ wailed Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble, burping up the rest of this evening’s pizza, filling the cramped office with a stench no more easy to credit, and no less stomach-churningly noxious, as Presidential tears after a drone strike.
Ingrid hurled herself out of the way, but there was no need.
For it was only raw acid fumes that spewed from the gaping cavern of the filthy, squirming, subhuman, humanitarian-brutality-mongering sack of neocon depravity and liberal-interventionist mendacity slumped in front of her slender frame.
Nothing more than this.
‘How many of me could he eat?’ she wryly asked herself.
‘Hm! How about I eat you out…
‘Uh, how about we eat out us…
‘Some…
‘Uh…
‘Urrrggghhh-fuck! Sheesh!
‘Wooooooo! That was a pretty good one! Huh?
‘Oh…
‘Oh god, the ass too, let’s get this ah…
‘Yeah sorry girl, my ass is kinda…
‘Wo-hoooo-owch! Urgh! Fuck!
‘Hey, Hey, Marcus B, how many pizzas will we…
‘Urghh….
‘Shit…’
‘Your suit is nice,’ Ingrid coyly remarked.
‘But some might say it was nicer before you decorated it.’
‘Oh God…
‘Ingrid baby, you say the sweetest things. I swear you should quit going to the Epstein…
‘Urgh, the Margarita Pizza Parlor.
‘Whew! Light o’ my longing, fire o’ my…
‘Pppppppppphhhhuhhhhhhhhhhh!’
‘You enjoy that pizza,’ Ingrid wryly observed.
‘Urgh…
‘Clean me up. Is the shower still working?’
‘You are a big boy now,’ tsked Ingrid.
‘Shouldn’t you know how to shower yourself by now?’
‘Yeah but…
‘I can’t reach down…
‘Down…
‘Where, I ur…
‘I mean, like…
‘Yeah, er, urgh…’
‘Why don’t you go to the bar? I think you would be a real hit with the citizens,’ Ingrid smirked.
‘Undress me, Ingie lady,’ Marcus whimpered.
‘The, the fuckin’ sick…
‘It’s really breakin’ my balls…’

‘My fellow Americans!’
Senator Willow was firmer now. Her voice was far from the loudest, but in her way, it was as authoritative as any; even if, in her own very limited and fallible way, she had come among men to serve, and not to be served.
‘I am here today to remind you of some solemn truths.’

Nauseous by now to the point of giddiness, all Senator Bubble could do was to scream inwardly:
‘Oh God, here comes the pretentious intellectual crap as per usual!’

‘Our nation is founded upon the three noble truths of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

‘Fuckin’ you go, girl!’ roared Saul Friedman, pounding the table so far the glass shattered.
‘You clumsy Jew fuck!’ roared Dogpound.
And who, pray tell, was Dogpound?
…
Well, who frickin’ cares?
Fuck this guy.
She’s goin’ in!
‘She’s fuckin’ goin’ in,’ yelled Saul, practically howling with delight.
‘You show these fuckin’ neocon bitches what happens when the Willow hits the fuckin’ shits!
‘Gonna show these bitter neocon fucks what’s gonna hit them when they shit all over our frickin’ Constitution!
‘You go on ahead an’ deal those boys a fuckin’ Steamy Jefferson, girl!’
‘Hm. We’re. We’re. Uh, Sally? Is. Is the Steamy Jefferson. Ready?’
‘Fuck do you care?’ snarled Sally.
‘I fuckin’ told you to just pour the beers, because it’s all a bloody retard like you is good for.’
‘Good for. Good. Good for,’ muttered Jim, smiling weakly.
‘Tell you what, Americans with Disabilities Act is a pile of crap. I wish Alan hadn’t hired you, you worthless shit for brains. I mean, if we had a good libertarian here like Senator Bubble…
‘Well, ish! I mean, instead of a fuckin’ Jew sellout like that guy over there…
‘Oh. Oh my gosh.’
‘Took. Took three,’ Jim muttered.
‘The…
‘The fuck. Oh. Oh my God. Let me dial Alan.’
‘Need the phone?’ said Jim, signalling.
‘Oh, you useless retarded sack of crap! Hey… give me that!
‘Alan! Alan! Alan!’
‘Wah… wah… it’s… it’s frickin 1 p… pm, bitch!’ Alan almost wailed.
‘Don’t fuckin’ call me this early in the morning! It’s only been light for what… 6 hours?’
‘Alan, just let me tell you what’s going on here. The Jews.’
‘What?’
‘The fuckin’ Jews, Alan.’
‘What? Fuck those guys! They’re always breakin’ my fuckin’ balls, sis!’ Alan groaned.
‘Lisssstttteeeennnn caaaarefuuulllyyyyy, Al. The Jews.
‘Now tell me, Alan. Can they take alcohol?
‘Are they like, you know? The Chinese, and the, and the Orientals, and stuff?’
‘And…
‘Stuff? Uh…
‘Fuck would I know, sis? Quit fuckin’ callin’ me up? No wonder our bar is going down the…
‘The…’
‘Well, you fuckin’ callin’ me up like this!’
‘Look, we have this thing, I mean look, we got ourselves a rowdy Jew guy up here, and he’s making me feel uncomfortable.
‘Hm. Do you think he might try ‘n’ pull somethin’?’
‘Huh? Oh, oh my gosh! We haven’t seen one of them folks in a while! Wow! Hee-hee!
‘Ohhh, my, gooossshhh, Sally, why don’t we fuckin’ come ‘n’ bleed the bastard dry, yeah? Wooo hooooooooooooo!’
Sally cleared her throat and spat on the carpet.
‘You flaming idiot! He practically hasn’t bought shit since he’s come here!’
Alan shrieked in horror.
‘A Jew who ain’t bought shit? Fuck this guy!…
‘What, I mean…
‘Wha-wha-what-what-what? Ohhh, God! I mean, what fuckin’ good is that?
‘A fuckin’ Jew with no money? Why don’t we fuckin’ call Caleb?’
‘Because he is dead! Ah, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Well, yeah…’ Alan whispered.
‘Yeah?’
Sally gasped.
‘Now you get it, right?’
Alan quivered.
‘Yeah, yeah, I mean like yeah, sis. But… but…’
Sally practically screamed.
Alan finally managed to squeak out:
‘He really, really, really hates the Jews, alright?’
Sally slammed the phone down in disgust.
‘Why did you give him that beer? You are even more fucking stupid than my other brother?’
‘He. He likes. Beer,’ stuttered Jim, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
‘You know what?’ spat Sally.
‘Well, at least Alan has a bit of fight left in him. CNN caught his heckle the other day.
‘He told Senator Marcus Bubble the fuckin’ Zionazi mafia were destroying our country.
‘Of course, the stupid Zioliberalism media are always gonna try and censor our Markie!
‘But he got the message across. One way or another.’
‘Mr. Mr,’ began Jim.
‘Don’t you dare!’ warned Sally, wagging his finger in fury.
‘Mr Feinstein is real nice,’ muttered Jim weakly.
‘Nice? Of course he’s fucking nice! He’s a fucking Jew shopkeeper, why wouldn’t he be nice?
‘Well? Hm! Any ideas why? Huh?’
Jim furrowed his brow.
‘I don’t. Understand?’
Sally slapped the counter in frustration.
‘Of course you don’t understand. Because you’re literally thick as shit!
‘You know, see us other two siblings: me and Alan?
‘We are the smart ones.
‘We support the troops.
‘We support every lost, err, every last goddamn war of ours that is necessary to defend our country and sustain the project of our common humanity, or some fucked up intellectual shit like that.
‘We don’t sell to queers, Jews (not unless… well, y’know!), dirty Ayyyrabs, or to those filthy fuckin’…
‘Well wait, technically we do have to sell to the niggers, I mean why? ‘Like, why the hell? Becaaauuussse diversitaaayyy or some PC fuckin’ crap like that back in the 1940s.
‘But you know what? You don’t understand any of that shit.
‘Because you are fuckin’ retarded. Only a fuckin’ special ed trophy spastic like you doesn’t understand with us.
‘See me and Alan, we are really smart; but you are dumb as a fuckin’ block of…
‘Of firewood, or, fuck poetry, Christ knows!
‘I mean, you are so fuckin’ thick as shit, you might as well be a Democrat, or a pacifist, or some other worthless sack of shit for brains pinko!’
Jim timidly offered to change the subject.
‘Is Mr Feinstein coming back some day? He’s. He’s a real nice. Nice. Guy.’
‘He’s nice,’ spat Sally.
‘They always are, those guys…
‘When they need to be.
‘But no, he ain’t comin’ back.
‘He was really disrespectful to Alan about his moment of glory at the Charleston Bubble rally. He said Alan was a ‘privileged white guy,’ whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean?
‘I mean, he should have shot the guy, but he’s a pretty lousy shot. Second only to you, genius? Huh?’
Jim wrinkled his brow and paused for a moment, lost in thought.
All of a sudden, he broke out in a smile.
‘Coffee,’ he beamed, his eyes glittering with joy.
‘Well, well, well…
‘ Well I guess hell, that’s not a bad idea,’ she muttered.
‘Yeh, why don’t we close early. Go and tell jolly ol’ beat up King Jewfucius here he has to clear out.’
Jim walked over to Saul.
‘Uh, excuse me sir, I mean, uh, Mr jolly old beat-up King Jewfucius.’
Sally’s mouth fell wide open in horror.
As for Saul, his generous blue eyes blazed with anger for a whole lightning boltsworth of fear and fury.
Habit of a lifetime.
Right?
You can never presume it’s gonna be alright.
The time will never come when we can really…
Ah, fuckit! All of a sudden, the storm lifted, and he remembered.
‘Hah! Ya cheeky fuckin’ ass,’ Saul grinned, dealing Jim a thoroughly rambunctious bear hug.
‘Jew-sagely as fuckin’ charged, son! Shrewd fuckin’ cookie is old Jim, here! Ya frickin’ snarky fuck, boyo!’
‘Sorry for what the, the-the-the retard said,’ stammered Sally in a faux-apologetic manner.
‘He’s thick as two short…
‘Uh, wood pieces, right? Know what I mean.
‘But you know you do have to shift your ass, because we don’t need you now.
‘And your dollars.
‘Hm. Bar’s closing!’
Saul spilled the remnants of his drink, dismayed to hear this crushing news.
‘Awwwwwww!’ moaned Saul in desperation that was only half contrived. ‘But… but Senator Willow…’
‘Who? Oh… her,’ murmured Sally.
‘Politicians. The usual shit.’
She glanced towards the door, her glare harder now than ever.
‘Ah!’ gushed Saul, almost ecstatic with delight. ‘Not just any politician.’
‘Hell you on about, old man?’ whispered Sally.
‘Get. The. Hell. Out. Now.’
So that was that.
‘Hm. Good frickin’ evenin’ to you an’ all. Mizzizz Barmaid Frickin’ Sunshine,’ grunted Saul.
Sally waited until Saul had got the right distance away/
By now, the old man was close enough to hear her, but (hopefully) nowhere near close enough to think it worth the trouble to stagger back and give as good as he got.
‘You and your fuckin’ tribe suuuuuucccckkkk!’ screamed Sally.
‘You and your fuckin’ miserly…’
Saul heard it alright.
Swinging his cane in disgust, he reeled and roared:
‘Shut yer damn whitie’s craphole, ya racist asswanglin’ vanilla-lickin’ fuck!
Sally yelled back with a volley of unprintable abuse.
Saul remained defiant.
‘Hurrrr! Go an’ fuckin’ goy up some other fuckin’ soft-ass Friedman mercymonger!’ he spat.
Nobody was around.
Or so he thought.
Saul raised his head with a start!
A single pair of jolly brown eyes and a chubby face, just consumed with innocent mirth and delight.
Or so the naïve onlooker would have thought.
Big Xian was actually a much greater and more profound figure than many a person in his city or nation would have been ready to imagine. But that said, imagination was scarce enough of a resource in general, God knows!
Big Xian laughed with amusement.
‘Hey! Hey! Hey! Did they be nasty to you again, Big Saul?’ he chuckled.
‘Hm. What’s it t’ you,’ muttered Saul.
He immediately felt bad, though.
‘Come and get something at my place instead. We are still serving your favourite.’
Brightening somewhat, Saul smacked his lips in anticipation.
‘Pork balls? What’s the sauce?’ he practically panted.
‘Nooooo, brother!’ Big Xian grinned.
‘Hunan pork!’
Saul whooped for joy.
‘What? You frickin’ kiddin’ me, Xian?! Thought you said you weren’t getting’ it again!’
Big Xian’s hearty belly guffawed, and guffawed, and guffawed.
‘You are my best customer! I have to get this for my best customer!’
Saul frowned naively, not fully grasping the joke.
‘How d’ya know I was here in town again? You ain’t been doin’ that fortune tellin’ again?
‘Well, now that’s some damn spooky little shit you got goin’ there, Big Sen.
‘Ahhh, tell yer what, big Sen, I ain’t never been spooked so much in my frickin’ life. You sure you weren’t genuinely witchin’ me?
‘Ach, dear God Sen! That whole scary-ass Yi Jing shit o’ yers! I mean, in all my born days…’
Big Xian roared with laughter and ushered Saul into The Kunming Twilight.
‘You know, Big Saul, It’s so good your God allows you to eat pork at my place all the time!
‘Friend Saul, it is like all our Christmases have come at once!’
‘Christmas? Heh, heh, heh! Well, ya big-ass snarky fuck, Big Sen!
‘Huh? Some frickin’ big-ass joker failer of a jest! Ya know us folks, we just don’t…’
Big Xian poured Saul a glass of tea.
‘You know, if you keep eating like this, one day, Big Saul will be as big as Big Xian.’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ya outa yer frickin’ mind? Heh, heh, heh!’ roared Saul, by now almost delirious with mirth.
‘You know, this is a big day for us!’ said Big Xian.
‘Yes, it is Youtai Independence Day, here in Chinatown!
‘And in my own hometown in China, in our ancient community, we will all celebrate the Youtai Independence Day!’
‘Really!’ gasped Saul.
‘Owch! Guess what? It’s frickin’ Israel day too!
‘Ooo, now that’s some spooky fuckin’ shit, Big Sen!
‘Alright then, well let’s have a toast to the name, cos we don’t know what the proper way o’ callin’ him is, but he won’t mind if we go full Hunan piggy-ass on this one, just this frickin’ once, right?
‘Now give us that frickin’ skewer, an’ let’s just blow our fuckin’ balls off to blazes, son!’
Big Xian laughed again.
‘The name that we can name, you know, it is not the everlasting name.’
‘Wowee!’ Saul whooped in joy, taking down a carelessly obstructing bamboo dumpling basket as he shook his cane for sheer delight.
‘Now you and I, we could be practically frickin’ brothers, Senny boy! Whoop! Whoop!’
Xian smiled for a moment.
But then, overcome with emotion, he frowned.
Pensively, he fell into a muse.
He could hide his true despondency no longer.
Youtai Independence Day.
Saul had never once asked who the ‘Youtai’ were.
Silently, in Big Xian’s mind, he pictured himself back in the beautiful Yunnan province of eternal spring.
Silently, the fingers of his grandfather traced his fingers on the half-naked, feverish body of the ailing lad.
But this was no Chinese calligraphy.
‘Youtai,’ Big Xian audibly breathed. ‘Youtai.’
The hills and valleys echoed with the gentle thunder.
The winds of change dispersed, and all was left was the gentle pitter-patter of a bittersweet nostalgia.
‘Y’hudah,’ sang the ospreys, silent.
Far flung, free, and lonesome.
…
Y’hudah.

Senator Willow’s speech was already forgotten.
At least by a lot of people.
The people who really counted.
‘So,’ she murmured, finally letting the first tears flow, so heartbreakingly, soul-rendingly late in her speech.
My judgment was poor.
What’s to be afraid of?
Is it such a shameful thing for a woman to cry?
Oh, for God’s sake!
Of course it is.
It’s not my America.
It doesn’t belong to me.
Not now.
‘These “goddamn filthy Arabs,” as our good Professors Shankley Butcher and Petty Marshall are classing them, are also mothers.
‘They are our daughters.
‘And sisters.
‘And wives.’

Yuck! What a fucking dumb and divisive thing to say!
The first few seconds, after his shower, were amusing.
But this is just too…
Urrrgghhh!
Ingrid tutted.
‘I’m going home. Thanks for dirtying my clothes for me.’
Marcus struggled to beg her without retching.
‘I got some plan B,’ he whispered.
‘Get you anything…
Anything…
‘You w-aaahhh-wah-oh-my-fuckin’-guuurrggghhh!’
‘You are scum,’ Ingrid murmured, flicking her ponytail as she deserted the bloodbath.
Blood-bath?
Well…
if only!
‘Shit,’ murmured Bubble, practically immobile.
‘Nordic bitches are really hot when they’re fakin’ bein’ angry.
‘Hm. No wonder I had to pay of that greasy Findielander bitch and send the CIA to tell her to take the money and shut the fuck up!
‘I mean, she wouldna been the first uppity, schoolyard-slutty, spunk-lovin’ cunt I’d had to sort out once and for all.
‘But I wasn’t letting that uppity-utterly-chuggin’-bitchwipe spoil our trade deal with those Russia folks.
‘Nah, I had to arrange the Ukrainian no-fly-zone (‘some would say bombing campaign?’ Ahhh, just you go and fly your fuckin’ ass, Otis!) just right, so that we could bury the bad news.
‘In the ass.
‘Sideways.
‘With a rusty chainsaw.
‘I mean, what’s worse, in all fairness? Fuckin’ a few uppity bitches over, or being a flamin ‘non-interventionist’ pinko isolationist?
‘So a few fuckin’ white niggers in Ukraine got blown to blazes.
‘So the fuck what? I mean, if Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble calls it a humanitarian intervention, then it’s a fuckin’ goddamn humanitarian intervention, isn’t it!
‘Well, anyone who says otherwise is a pacifist traitor!
‘I mean look, as one of our boys said a few years back: ‘The First Amendment is great in principle, but we’ve got a war going on!’
‘Well, no shit! Marcus Charleston Bubble is just sick of privileged, latte-sipping limousine liberals from the Ivy League privileging (ha! Gotta love that shit!) the so-called ‘rights’ of our enemies over The National Interest, the Global Village, and The Greater Good of Our Common Humanity!
‘I mean, hell, I woulda thrown in the other shit about ‘the pure Anglo-Saxon white race,’ but you seriously think these shameless Zioliberal Cultural Marxist assholes in the controlled media would ever let me get away with that shit?
‘Well, let me tell you something showful, honeybuckles: I may not have managed to ended Jew Privilege, Arab privilege, Muslim privilege, and general goddamn-motherfuckin’-Oriental foreigner privilege in this great and blessed nation of ours.
‘But you know what? For what it’s worth, I’m working on it.
‘And I tell you what, I am going to keep ‘calling you out’ on your ‘privilege,’ and weaponize your evil ideology, and turn it against you.
‘I will have white people voting for the Republican Party, the Party of Our Common Humanity, Humanitarian Interventionism and of One Nation Under God, and I tell you what, we will have our people voting GOP for a million years!
‘And as for the rest? Well, let me tell you something, people. The Supreme Court is not pristine! I say this… I say this… Urrgghhhh!’
The last word was something Marcusu Charleston Bubble had actually said.
The rest of the speech had occurred only in his head.

CHAPTER 2: BITCHES ‘N’ BLACK BOYS

Otis Spengler leafed through the Brooklyn Galaxy one last time. He had to quit doing this. Three editions already without him in it.
Wasn’t it time to make a proper break?
‘I’m not pro-war, I’m anti-terrorism; no exceptions! Take it or leave it!’ panted the greasy, shimmering shade of Marcus Charleston Bubble; in the interview that ought to have destroyed Bubble’s career rather than making it. Some things Otis would never understand.
Then again, he wasn’t the only person who ‘didn’t understand’ things.
But what was not understanding, and what was merely not, in the memorable phrase of Morton Megaraparthenon, ‘giving a rat’s arse?’
(Now he was free, Otis Spengler could finally put the record straight about the memorable line ‘former gay porn erotic radical political performance theatriste, convicted hate-criminal and crypto-secular UK Minister for Culture and the Arts Morton Megaraparthenon’ was not actually his line.
Now, much as he admired the intricate and cunning weaseliness of the words, these were not his words, but those of Gideon Truman. He still remembered, to this very day and hour, how Gideon spat out his cigar in amazement when Otis raised the topic of the sinister addition to his perfectly sober and ethically serious article.
For someone supposedly short on time, Gideon could spend hours in a good debate. Nothing disciplinary ever came of their arguments; somewhere deep down, Otis sensed that Gideon Truman actually enjoyed and admired their little tug-‘o’-wars.
It was for all the world as though Truman, unable to enjoy the joys of a (somewhat) clean conscience and the philosophical consolations of a substantial catalogue of ethically reflexive and, at times, even genuinely subversive articles… well, it was as though Truman, although no more willing to enjoy such wholesome pleasures as he was able to pursue them, nevertheless revelled in these pleasures.
He was living a great life of superlative journalism; but vicariously. Vicariously.
Always vicariously.
There was a time when, upon uttering his usual spiel about the poor little black boy big daddy Truman had scooped up from the ghetto and put on his feet, the right way up… well yes, it was hard to deny, judging from the rare hint of genuine tragedy that flashed across Truman’s forehead (his cold, fishy eyes rarely showed his hand), well yes, it was damned hard for Otis to purge his mind of the harrowing feeling that Truman genuinely admired him. And more…
Envied him.
And not even in an entirely malicious way.
Otis was the young, fresh, creative spirit the mediocre Gideon Truman had never had the ghost of a chance of being.
‘You know what?’ Truman used to spit. ‘You’re the brains, and I’m the fuckin’ wallet, baby!’
At times, Otis would almost have preferred to be the wallet; for then he could be stowed out of sight, away from the insincerely gratified, faux-congratulatory eyes of the cannibal on his back.
… Sindbad the Sailor?
Oh, God! Those allegations of the ‘Arabian Whites’ party in the Amber Hornet! Otis wasn’t sure why Truman forbade him, literally at the point of a gun, to elaborate on precisely what was alleged to have been going on the night the club was bombed, and Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble victoriously greased and waddled out of the wreckage.
He had one or two leads.
But only in his head.
Better to keep them there.
Contrarian and rejectionist as he was, Otis was not such a fool as to think that even here, the land of the free, the nation of the American Constitution and the First Amendment, he could ever get away with just writing whatever the hell he wanted.
After all, when people did… well, things just tended to… happen.
‘Make of that what you will,’ Otis muttered to himself.
His stock barbs already seemed threadworn and hilariously, pathetically irrelevant.
What kind of use were his sneaky innuendo and snarks, when the problem wasn’t actually that people didn’t know what was going on?
Because they knew.
Everyone knew.
What, you think our people are stupid?
Otis inwardly groaned.
‘There is not one government, not one government in the history of the entire world, that has ever told the whole truth about their foreign policy, unless it was at the point of a bayonet… if that,’ Ubuntu Grace had hinted, shortly before her mysterious assassination.
Curiously enough, Dickie Klindel and Eva Vernon Letterman took good care to ominously repeat these words two days afterwards; albeit lacking entirely the note of anger and bitterness that was in the voice of the prominent black civil rights activist (‘Food Stamp Bunty,’ Senator Bubble called her).
The fact that they were being interviewed only an hour or so before the time the coroners were to declare Ubuntu Grace dead of just short of 4 dozen gunshot wounds, was of course not remarked in the media. The fact that Letterman had said ‘Look Cassie, I really wish we could talk for another hour. I mean, I’d sure rather be here with you than facing that ugly crowd in Minneapolis, like Umbongo Grace is doing. But she’s a big girl, God knows! I guess she can take care of herself!’
The compliment, of course, was very far from sincere. But to say that a notable liberal interventionist intellectual like Eva Vernon Letterman was being sincere was pretty much the most obscene thing you could possibly say. Not so much because it was insulting to her, or to her filthy comrades-in-arms like Dickie Klindel; but because such a comment would be an unbearable insult to the intelligence of anyone who heard such an infuriatingly tautological proposition.
And had not Dickie Klindel not taken the stage with Lynton Goering at the previous Florida Caucus, endorsing his comrade’s Presidential run, saying…?
‘We shall never promise we shall tell ‘the truth’ to the unworthy. There are different kinds of truth. There are the truths of patriots, and the truths of those who are… hating our nation. Who can gather figs from thistles? Or who can chant high praises to the High Jehovah, Lord of Seas and Storm, in the darkest temple of Mount Babylon?’
This burst of pretentious radical humanitarian interventionist performance theater did not seem to faze the audience; indeed, not even the self-evidently (so thought Otis), but yes, the self-evidently fallacious reference to the non-existent Mount Babylon; not one of these things seemed to make the slightest difference to the unspeakably ruthless, wolfish-baying mob 0f barbaric humanitarian genocide apologists.
So, it was no wonder that Lucy Brendan was driven to commit suicide. The idea that this naïve 13 year old had somehow ‘seduced’ and ‘manipulated’ Lynton Goering, forcing him against his will to make the proverbial ‘honest mistakes’ that so many humanitarian interventionist intellectuals and politicians make day and daily, was palpably absurd. But Lynton Goering couldn’t possibly be a… a sex offender?
Well, not a real one, anyway.
There must be some mistake
Men get drunk.
Men make mistakes.
I mean… I mean, oh for God’s sake, he’s a man! You can’t question his judgment on foreign policy purely because… oh, get a grip, man!
Not one person at the Brooklyn Galaxy had dared make the right kind of sensationalist headline.
Otis had never forgiven himself.
Come hell or high water, he would have done what he could to have avenged the soul of that terrified young girl.
But he couldn’t.
He was in a cell.
Honest ‘mix-up.’
Another honest mistake.
‘Whew! Shit, boy. Hoo-wee!’ breathed the boss. ‘I never woulda thought it was actually you. You know what, you are actually, the real, honest-to-God Otis fuckin’ Spengler. You know what, it’s been a pleasure, sir! I mean, the poor asshole who treated you bad and falsely accused you; I mean he’s pretty new, and he says all you folks look kinda similar to you, so you…’
Otis’ face had hardened, to the point where the bulging bullfrog eyes of his tormentor-in-chief had almost popped out of his skull.
‘Shit!’ Charlie breathed. ‘Well, like, shit! Hoo, boy! I mean, not like you… you know what I mean, that you actually do look kinda all the same. But, but… some of our boys, I mean you kinda look that well to them, that’s all I’m sayin’. But I mean, like, yeah boy… been a pleasure.’
‘Has it?’ murmured Otis, staring the chief thug in the face, who immediately began to puff and pant, desperately trying to retain his composure.
Otis staggered out of the cell, almost dead with hunger. He almost swore he heard his torturer snort ‘ungrateful nigger, got no sense of goddamn gratitude. No different, no different, no different.’
Maybe his ears were just ringing from hunger?
God knows.
This was a very unpleasant memory. But what hurt more, is that he hadn’t managed to stab Gideon Truman in the back, and find some way of getting a headline and byline that could express the ugly truth as least imperfectly as mere words could do:
GOP Paedophile Lynton Goering: ‘Raping in the Name Of!’’
Alleged sex offender and proven humanitarian interventionist unifies theory and praxis: Former Campus Radical Carries on a Grand Old Trotskyite tradition.
And those delicious first two lines:
A humanitarian interventionist is a Trotskyite who has been mugged by the prospect of a huge state stipend.
But there aren’t enough icepicks in the whole of Mexico to impose a fitting punishment on the filthy, subhuman R2P child-rapist Lynton Goering, whose dashing ‘humanitarian intervention’ on Lucy Alice Brendan is just the kind of ‘legitimate rape’ the subhumanly-beastly ‘Party of Humanity’ really didn’t want broadcast too loudly.
Yes, he would have made sure he had stabbed Gideon Truman in the back with that headline. Truman wouldn’t have minded, if Goering had merely been a rapper or a union thug or ‘some shit like that,’ his usual dismissive throwaway for people he held in too much contempt to genuinely abhor. The only ‘virtue’ Truman had (and some would no doubt consider themselves worthy to affirm that this did indeed place him one very slight notch above Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble), was that he was no more capable of bearing a long-term grudge, than he was capable of loving or admiring someone with any real sincerity.
He was just uninterested in people; except insofar as they were useful to him.
Or in a word: lucrative.
But who cares?
That was a long time ago.
Maybe Gideon Truman and his Big Daddy Ford were right after all.
History is bunk.

There is a lot of talk today about how history will judge us if we sit on our hands. And I tell you now: as a mother, as a daughter, and as an American who loves this nation: almost all of our troubles come not from sitting on our hands, but from trying to achieve the impossible.
Beware of those who promise to bring freedom at the point of a bayonet.
Such freedom is ever dearly bought.
Those who pass through the valley of bayonets will never be able to fully enjoy the fruits of their pilgrimage.
Beware of those who are ready to bang the drum for war all morning long, but who are unwilling to smoke the pipes of peace when twilight falls.
Our enemies wish to take away our freedom, this is true.
And surely this is surely not within their power.
But this I make bold to declare to you today:
They cannot take our liberty from us; but they can certainly incite us to heedlessly cast it away, through our own folly, heedlessness and hubris.
And that, in the end, amounts precisely to the same thing.
The final and everlasting extinction of the light of Thomas Jefferson, of Johnny Appleseed, of William Penn, of Tom Paine, of Booker T. Washington, of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., of Frank Chin, of Azar Nafisi, and of my blessed sisters of Seneca Falls of most humble and exalted memory, who this very night are looking on and mourning the dire state of self-disgrace and depravity into which we are falling ever deeper.
Friends, fellow-citizens and fellow-dreamers of America, do not take upon yourself the yoke of the darkness, because you chafe under the heavy burden of the light. For if it is hard to rejoice the heart of the King in Jerusalem, how much more so in darkest Babylon?
I am an American.
And I weep for our city of peace.
God help me, here I stand. I can do none otherwise.
Good night, my children of the light and candle-bearers of imperilled hope.
And I say not, this one night of passion, God Bless America!, but:
God Shield our candle from the raging winds of despair and grief.

Senator Deborah Willow artlessly turned and faced the sky.
The rains of blessing would not come.
A camera glimpsed the shadow of a tear.
…
But a camera is not the equal of a tender heart.

Chapter 3: Schleiss & Dice

Otis yawned and poured himself another Southern Comfort. This time, it was President Milton Clement Schleisser’s response to Senator Willow’s speech on the recent warmongering. Some media outlets had not paid sufficient attention to Willow’s gestures of affection towards the repudiated Senator Friedman. Was Willow’s reticence cowardice or courage?
It doesn’t matter.
My opinion doesn’t matter.
And…
‘And if mine don’t, yours sure as hell ain’t one frickin’ whit more consequential!’
Otis tried to summarise the speech, taking mental notes as went along.

Saul Friedman is an asshole.
Saul Friedman sucks.
Yada yada yada.
Dog-whistle politics.
Dual loyalty traitor.
Saul Friedman sucks at baseball.
Yada yada yada.
Saul Friedman sucks the bleeding dick offa Cassie-Jane Helman and those goddamn dirty Ayyyrabs!
I’m not lying to you, I’m just telling it to you how it is.
Believe me! Would Uncle Milton ever lie to his precious little girl?
Big Daddy Milty loves that little boy o’ his!
The Jews.
The Arabs.
The intellectuals.
Jewish Arab-sympathising dual-loyalty intellectuals.
Jewish Arab-sympathising fuckin’ dual-loyalty intellectuals just like Saul Freakin’ Fucktard.
Just like Saul Fucktard..
By the way, did you know this guy sucks at baseball?!
The fuck… you ever hear about this little short-arse autistic retard guy who sucks at baseball? Oh by the way, this guy is a fuckin’ retard.
Why does Senator Willow think he’s so good?
Because DEH-JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZ!
You know what else the Jews are good at?
Sweet and sour pork at Christmas? You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?
Yeah so he raped a few kids, so what? Saul Friedman is a fuckin’ pacifist who hates our freedom!!!
No he really does hate it! Believe me, my friend. He really, really hates us!
Where does the money go? Huh? Huh? Where does the fuckin’ money go, bitches?!
Just come ‘n’ good ol’ Uncle Schleisser, what does good big ol’ Bogey-Abraham think about our glorious nation?
Nation? What’s it mean? Ah would ya just quit it, kid; you’ll understand soon enough.
He really does suck at baseball, I tell ya!
Until then, just shut the fuck up!
You ever hear of a Jew who eats pork at some shanty dive in Chinatown? Wait, let me tell another one!
Until then, just shut the fuck up!
Pacifists are destroying our country.
Not one in inch of victory against the enemy without…
Until then, just shut the fuck up!
Until we have paved a thousand leagues over the tattered manifestoes and broadened phylacteries of the enemy within.
Until then, just shut the fuck up!
Intellectual media.
Until then, just shut the fuck up!
Zionist media.
Shut the fuck up!
Jew media.
Shut the fuck up!
All about the jews.
Shut the fuck up!

‘Another one?’asked Miranda.
‘I’m tell you when I’m ready,’ murmured Otis, as he picked up his hat and prepared to head for the door.
The waitress smirked and resumed polishing her glass.
Until then, shut the fuck up! Otis inwardly voiced, as he headed for the door.
The night was cool.
Still no sign of rain.
‘Listen, son. It’s… it’s been hard. Hey… hey you happen to have…’
Otis turned on his heel.
‘What do you think?’
‘Just… just askin’. Please, please. Help a poor boy, it’s just, it’s been…’
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ Otis grunted, as he strode away in irritation. The bum inwardly wailed…
But the unspeakable pain and terror in his wrinkled face was horribly, deathly silent as the grave.
‘I’m a vet…’ the guy tried to mutter.
No words came out.
Otis strode away.
The old man burst into uncontrollable sobbing.
Otis walked and walked.
He heard a child crying in the distance.
‘He’ll be back soon, I promise. Daddy soon,’ soothed the mother from some place out there, God knows where.
As far as the bank.
His legs buckled.
Otis trembled, struggling to master himself.
At last, he let out a deafening roar.
He awaited the slamming of doors, the yowling of cats, the barking of hounds, even the odd ‘Shut the fuck up, you rowdy nigger!’
Hm.
Can’t even feel surprised at that.
Like they were all dead inside…
Otis, are you going to tell Pastor Duffy you aren’t going to come to seminary? Better you did it in person.
I’m decided.
Otis, Otis, I can’t say anything more. You have broken my heart. But this last thing I say to you, and it’s probably the last thing I will say to you before I die:
What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the world, but lose his own soul?
It was no use.
He couldn’t forbear any longer.
He sobbed and sobbed.
How many minutes?
Hours?
Days?
Weeks, even?
6 days a week we will perform our labours. But the seventh day shall we anoint unto the Lord our God, to keep it holy.

At last, the faint stirring of a breeze. Otis resumed his step. Finally, he reached his apartment block. As he reached for his key, he saw the wretched man to whom he had so callously closed his heart sprawled out on the pavement.
It was a long way from the top of that bridge.
But his fall, no doubt, had been short and merciful.
‘P… please son, just can you, can you just help a poor boy out, just a little cent or two,’ the crumpled heap of a man implored him still, his plaintive moans still echoing in his ears.
This time, Otis didn’t cry.
‘Congratulations!’ he smirked, as the door swung open in a rusty greeting.
…
‘Now you’re just like them!’

Chapter 4 Ruby, Rue the Rubes!

Ruby Chandra de Montevideo rose to greet the trembling Senator Willow. She coldly extended a chubby but far from jolly hand to the latest in an admittedly very short line of faux-Democratic bêtes-noires.
‘Well, if it isn’t Senator Deborah Mooonaaa Willow.’
Deborah’s trembling knees now had an uncomfortable squirm to accompany them.
This old practice of weaponizing names was not unknown to the American political scene.
But then, it was hardly unknown to her, either.
How many generations would it take for her to feel free to walk down the street and know… you know, really really know, that her fears about being picked up suddenly in the night and taken to ‘The bay’ were groundless?
Sure, he was an Iraqi interpreter.
So what?
Once an Ayyyraaab, always a fucking traitor.
Dickie Klindel.
Her heart leapt.
With terror, not love.
Dickie Klindel.
Arabs are not the enemy of our nation. Unpatriotic Arabs, on the other hand, cannot expect special privileges we do not accord to all the other parasites and vagabonds marauding around this… this…
What did he even say again?

‘Fuckin’ good shot, son!’ roared Saul Friedman.
Otis gracefully laid down his club.
‘Meaning precisely what?’
Saul stuttered, almost burping half a pint of finest Mama’s Special.
Otis wiped his brow with distaste.
‘Unless you have a birth certificate saying ‘Marcus Murdoch Spengler’ on it, it would be advisable for you to avoid making such comments in future.’
Saul Friedman blushed head to toe.
‘Yeah… y, yeah-yeah-yeah, sorry boy,’ he spluttered. ‘I, I-I-I meant, just a, a fuckin’ hot-damn good shot, is all, is all my, my-my-my-my-er, my good friend, son. Fuckin’ good shot, that’s for sure!’
Otis furrowed his brow, albeit somewhat less disdainfully than before.
‘Quite an eccentric fellow,’ he mused, almost Anglo-generous in his aristocratic bearing. ‘You have probably heard me and my people are good at golf.’
‘Oh, oh fuck yeah!’ Saul gushed, trying hard to remedy the situation and perhaps overcompensating just a smidgen, as Otis Spengler would no doubt have it.
Saul continued to run his mouth off, albeit in such a naively genial maner, that Otis practically had to staple his lungs to his ribs to avoid being incapacitated by the surges of hilarity he imagined surging through his rocking ribcage.
‘I mean, you guys, golf? No frickin’ shit, I mean, ohhh boy! I swear! You people are the fuckin’ best at that shit, no frickin’ shit! Ooo, can you people golf!’
Otis drily raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you by any chance acquainted with my elder brother, President Barack Obama?’
Saul paused a moment and frowned, suddenly lost in thought.
Relishing the moment, Otis paused; and with the delicate, pirouetting delicacy of a Venetian ballet donna di arte, enunciated:
‘Or as some would no doubt be inclined to inquire…’
Saul’s face fell like a stone.
‘Barack Hussein Obama?’
Saul’s face practically exploded with dire-apologetic energy.
‘Oh w-w-w-w-w-w-w-well hell no, no, n-n-n-n-w-w-w-well-well-well what I really meant, it’s like heh-heh-heh, er it’s like, ya see-see-see, well no, no-no-n-n, well it’s really more like this, heh heh…’
The master of intrigue had not lost his touch after all.
Now then.
Now, then, this was gratifying!
Hook, line, and sinker.
Another worthless and buffonishly unprincipled career politician, squirming at the end of the line.
About to empty the jaws of the awesome leviathanic media beast, to be munched, mangled, and spat out without mercy.
‘… I’m not like that,’ Saul finally pleaded weakly.
Another pause.
Ohhh, the artistry!
‘You are all the same to me,’ Otis haughtily declared, as he headed in the direction of the caddy-shack.
Saul hung his head in humiliation.
Dully, he twitched his neck, and then looked down again. He fiddled with the clinking coins in his pocket.
‘Just two cents left,’ he weakly murmured.
All of a sudden…
Oh, God!
‘All the same?!’ he roared, as he waved left fist in a frenzy of buried memories.
‘Now just you wait ‘til I frickin’, til I frickin’…’
Thud.
Fuck! What the hell was that?
Frickin’ post!
Urrrggghhhh! Fuck, fuck, fuck.
‘Hm. I see you’re having a rather athletic time of it. Shall I assist you a little?’
Saul grunted in agony.
‘You look after yerself, a’right?’
‘Hm. Are you quite sure… young man?’
Ohhh! The delight! To see another dodgy politico rolling around in the mud like a felled Goliath.
Or should that be…
Ungoliant?
‘Hm. Urrrgghh-fffrrrgghh-ur-ur-ur-ur-UUURRRGGGHHH! Just a frickin’ post. Fuck knows why they planted them there. Frickin’ jerks. Frickin’ urgh, urgh, uuurrrgghhh… OOOHHH SHIT!’
‘As you wish,’ high-Darcied Otis.
And that was that!
A rustling in the bushes.
…
Captain Catty-Glance was on the march.

‘Senator Willow, I believe we are going round in circles. It does appear that for the past hour, you have done nothing but moralise and make abstract, idealistic appeals to highminded pacifist norms. That is, whenever you have not been conducting the usual self-serving, defensive apologetics for your utterly appalling speech, with its gushy unpatriotic sentimentality, its whimsical populist superficiality, and, dare I say it, its apparent failure to…
Well, shall I say, its…
Less than fully critical attitude towards a certain anarchistic overgrown student activist by the name of Saul Terence Magilligan Friedman.
‘Do you what you want,’ murmured Willow, at her wit’s end.
‘Oh. You think you know where the wind is blowing, do you? What a great prophet you must be, indeed! Now, there’s a certain school of thought that says if a prophet could be stoned between the temple and the veil of mercy, it would be the greatest thing that ever happened to us! Because it would rally people around the throne of liberty, and our kingdom would advance and prosper for a thousand years. All hail, hallowed Prophetess Mona: priestly benedictions be upon thy head, and may the worthy nostrils of Cleopatra be enlarged for evermore!’
A dig at me?
Or at Saul?
Or both?
Oh, why should I even care any more!
‘You were such a clever woman. Why, I had such high hopes for you. You could have been the second woman president.
But you belong to the past.
The world is changing.
And we all needs must change with it.
For it is utterly intolerable that the greatest nation on earth, the beacon of this great grand and eternal liberty of ours and of all humanity, should dare to arrogantly vaunt itself against the tide of history.
Humanity is One.
Our world is One.
And if this so, then we must make sure this ‘One’ is truly unique, and not merely counterfeit and cowardly.’
My dreams will always be greater than yours.
‘Oh, will they now?’
Wait… did I just say that out loud?
‘Your dreams are certainly bigger. Too big to be accommodated by reality. This is politics, not poetry class. But if it were, I should still give you an F, even then. Because you are more worried about narrow principle and dogmatic moralism, than the greatness and splendour of the world we are now creating.’
Senator Willow finally raised her eyes.
‘I… do not… believe… in the greatness and the splendour of this world.’
Ruby feigned horror. It was only momentary. ‘Oh, well,’ she Nixoned out, with a substantial degree sub-Johnsonian nonchalance. ‘Everybody has their own way. Yours is out that door. What a tragedy that a person in whom I had first placed my hopes, the one person I believed in and trusted and had faith and confidence in more than anyone in all the world…
You… you damned LIAR! You trust no-one. Do you even trust yourself? God knows! Oh, God knows if anyone or anything in this world matters at all; only Ruby Chandra Montevideo, and her stupid, STUPID wars!
Should decide that the beauty and glory and richness of reality is too meagre, and she seeks some heavenly paradise of pacifistic idiocy, somewhere, well, somewhere up there, God knows where?
I have told you a thousand times I am not a ‘pacifist.’ I’ll be hanged by the goddamn neck before I let you get away with that one.
‘Well, I think you may leave. Take your dear old letter. Shred it, burn it, no-one cares what you do with it. Take your bridge, and bury it in the sea. Bury it in the forest. Bury it in the… in the sand. Yes, the sand. Now that will do nicely.’
Ha! Do you think I don’t understand what you are saying?
‘Now, then… Ms Willow. Do you have anything else to say? Or dare I ask? There are quite a few hours to go before daybreak. Shall we stay up all night.’
‘I have but one thing to say,’ Senator Willow breathed, with an air of menace that even animated the normally cold-as-sea-washed-infants Ruby Chandra Montevideo; supreme leader of what was once the party of Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean and Teddy Roosevelt; and was now the party of LBJ, Barack Obama, the Clintons, and Captain Flip Flop.
But especially LBJ!
He would have those sheep munchin’ fuckin’ spunked-up hogweed for a thousand years!
Senator Willow’s lungs were meagre in the eyes of many; but by God, did they pack a punch, when they were needed!
Senator Willow drew in her very last breath… it seemed almost literally so…
‘Either kill me, or take me as I am! Because I’m damned if I’ll ever change!’
Ruby was caught on the hop. Who could have thought a feeble non-interventionist salad-muncher like Willow could have bellowed forth like this. Like some kind of blazing hawk in mid-arrow’s ignomious plunge!
‘Marquis de Sade? That’s where you get your ‘high truths’ from, then? Ha! Ha! Ha!’ cackled Ruby, rubbing her hands for a furious delight that, just for one fleetingly ecstatic moment of political orgasm, transported her far beyond the crabbid, narrow dome of her liberal-interventionist Golden Kosmos.
Ruby roared and roared. ‘I’ve heard it all now.’ She practically screamed. ‘Get out! Get out! Get out! You won’t misspeak again!’
Willow stormed out of the room and headed for the door.
A certain lurking and lingering ‘leading light,’ such as he was, whistled to blazes; as though his future Democratic nomination campaign depended upon it, and upon nothing else whatsoever under the earth or under scarlet hellfire paradise itself.
‘Do that again and I’ll break your neck!’ she whispered furiously.
‘Hey, baby! Well, some would say that’s actually kinda hot! I mean, there’s a certain school of thought; well, tell ya what, chicken! I would fuckin’ love you to break my fuckin’ long one? Huh? Well, I guess you can just call me L B F! Little bitch fuckin’ Willow fun time frenzymications, all the way, baby!’
‘Just drop your stupid dick and let me the fuck outta here!’ warned Willow, waving her slender palm in warning.
‘Mmm-hmmm. Where’s that coy-ass little handy goin’?’ gushed her merciless tormentor, grasping his twin vessels of Democratic sacrament as firmly as any Grand High Priest of generations past.
The liturgy could never be complete, however, until he had stuck his warm, moist, reeking swine tongue down her enticingly disobedient throat; awaiting in establishment-choral piety the final benediction. Any hole’s a goal!
‘It’s now or never, sweetheart,’ he grunted. ‘Something’s goin’ down, and it ain’t the number of Lebanese orphans, that’s for sure, my hot-damn cute-ass little honey-muffin! Let me just sample that fuckin’ Sweet-Ass Pacifist Kool-Aid o’ yours… oh Jesus H. Johnson baby, but do you just gush o’ somethin’ special! Wikileaks should be all over my girl like last month’s fuckin’ Poon-Tang-a-Boomie-Bang-a-Thailand-Surprise!
‘Woof woof! Girl gone full flamin’ honey-drippin’ Indo-China with man dem coquettish cocoa-mama shyness… Oh, by fuck if I could be inhalin’ that salty goodness right now!
‘Wahhh, now let me be just, be fuckin’ leavin’ like every last fuckin’ corner of that slender funsize ass-‘n’-bag-fuckin’-greatest-hits bonus o’ yours drippin’!
‘Ohhhh my gosh, does a good Democrat dick-waver liks that fuckin’ moooiiist ‘n’ sweeeeeeeet little pussy o’ his!
‘Urrrggghhh-hur! If you’re man dem girl gonna me my Eva Brown to my vanilla white boy special, then let me be your Lyndon fuckin’ Goering, baby!
‘Oooooo! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shiiiiiit! Shit, I mean like fuck, ooo it’s like there’s a good little darlin’ babycakes… oooooo, fuck yeeeaaahhh! Here comes the Little Willow fuckin’ future-Presidentializing-Expressy baby…. Ohhh, fuuuccckkk!’
Senator Willow screamed. But that hand had always been destined to be there.
To be there.
Just there.
In her…
In her own body.
And he alone.

I can bear no more.

Chapter 5: Golf Vacation Ahoy!

Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble put the damn phone down.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he roared.
Renée trembled.
‘Who told them about the hush money? Huh? Huh? Tell me! Tell me, bitch! Tell me! Ohhh, let me tell you something, if you’ve breathed a word about this shit, you will wish you’d never been born! Who told them that shit about paying off Ingrid?’
‘I… I don’t know!’ she shrieked.
Marcus squinted, in momentary puzzlement.
‘Ah, forget it, bitttccchhh!’ he hissed. ‘If we can silence her, why can’t we silence all the other bastards too? It’s not like she would ever dare tell her that accepting this money was… quite as it seems, if you want to put it that way.’
‘Can.. can…’ Renee took the courage to whisper, although she barely had the courage to breathe.
‘What? What is it? What is it now? What could possibly be more important or consequential than what I am saying now? Is there anything in this world more true or more correct or more reasonable than what I’m saying now?’’
Renee’s breath died away. Rooted to the spot in horror, she closed her eyes. In utter terror, she pictured Bubble’s meaty fists smashing her lumpy skull into smithereens.
The guy was a neocon.
No mercy was possible.
She shuddered, and appeared to be slipping into an endless sleep.

‘You still standin’ there quiverin’?’ Marcus grunted.
Renée threw open the windows of her bleeding heart and soul in amazement.
The blow hadn’t come.
‘S… sir,’ she stammered?
‘God! Just like that stupid Norswede of mine from a few weeks back, God knows when, but anyways. You know what? For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. And it kinda sucks for you. But… you’re fired! Might as well give it to you clean and sweet, huh?’
Renee’s lip quivered. She sobbed almost inaudibly, realising what an utter fool she had been. How could she look her boyfriend in the face?
‘What? What is it now? Oh for crying out loud girl, just quit the guilt tripping and get out of my face, alright? At least I’m not a flaming Democrat, huh? Then you’d really have something to cry about, yeah? Ohhh, what like Mary Baker Nanak on a frickin’ meat-popsicle, girl! You just have absolutely no idea what corrupt, sleazy men in power do to their coffee girls when they ain’t got any principles or morals! I mean, you name just one thing I’ve ever done wrong to you in this short time?’
Renee lifted her eyes. Timid as she was, she dared a little glint to flare up in her swimming eyes.
There was something about her that Senator Bubble just didn’t seem to like.
…
Her gender?
Well, not exactly what I had in mind. But if the ‘capote’ fits…
‘Tell you what. You’re wasting my time, and time is money in this business. How about a parting gift to give to this privileged, stuck-up union daddy of yours! Huh?!’
‘Ow!’ screamed Renee, her entire skull exploding in spasms of helpless, agonizing terror.
‘Alright. Alright. I’m not gonna do any more. Don’t you dare ever try to be clever and be a special snowflake about this one. We’ve had trouble with uppity bitches in the past trying to derail the national interest by making frivolous accusations. This wasn’t an invitation; it’s a warning! You understand the difference. Good. Hm. Smart girl. Now you are one smart little RINO girl, that’s for sure! Hm. Now you be a good girl now, and don’t cry.’
Renee’s lungs contracted in agony. She choked and spluttered.
‘Ohhh, would you just quit the play-acting, would you? Less of the slick Ivy League pacifist bullshit! I mean, I know you wrote an article or two on the war on terror when you were even younger and even stupider, but you’re too old to play act. If you don’t hate your country at the age of 20, you ain’t got a… no, wait… Well, anyways! I’m going in that restroom round the corner; and you’d better be fucking gone by the time I leave, or you’re not even getting those shitty crumbs in the mail you’re supposed to be getting! URP! Excuse me, liberal, but I must… hm, hm, uurrghh… UUURRRPPP!’

‘May I dare inquire what this most augustly exalted tome may be?’ inquired Otis; respectfully enough, but not utterly without ironical amusement.
‘Hmgh. What? Oh, yeah! Oh, it’s uh, it’s the, uh, it’s Karl Popper’s ‘Open Society and its Enemies.’ You should read it, it’s some frickin’ good shit, brother! Blow your frickin’ head off, this guy! This is one damn smart cookie, that’s for sure! Heh heh heh…’
Otis shifted in his chair, but more gracefully than Saul Friedman could ever dream of doing.
‘Are there not rather too many smart cookies in this world? Is it utterly beyond the bounds of respectful discursive convention for me to thus insinuate?’
Saul frowned. ‘Hm? Say what?’
Otis smirked.
‘Perhaps my words are clear enough.’
Saul grunted. ‘You got the fuckin’ power cut to yer head, son! What the frickin’ hell are yer jibber-jabberin’ on about now? Huh?’
Otis elegant cast a few sprinkles of sugar into his coffee. Saul gawked in envious admiration, half-wishing he had long, slender, pianist’s fingers like this frickin’ freako guy had. Frickin’ aristocratic dandy, but there’s an upside… there’s an um… heh heh heh…
‘You might like to have hands like these. They are useful for certain artistic endeavours, for those who have the freedom to pursue them. Do you paint, by any chance?’
Saul’s face lit up with joy. He rubbed his hands with glee; this time, he didn’t have to worry if he was hijacking the conversation and mercilessly holding forth on one of his pet topics. This curious semi-stranger actually wanted to talk about this shit! Frickin’ straight up! Let’s go ‘n’ get stuck into this frickin’ paintin’ shit, a’right?
‘Hm… even so, I don’t think you would benefit from hands like these. This beauty came at a price!’
Saul’s mind went back to the ikon in Zakynthos. ‘Blessed Magdalene.’ She looked a little different from most European ikons. But why try the reader’s patience in pedantically elaborating upon a dusty, erudite matter, which will no doubt not be of the slightest consequence to the great and the good among them?
Otis sighed and commenced to stir his coffee. Saul’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Mother o’ mine, mother o’ mine,’ he intoned with raw emotion.
‘You know, a decade or two ago, there was some rather tragic news in the media. A great singer known as Mr Bob Zimmermann, aka Bob Dylan, had finally gone to rest with his fathers. He had protested mightily against the Vietnam War; which by now is ancient history. Did you know that this war was once a byword for the horror and the futility of warmongering?’
‘Well, yeah. Yeah yeah yeah! I mean, it’s like all that there ‘War on Terror’ shit, ain’t it!’
‘Well… after a fashion,’ Otis drily remarked. ‘They are really rather different, insofar as, in all probability, there is not a living soul alive today who truly remembers how horrific that war was. The window of opportunity has already passed. And one day, the Bush Dynasty wars, from a period where Vietnam was as dusty to them as the Twin Dynasties era is to us; yes, this Bush dynasty and its horrendous atrocities and ‘humanitarian genocides’ will be just as cobwebbed and irrelevant as the Vietnam war is to us now.
‘A distant relation of the sometime renowned scientist Steven Pinker has made good on his heritage, and spoken of the ‘Fatigue Mill.’ Now, when he was alive, Steven Pinker spoke of how people endeavoured to avoid causing offence by the use of euphemisms. Hence one could not call one of ‘those folks’ a ‘nigger.’ Not that there was anything intrinsically pernicious about such a speaking habit; it was merely… bad form. And in those days, the United Stated of America rivalled Old Europe and even August England for the elegance of her diction, and the respectable gentility of her manners.’
Saul sat open-mouthed, savoring every word. It was as though this guy was from another era; there was something of Macaulay about him, something of Hobbes, something of Mill, something of all these guys. Who the fuck are ya, son? You are not like anyone I’ve ever heard. Decades and decades (two can play at this erudite textual archaeology game, huh!) an obscure hack named Christopher Hitchens had combined the most astonishing semi-reconstructed-Luxemburgian and neocon mediocrity (insofar
as there may be a difference!) with an extravagantly supple and characterful flow of prose. He was Apollo in the guise of a carnivorous hack politician of Sparta; the belly of Caligua with the pen of Cicero. Well, aside from this Hitchens guy, how long has it been since anyone could write proper prose like that? But you…
‘Now, the euphemism treadmill ran forth as I shall now proceed to elucidate. Don’t call him nigger. Call him colored person. Don’t call him colored person. Call him African American. Don’t call him African American. Call him Person of Color. Don’t call him Person of Color. Call him Othermel. Don’t call him Othermel. Call him… nigger!’
Saul sat bolt upright in shock. ‘What… wha’-wha’-wha’, he spluttered. He didn’t understand what could possibly be so euphemistic about the latter one. Everything makes sense, until you get to ‘nigger.’ Everything is clean and ordered and… oh for frick’s sake people! The fuck is wrong with these racist assholes, huh? Huh? Huh? Tell me!
Otis surveyed his naïve interlocutor with a haughtiness so high it was almost compassionate in its Alpine distance from the deftly-anthilled ‘little guy’ before him..
‘You get the hint, by any chance?
Saul was outraged! ‘These frickin’ assholes!’ he roared, his voice almost rising to a scream.
Otis sighed. ‘Rageful, much? And what good, pray tell, will your anger do you?’
‘Fuck outta here! You oughta punch them, Otis! You oughta punch them good, so fuckin’ good, just in the frickin’ balls! And let the bastards know who it was as punched ‘em! You oughta smash their frickin’s skulls in ‘til they, ‘til they, til they frickin’, til frickin-frickin’-frickin’…’
Otis drained his final cup to the dregs.
‘I must confess it is quite beyond me what that would achieve. Precisely who do the assault laws service in this grand and glorious utopia of liberty of ours?
Saul could bear it no longer and finally burst into tears.
‘In any case,’ whispered Otis, in a voice by now almost soothing in its oceanic gravity and precious magnitude, ‘the euphemism treadmill is the bastard father of its bastard offspring: the fatigue treadmill. The war fatigue treadmill.’
Saul quit blubbing for a moment and raised his head once more, blinking in a fury that was rapidly renewing. He fixed his eyes on Otis.
‘I… for one… am not fatigued. Otis. I am not… fatigued. Believe me. This is… the truth.’
Otis, with a gaiety only half contrived (at most!) stood up, dusted himself down, and left a parthian shot:
‘You are no doubter a little longer in the tooth than I. But I was once even younger than I am now, and I dreamed of doing something to halt this nonsense. But I am old before my time, or perchance you are young after yours. Never mind, it matters not. Let me just tell you this one thing:
On this one thing, if not ever otherwise…
The grey hairs of disillusion must needs carry the day.
Saul paused in the stupefaction of pure and unadulterated horror; barely able to believe that he was hearing what he was hearing. Gasping for breath like a drowning man faced with one last push that would be the judge and the determiner of reaching shore or perishing forever beneath the foaming mass, Saul bellowed with a roar that would have shattered the window-panes, had there been any left in Alan’s worthless dive:
‘NEEVVVEEERRRRRRRRR!’
Otis was unperturbed.
‘Just face facts,’ he smirked. ‘I do not approve of this vulgar opportunism and cynical, opportunistic brutality any more than you do. I do, of course, beg leave to take the liberty of supposing that the only difference between us must be that I know, and that without the merest, most imperceptible deficit of moral and practical uncertainty, that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever, not the slightest thing in the world, that you or I can do to change this thing.
‘Indeed! For my part, albeit for what little, no doubt, that it is worth, I no longer believe that it is possible to turn coal into gold; nor, indeed, pace the thwarted al-Ghazzalis and Laozis of this most humble of clayfull spheres, to transform the stalest of rank manure into the vital, sparkling ambrosia of the blessed one. Ah! Now, there is a reason that we mock and scoff at alchemists, like we do foolish hounds or elder wristly-parsing spinsters!
‘Lest there should be any misapprehension on your part, or indeed (no less!) on mine, I certainly cannot doubt your virtue and your character. But even less dare I take it upon myself to ascribe wisdom. Ah! Now admittedly, It is certainly a credit to you that your heart is ever burning against the rapacious hypocrisy of these worthless vermin. For that, as the least among men, you would be sure to earn the first laurel in the Kingdom of Heaven, if such a blessed sphere there ever were. But in wisdom, you must wear the dullest and hollowest of dunce’s caps; for your generosity of heart, vast as it is, is matched only by your ingenuous naivety, your genial fancy, and your puresouled maverick whimsy.’

‘Jim?’ whispered Sally.
‘I had. Nightmare,’ sobbed Jim.
‘Oh, God. What was it this time?’
‘Dog. Is Mr Feinstein’s dog ever coming back?’
‘No, Jim. Don’t you remember? They killed it.’
‘But why?’
‘Because the dog was too friendly. He was too nice, too rowdy. And that made people suspicious. And ‘cos of that, it only took one bad day, one little wrong action and misstep, for people to take their pitchforks to him and… well, he was toast. You really don’t remember?’
‘But he was niiicccee!’ wailed Jim.
‘Well, no shit! Of course he was nice!’ Sally groaned, almost at the bum end of her rather narrow threshold of exasperation. ‘That’s exactly what happens to nice people! You treat people nice, they just, they just shit all over you! You remember that Levi asshole? Wouldn’t marry me and take care of our kid. Maybe if I’d been an actual bitch to him he’d ’a been nicer! But no. Nice doesn’t pay. Generosity of heart doesn’t pay. Love is like a wallet. You take it out when it’s in your interests to do so. Other times, you keep it in your, I don’t know, your shit,’ mumbled Sally, horrified at her waxing so disgustingly artsy-fartsy and fanciful all of a sudden.
‘Mr Feinstein is nice. Mr Xian. Nice,’ proffered Jim.
‘Yeah, they are nice. Just like that stupid dog was nice. Nice people are nice, for sure! And… they are also idiots. Nice idiots. I mean, what would happen if we elected a President who just decided to call a conference and say, you know, ‘Here’s the deal. You don’t do anything to you, and then in return, I won’t do anything in return. I expect exactly the same?’ Now, how’s that gonna be?’
Jim’s face brightened a little.
‘That would be real nice!’ he whispered, his heart leaping with joy.
‘No. It wouldn’t? Right? Ah. Ah, well, whoda thought you were the house retard, huh? That below 70, 60, whatever IQ is really showing. Nope! Uh-uh-uh, Genius Jimmy Boy! … It wouldn’t be ‘nice’ at all.’
‘It would be nice,’ Jim mumbled stubbornly, his face darkening just that little bit.
‘Well OK, genius! Sure, it would be nice. And it would be idiotic. The very day they did that… well, the following day we would finally just cease to exist.’
‘We would what?’ Jim murmured, unsure he fully understood the sentence.
‘Never mind. You’re a pacifist. You wouldn’t understand.’
Years and years of patronizing and condescending treatment condensed in one blazing singularity.
‘I could too! Fuck you!’ Jim almost screamed.
Sally blinked in amazement. Jim cursing? Jim screaming? He’s the fucking family retard. Since when do these stupid flaming retards give a rat’s ass?
‘OK, fine, buddy!’ she snapped. ‘I’m gonna tell you the way it works, and you can take it or leave it. You have to fuck the other guys first, before they fuck you. If you want to do it any other way, then they serve their buddies up your ass on a plate. There! Satisfied?’
Jim turned away his face and sulked.
‘I’m still nice!’ he spat out!
‘Well, I hope it does you some good!’ Sally sneered, as she left Jim’s bedroom.
A rare pang of conscience twinged in her breast.
…
It dissolved.
‘Ah forget it!’ she laughed. ‘Since when do autistic retards understand sarcasm?’
But like every autistic person upon the face of the earth in the entire history of the human species, Jim understood a lot more than he let on. In fact, as it not uncommon among so-called ‘special folks,’ he often understood things better than the great and the good. And more… unlike them, he was unafraid to say the truth, however delicate or inexpedient it may prove to be.

‘I am comin’ round to blow those fuckin’ doors off right now! Uh uh uh… Listen bitch, I ain’t takin’ no for an answer…’ breathed Saul Friedman. The phone shook in his hand as the half-sinister, half-ludicrous rattle of his breath travelled across the buzzing, blooming communication lines of the nation where, to quote the bygone wag Justin Raimondo of the ‘Twin Dynasties’ era, the same government who invented the internet also invented a way to watch you over the internet.
But no-one, of course, was watching Saul now; not that anyone could tell the difference. After all, even good old LBJ and Neo-LBJ (Mark 1 & Mark 2 alike, whatever the other frickin’ guy was called again, heh heh!), couldn’t count on not being bugged or perved upon when they were inviting their girls to ‘shake hands with Jumbo’ or ‘go full Asia fuckin’ airplane!’
The voice at the other end was firm but hesitant. ‘Another 24 hours?’
‘Now listen up, you sneaky fuck,’ Saul growled. ‘If you don’t run for the nomination. If you don’t run for the nomination, you don’t win the nomination. If you don’t win the nomination, you don’t run for president. If you don’t run for president. If you don’t run for president… well, do I need to even frickin’ spell it out, boy? Huh? How much more frickin’ info do you need? The whole country is going to hell in a bastard leaky dickrubber; and you want me to ‘extol the virtues’ (Ha! Otis! Ya frickin’ snake in the grass!), of having a non-interventionist, pro-privacy, pro-speech guy sitting in the Oval Office? I mean, ah fer Chrissakes, son! What could it be about this that yer possibly couldn’t understand?!’
‘I have something to bring you when I visit you. Do you remember Otis Spengler?’
‘Oh, the guy who said liberal interventionists were morally superior to neocons? Ahhh, fuck that guy! All balls deep in the pie,’ grunted Saul.
‘No, you know, the former journalist of the Brooklyn Galaxy.’
‘Don’t read it,’ snorted Saul. ‘Only read the Austrian Prospect.’
‘What? You don’t even read the Reason Archives? Or the Terence Twilight? Or Cato? Cato is still running. And you can get Reason online, still. I assume you haven’t been reading anything but our old favorite in recent years?’
Saul practically spat in rage. ‘What? What? Decades, not years. I don’t read worthless shill propaganda.’
‘Well, perhaps I can convince you otherwise. Such a pity I haven’t seen an article in a while. What a pity. Really.’
‘They’re all the same. All the same to me. Who frickin’ cares,’ whispered Saul, a little touched by his old friend’s kind offer to broaden his reading horizons, commensurate with his generosity of heart, which latter of course was hardly in dispute.
A little touched.
But perhaps not so much, really!

Jim’s crayon wavered as he prepared to make a final masterstroke on his picture.
He wanted to draw a curly tail on the happy pig. The picture was called ‘Wen I am Pressidint.’ The joyous panorama of happy children, beaming adults, playful dogs and coyly grinning cats would have brought a tear to the hardest of hearts.
Or at least, a few decades back, it might perhaps have done.
But that was a different time.
Or so Sally, rightly or wrongly (was there a difference?) might have told him.
Just as he set pen to pay his final artistic compliment to his funny friend, the crayon snapped.
Jim threw up his eyes in despair.
He looked around in desperation.
No crayons.
No more.
No more.
Crayons.
No.
No.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed, as he kissed the pig in despair. ‘Meant. Meant to draw. Real nice. I’m sorry.’
The last heart-rending wail was one Sally didn’t hear.
Not even the slightest glimmering footfall of a dream ever disturbed her sleep.
She was sleeping just she always slept.
Just that way.
…
Like a corpse.

Chapter 6: I Can See Your Gas-Chambers from My House!

‘No, no, no. It is already well understood that Willow resigned, for the greater good of our blessed party, of our glorious nation, and indeed, of this grand, great global village; and the everlasting supremacy and dominion of our common humanity.’
Cassie-Jane Helman exploded in laughter.
Ruby Chandra De Montevideo took good care to maintain her composure and maintain the high ground of good form. ‘Now… that is extremely unprofessional,’ she icily intoned. ‘This is on live television, or have you not noticed?’
Cassie asked:
‘Our party, our nation, our planet, and our species. Is there a difference?’
Ruby Chandra De Montevideo murmured.
‘I am not here for intellectual word games and semantics. Half the media nowadays is about mere semantics, rather than about the given constellation of purely value-free and objective strategic constraints and opportunities. Mere poetry and passion in the place of intelligence. How many journalists nowadays understand the difference?’
Cassie scowled in mock-fury. ‘Why did you come here then?’
Ruby Chandra De Montevideo paused for dramatic effect. ‘You may the special snowflake cooo-looo-ra-tuuu-ra diva of this establishment; but let me tell you, young lady. I am the Queen of the Night!’
Cassie, unable to maintain her ruse any longer, burst into a stream of mirth. ‘The Queen of the Night is the greatest coloratura role of all! Is there really a difference between Mozart’s Dark Empress and Gluck’s Eurydice of the light?’
Ruby Chandra De Montevideo gaped in wonder at the appalling presumption of the interviewer. She simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘You are thick as an Arab!’ she spat. ‘You are perpetuating a vicious Madonna-whore gender stereotype. I mean, it’s all about intersectionality nowadays, or at least it should be. All this unworthy concern for the admittedly rather aggrieved poor unfortunates who have the bad misfortune, ah, bad luck, to get caught up in our collateral strikes; er, to end up as collateral on account of our… well, you know, what else can we do?’ she finished weakly.
‘Intersectional racism. That’s a new one!’ Cassie roared with laughter.
‘Well, yes. It is, isn’t it!’ Ruby snorted.
‘Maybe try and include women in your intersectional social justice framework?’
‘Well, we’re still sitting here, aren’t we?’ Ruby muttered, appearing to warm a little.

‘Alan, why the hell did Cassie-Jane Helman quit doing her job and do this godawful satire persona? It’s unfunny as shit. I mean, it’s just so contrived and artificial. I mean, nobody goes around in real life saying stupid shit like ‘humanitarian bombs are not more cosy and fluffy than Soviet bombs,’ or ‘the only thing worse than a Godwin fail is a Godwin failure; especially one sitting in the Oval Office!’ I mean, it doesn’t work as comedy; I know comedy is supposed to be flaming stupid, but for God’s sake! Come off it, would you? Nobody, but nobody thinks like that! Hell, when did they ever? I just can’t suspend belief because the opinions on that show are so, I mean, they’re not even far out. Not even wacko. Not even, I mean, not even…’
Alan sat down the glass he was wiping, shocked at Cassie-Jane Helman. ‘Are you seriously dissing Cassie-Jane Helman?! Well, you can just go to fuckin’ shit, Sally. That bitch is hot!
Sally spat on her apron and rubbed it a little more. ‘You still thinking with your dick? She’s nothing special, even in that department. But look; nobody cares about that creepy black guy of theirs leaving, but they think that now she’s gone, the whole shebang might just fold. Or they might just have to go paper only.
‘Still, I wouldn’t so much as wipe my ass on that shit. Worthless liberal bullshit, excuse the t… the teleology. Well, anyways, did you hear that they are saying the geo-engineering complex shouldn’t be wound down, because people are actually affecting the climate with our, I don’t know, our shit? Oh, and apparently they were still plugging this crap a few decades ago. Well, guess what? Eco-doomsday never happened. Why don’t we quit funding this crap and, I dunno, fund some hospitals or something.’
Alan dropped his glass in horror. ‘Hospitals? That’s… that’s literal socialism, Sally!’
Sally grunted. ‘So?’
Alan stormed out in his usual strop. ‘No stupid sister of mine is supporting socialism! That really hurts!’
Sally swiped as he left.
‘Maybe quit cheating on those foodstamps, or the rules only apply to niggers?!’ she spat. Sally glowered at her brother as he left her holding the baby once more.
‘Not even a proper goddamn baby,’ she cursed inwardly, to pretty much nobody in particular. ‘Least you can get rid of a bady when you don’t need one. Oftentimes I wish Ma had done the decent thing and really fucked Jim when he had the chance. Not much of a life for him, is it right?’

‘Yer energetic bastard, yer!’ roared Saul, handing Jim another potato chip or two. ‘How far can you throw this one? Huh? Wait til ol’ Saul frickin’ Friedman casts this one to frickin’…’
Saul stumbled and fell of a clatter.
Jim wailed in horror.
‘Mr. Mr Saul. Mr Saul. Mr,’ he wept.
Saul was reluctant to let his jest backfire any further.
‘Ah c’mon son,’ he laughed, springing up like the feisty Springheeled Jack he was. Of course, the real Springheeled Jack was not 5 foot 6 inches; but today was a day for fun and frivolity; and not at all for needless solemnity.
Jim’s face lit up with you.
‘Mr Saul! Yeah. You’re alright!’
‘Alright as I’m never gonna be!’ grunted Saul, rubbing Jim’s tousled mop for sheer delight. His clumsy bear hug made Jim’s heart leap for joy.
‘Tell yer what, you boys are the best fuckin’ family in this whole goddamn state, a’right?!’
Now, if Saul had heard the news more often, instead of relying on a narrowly circumscribed range of sources for his political intelligence as a Republican politician, he might have known the name of the antisemitic asshole who was breakin’ his frickin’ balls like that when Senator Bubble gave his notorious speech. He knew all about the heckle, of course; but he would never once have dreamed that the masked assassin of all decency and love and generosity of spirit was the same guy, Alan Jepthah Thatcher III, who served the odd drink in the Stony Joe’s.
It was not in Saul Friedman’s nature to assume the worst of human nature in everyday life.
Only in politics.

‘But why do you keep doing it?’ pleaded Lucy, staring in bewilderment at the defiant Cassie.
‘I don’t know!’ snapped Cassie. ‘There are just no openings for critical journalism. There were precious few when the wall fell in, like, ancient history; and fewer still in September 11 times.’
‘September 11? Oh, you mean like the Vietnam thing?’
‘No, Vietnam was even longer ago than September 11. 9/11 was the World Trade Center thing.’
‘Oh wow yeah, of course, sorry. I wonder what it was like to live in the days when the media was only, like, you know, 90% corrupt?’
‘Well, I don’t think there’s a single person on earth old enough to remember that. And so the media shill corruption and corruption went on and on, deepening and deepening.
And so on and so forth; the Islamic State (which Washington created, by the way, according to the document (name?)), the Ukrainian Emergency (the third and most brutal of the CIA-fomented coups), the Japan-Korea war (oh, God! I still think the leaks are real, say what you like!) No, no, they got Japan in trouble in order to stir the shit, and then threw their former allies under the bus. That’s why Japan doesn’t even exist anymore; because they were no longer useful. Korea is pretty weak for the time being; and any atrocity is worth it for a short-term gain. Oh, and the, and then the July 4 coup in Ankara (why the hell do they name it after an American holiday?! That alone says enough).
‘No! No! No! No! No! You’re wrong!’ begged Lucy.
Cassie sighed and shrugged her shoulders.
She fixed her eye on Lucy. ‘You really sure about that one?’
Lucy whimpered, barely able to hold her voice together. ‘Look, look, I know we have a few corrupt people out here.’
Cassie guffawed, to the point of making Lucy sit bolt upright in horror.
‘A few? A few? A few? Are you freaking kidding me, Lucy?’ she practically screamed.
‘Yes, no, please, please hear me out, there are all these corrupt people, OK, but, but the other ones…’
‘What other ones?’ groaned Cassie. ‘Don’t you think about the crap the airwaves are spewing out? For God’s sake, it is not reality. It is the media!’
Lucy trembled in terror. She could barely string two letters together, let alone two syllables.
‘And, you know, OK, we’ve made some big mistakes, and yes, we’ve some really, really bad, stupid, stupid mistakes, but it’s not like we meant to hurt those poor, innocent people, I mean do you remember when Ruby Chandra De Montevideo held that baby in her arms and cried, because she was a, a, a a a mother, and the baby was afraid, because, because she no longer had, h-h-h-h-h-ad, had a, a mother…’
OK. I’ve been lenient. But this is just too much. Time to move in for the kill.
‘Lucy,’ Cassie whispered.
‘Hm? Yes?’ Lucy whispered, apprehensive of what could possible be coming next.
‘Let me ask you something, Lucy,’ Cassie murmured.
‘Y… yes?’ whimpered Lucy; a single, solitary tear rolling down her tear and resting upon a single, solitary acne scar she had carelessly forgotten to cover up.
She remember those boys.
Those girls.
How cruel.
Cassie’s warm, mellow cadences ullulated enticingly in the almost silent vacuum of the park. The air was brimful of menace.
‘Why… did… that… child… not have a mother?’
At first, Lucy could not assimilate the question.
All of a sudden, Lucy threw her hands up in horror and shrieked.
‘Exactly!’ roared Cassie, almost callous in her jubilation. ‘EEEXAAACTLYYYY!’
Lucy fell of the bench, overcome with horror.
‘Number 1. There are no honest mistakes in warmongering.
Number 2. Even if there were, a war is not a single mistake, but a series of a million small decisions. ‘One mistake’ is hardly what’s at issue, right?
Number 3. Once again: there are no honest mistakes in warmongering. Period. Finito!
Number 4. There is no such word as ‘we!’ The word means everything and nothing, and signifies everyone and no-one.
Number 5. The only thing the word ‘we’ could possibly mean, apart from (but not exclusive of!) everything and nothing, is: ‘the narrow, petty, self-interested depravity of the warmongers.’
Number 6: By the way, just on off chance you’ve forgotten already, there are no honest mistakes in warmongering.
Number 7: This is gonna hurt. I hate slavers. I hate abusers. I hate rapists. If I ever told you what I knew, and what I know in my own body, every single hour, about a certain high profile Republican with that greasy fuckin’ ass of his, the very blood in your veins would freeze into ashes. Cold, deadly and poisonous.
But the only thing worse than a rapist, and an abuser, and a slaver is a victim, an enslaved one, an abused convenience meat-puppet who loves their chains. I can never forgive or forget an abuser. But at least I understand them. Well, just a little. I’ve got the measure of them. Every fucking inch, and by fuck, oh by blazing fucking fuckety-fuckie-fuck, Lucy, do they plough you deep! But let me tell you something, Lucy… I can understand these bent fucks, just that tiny little bit. But the one thing I will never understand, should I even live to be a million years, a billion, trillion, zillion years, and forever and ever more, is how someone who is getting fucked over into brutal, heart-crushing oblivion and misery can sit there, and fight tooth and nail for the filthy, sub-human, parasitical, vermin fuck-ups who are battering their screaming, bleeding skulls under their furious, iron jackboots.
‘Have you no shame? The one thing you can say for Dickie Klindel or Lynton Goering or Marcus Charleston Bubble (now why do I mention that guy, I wonder?) is that there is some kinda fucked-up rationale for what they’re doing. But you’re not a humanitarian rapist or fucking paedophile interventionist. You’re worse. You are the one who will stand up with placards defending them, begging judge and citizen alike to give them the benefit of the doubt. You are the one who gets on the web forums and plays devil’s advocate, asking people not to take one-sided views. You are the one who is outraged at the atrocities of the Koreas and the New Zimbabweans, but has nothing to say about the senseless and utterly, utterly merciless atrocities ‘the good guys’ are inflicting upon innocent people, most of whom have never so much raised a peevish thought against our citizens, let alone an angry fist!
‘I’ve seen a million like you, and there’ll be a million more, and then a million, and an endless stream of ass-licking cowardly reprobates who are too cowardly so much as question even their next breath. How fucked up is that? Where does your next breath come from? Huh? You think it comes from Pharaoah. ‘The river is mine, and I have made it.’ Well, what about the rivers of blood streaming from the shattered skulls and shredded entrails of the infants caught under the carnivorous blood-frenzy of the Stormtroopers of the Greater Good? Look, if you disagree with me on abortion, that’s your affair. But here’s the thing, Lucy. If you think cutting up foetuses is so brutal and so unforgivably callous, how can you let people do this to fully conscious, living and breathing children and adults?’
‘Right, here’s the deal. You quit talking to me, quit defending and appeasing and collaborating with pure evil, and you get your own house in order first, before you ever dare patronise me with your idiotic horseshit.’
‘It’s not horseshit,’ a chastened Lucy dully murmured. ‘Not all of it. I’m… I’m trying to get a nuanced view.’
Cassie slammed her pale white fist down on the bench in fury; so hard she broke the outwardly sturdy but inwardly irredeemably rotten arm of the seat. ‘There is a time and a place to consort with nuance. And there is a time to fuck nuance in the ass, hard, backwards, with a rusty blazing fucking chainsaw, and we’ll just let the bastards bleed!’
‘Open your mind!’ pleaded Lucy. ‘You’ve only got part of the picture. I mean, they are the government! They are not perfect, I never said they were!’
‘Ahhh! I mean… ohhh, why do I even bother? You haven’t even begun to…’ Cassie drew a breath mid-sentence and dropped her hands in despair.
‘Can it really be true? I mean, really? Oh God, no, it can’t be true! It can’t be! I won’t let it be true!’
Cassie spat contemptuously. ‘It ‘couldn’t be true’ for the orphans in Vietnam. The widows in Iraq. The widowers in Afghanistan. Half of Japan is now dead, and the other half are doing hard labor in the Gulags of Korea, along the last few pitiful remnants of of the citizenry what used to be South Korea. All these people ‘wouldn’t let it be true.’ Every last damn one of them. Lot of good it’s going these poor wretches by now, huh?’
Lucy was at her wit’s end. ‘But why would they? Why would they? They’re supposed to be protecting us! They’re supposed to be on our side!’
Cassie laughed. ‘No shit! Yeah, they’re supposed to be. Don’t you think Lynton Goering was supposed to be a good Southern Baptist like-totally-non-rapist-kinda-guy too, when he was doing the Thursday Morning club in New Hampshire?’
Cassie didn’t whether she was more indignant or despairing. ‘You’re… you’re lying! I just know you’re lying! You’re lying! No, they wouldn’t! They just wouldn’t, you know! They are supposed to… supposed to…’
Cassie jumped off the bench.
‘Where are you going?’ panted Lucy, afraid of being left alone in this weird park. There were rumors aplenty of violent people roaming abroad.
And not just any people.
Misogynists.
Woman haters.
Presumably not elected ones…
‘What, are you afraid?’ snorted Cassie.
‘Are you kidding me?’ shrieked Lucy. ‘Don’t leave me alone.’
‘Uh… earth to Lucy. Earth to Lucy, huh? Anybody there? I mean, didn’t you think to bring your gun?’
‘No!’ shouted Lucy, indignant at the very thought of it. ‘No! No! No, no, no, no, no … I’m a woman!’
On any other day, Cassie would have exploded with laughter. But here and now, she was genuinely dumbfounded.
At last, she managed something: ‘Good to hear. That’s pretty good. You’re a woman, huh? So, tell me, Lucy. So how do you defend yourself?’
‘The police. Of course!’ shouted Lucy, amazed that the question could even come up.
‘Ohhh, I’ve had enough! Just… just go to hell! I’ve had enough, and I’m going home! Fuck you!’ Cassie roared, at the end of her tether. She galloped through the park, deliberately outpacing Lucy’s short and slender limbs, as she tearfully pleased with Cassie to help her get home safely.
Lucy got to the edge of the park. Cassie was way gone by now. But at least the streetlights were here. She could get home safely now. She should really pause and rest. But it was as though her legs were possessed by a divine madness. Her horror and sorrow propelled her as she pelted across the road.
‘Hell outa my… ohhhhhhh, shit!’ screamed the taxi driver as he cursed the last oath he would ever curse.
Lucy never had a chance.
The collision was horrendous in its suddenness and its brevity.
Not so many blocks away, Jane Pringle awoke with a start.
No idea why?…
Hm?
She turned over and slept and dreamed again.
‘Where were you?’
‘I heard a noise.’
‘Shhh.’
Sandy touched her finger gently upon the lips of Jane.
‘I thought you had gone away for ever,’ her heart murmured, almost playfully.
‘I did. I did.’
‘But why?’ Jane sobbed, her tears falling upon Sandy’s glitzy ear-rings.
Sandy raised Jane’s face, her eyes perfectly dry, but radiant with compassion.
The compassion only two true equals would enjoy.
‘It was the only way we could be together,’ Jane whispered, her words issuing tenderly form an ocean of regret.
Jane caressed Sandy’s trembling cheeks. ‘There’s no place for us, where you are. There’s no place for most people. You know that. I know that. And that’s why I had to go away. Because this is the only place where we can really be ourselves.’
‘Everything you touch turns to gold,’ sobbed Sandy.

‘Shhh,’ whispered Jane.
‘No matter how hard it is, no matter hard it is, I can always come back here. Well OK, well not always, but sometimes. I can’t just come here at will, but every now and then, I get this stirring and this intuition in my heart, and I know that this very night, I will be here, just here with you, right next to you, and I see your face, and I hear your voice, and I know everythying will be just fine. It’s as though nothing bad had ever happened; and yet there is nothing absent, nothing is any less richer. It’s infinitely rich, but also clear beyond measure. I have two worlds, most of the time; the inner and the outer. I live in them every day. But there is an inner world within the inner world, that most of the time, I cannot embrace or speak with. But I always know when it is our time. That last Valentine’s day, I knew you would be with me.
‘You visit me. You visit me. And it’s then that I know you are real. I don’t care if it’s a ‘fact.’ I don’t care about ‘facts.’ I only care about the truth, about what is real for me. For us, Sandy. For us. We will be in love forever. I am sorry I doubted you. Really. I am. You never really left me at all. For us to within the world within the world; this is the only way we can ever see each other’s face again.’
Sandy’s breast heaved with tender empathy.
Jane grew pensive.
‘Will the other people find their way to this place?
Sandy was firm. ‘No.’
‘But why?’ Jane pleaded.
Sandy’s face grew grim. ‘This place doesn’t exist for them. Everyone has somewhere like this. It’s not the same as our place. You must have known, right?’
Jane’s voice trembled, with the pain of a thousand knives of sorrow coursing through her veins. ‘One day, my day place will be a paradise, just like this.’
Sandy wrestled herself free of Jane’s embrace. ‘You idot! Don’t you understand? It’s not like how is used to be. Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble is the future of America. No-one can save this nation. The liberal interventionist and the neocon wormed their way in, and there is now zero prospect of curing this terminal spiritual decline. There is no future for America. There was a time, I don’t know, well say a few decades back or whatever, when there was some hope of turning things back. But people back then didn’t seize the opportunity. Some were brutal and vicious, of course. Others were dull as blocks. Others had some inkling of what was wrong, but frittered away their time on idle professional or intellectual or creative pursuits. Others, and these are the only ones for whom I can have any sympathy, knew all about what was going on, but they were too ground-down by the cares of this world, down in the economic doldrums or struggling with poor health or a poor education, to muster some strength to oppose the tyrants whose hands like a savage, heartless noose tightening ever closer and stronger around their chicken-necks. Those ones I respect a little. But not so much, even then.’
‘Is there… any hope?’ quivered Jane, placing her trembling hand on Sandy’s shoulder.
Sandy threw off Jane’s trembling palms with consummate ease, like a stern iron Buddha sloughing off an idiot gnat.
‘Are there windows in Heaven?’
Lucy paused and looked around.
‘I… I hope so.’
All went dark.
‘S… Sandy?’
But Sandy was no longer there.
But Sandy’s voice still echoed silently in her throbbing heart.
‘America is dead. It’s too late. Pack up your bags and join me, because there is no place for you or me. Maybe it could have been different. Maybe not. Fuck knows. But it sure as hell won’t be different now. It’s just that little few decades too late to be suddenly worrying about how to change things. You can shoo a camel, and you can shoo him and shoo him and beat him and spook him and do whatever you want; but if you are remotely half-assed about it, the time will come when you’ll realize you’ve missed your opportunity. There’s nothing left you can do. There was a window of opportunity to leap through, and by fuck did you assholes drag your feet!
Just you quit worrying about how to change this crap.
Hu?
America is gone.
Dead and buried.
Not by the evil people, the liberal interventionist and neocons, who hated her and wanted to viciously rape her and torture her and behead her and murder her in her sleep.
Nope! It was the dozy, sluggish assholes who loved America, but who didn’t love her enough to raise a single finger of criticism, let alone a single fist of fury, against the cowardly, miniscule gang of child-killers, woman-rapists and MIC pervert fucks who, as every damn one of them knew, was trying to obliterate and liquidate every last shred of hope and decency and dignity for which America, even at her very, very worst, had often stood. For all her considerable faults, at least America excelled in one thing; self-criticism. Accountability was long and hard, but active, informed citizens were once the lifeblood of this active, self-assertive nation. Now, however, critics have been plague-shamed into oblivion. The one and only antibiotic to the neocon plague and liberal interventionist ebola had been inoculated without mercy. People had only half-cared. Perhaps a few even 75% cared, or even 99%. But in the end, even critics of the barbaric culture of humanitarian genocide and humanitarian child-rape had their qualms and their reservations.
You know what, Jane? Just pack your bags and come with me. Come with me. Anywhere! The spaces here are infinite and boundless. Strike this path, be a pioneer; and others will follow too. This is the only ‘America’ that exists now, and that ever will exist. Will you join me? I’m not taking no for an answer.’

‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, isn’t that just the best!’ snorted Marcus Charleston Bubble. I mean, I know these people like their drugs; but sheesh, oh my God, Dickie! Talk about timely payback, huh?’
Dickie Klindel’s beady eyes darted back and forth. ‘I don’t think a strategically expedient post-mortem is out of the question. It’s not the first time in hissstory. Are you quite sure? Politics is the art of risk management, after all. It is little else, don’t you think, when it comes down to it?’
Marchus grunted. ‘Fuck you. You think I’m afraid of the stupid tranny comrades of this liberal piece of shit who just died there? Probably too busy sawing their dicks off outside our elementary school to worry about this crap! I mean, oh c’mon man, seriously! These guys are just lazy-assed flaming parasites, aren’t they? What the hell could they possibly try and pull? People who stagger around on freaking crystal meth 24/7 couldn’t possibly dream of giving us any serious opposition. Give me a break!’
Dickie Klindel’s fishy lips pursed into a frown of displeasure. ‘Well. To speak of other matters. Russian intelligence are said to be closing in on the underground infant cinema network. There are fears that they might already know about the role Benito Scarlett Muskogee and Eva Vernon Letterman have been playing in our… endeavours.’
Bubble roared with laughter. ‘Goddamn Russkies. They make me sick. Who the hell is going to believe that President Schleisser’s Secretary of State and; the hell does Letterman do again?’
‘Human Rights Publicity and Transparency Officer. Children’s health and woman’s equality portfoliosssss,’ hissed Klindel, apparently deadly oblivious to the irony of the situation.
‘Ha!’ grunted Bubble. ‘Well, what the hell can they really do to our party? Who the hell cares about what a bunch of bitter Russkies thinks about anything? Nobody believe these guys, with their shit empire and… hell, I can hardly believe Warsaw is still standing!’
‘Mossscow,’ slithered Klindel. ‘Ssserpently, sir, I ssshall be inclined to say it wasss Mossscowww.’
‘Well, never mind the semantics. They can’t do shit! Everyone knows the flaming Russkies are the biggest goddamn liars. Not a single person in Africa, India, Mexico or any other country on the face of this earth believes a word they say.’
‘I believe, Sssenator Bubble,’ Klindel spat, ‘they are not the only sssomewhatly ssstaggering great power in this world of ours, that is sssimply not the most widely credited of all.’
‘Ha! Bloody Chinkies, huh? Or the Koreans? Or the… well it can’t be the Japanese? Heh, heh! Wonder why, huh?’
‘I find your flippancccy rather… distasteful, if I may take leave to thusss afirm,’ Klindel nauseatingly slug-trailed.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ohhh, you pretentious, moralistic asshole! You suddenly having qualms? You afraid or what?’ Bubble got in Klindel’s face, pinching the arm of this semi-fellow-traveller and useful not-so-idiot of his. But nothing seemed to make an impact on the stony cold think-tank-intellectual and war politico: neither Bubble’s bullying vice-like grip, his repugnant breath, or the demonic gleam in his piggy little eyes. Not the slightest shudder or facial twitch animated this fatal fugitive from a cold, dark, planet indiscernible to the eye.
Or should that be… to?’

Cassie sat elegantly smoking her cigarette.
‘Quite a charming young belle demoiselle de Paris,’ he murmured.
Cassie coughed and spluttered. It was a point of honor with her to never cough when smoking. That would be a sign of weakness. Cassie, as not a few readers will be very far from appalled to hear, was one who loved ardently but narrowly. Her circle was narrow enough, God knows! But if you were by any chance within that circle, Cassie was as fiercely for you as she was mercilessly against you, if you should ever but once fall outside the circle of her concern and affection.
And once you fell, that was it. You were dead to her. Cassie-Jane Helman never gave second chances, as poor Lucy Klindel had found out to her cost.
‘You pretentious jerk!’ she guffawed, rolling around the bed in glee.
‘Care to scoop it up? I drive a fairly hard bargain, you know. In the meantime, we’ll take it that you’ve surrendered your lighter into the custody of a more prudent being.’
Lucy screamed with delight at Otis’ faux-solemn professoriality.
She took the risk of Yoghurt Baba; unlike Gideon Truman, Cassie was the only person on earth he could permit to sing the buffoonish white power rapper without serious qualms. Apparently, some short few decades before, flippantly singing someone like Yoghurt Baba to a black person would have been considered, if not wicked on principle, at least a serious breach of taste. Otis pursed his lips, not losing one whit of poise and elegance in doing so. Everything for him was not so much grand theater (political, journalistic or otherwise) as supreme ballet.
Otis wondered if it was all some kind of gigantic hoax. Could all three of four people really have been telling the truth about this? Did they seriously mean to tell him that there was a time when all this was anything other than… well, normal?
Hm.
Ugly word.
Distasteful.
Not the right choice of words.
Hm.
Repugnant.
A lapse.

Yo! Yo! Nigger, blastin’ ass today!
Nigger chasin’ girls, bitch, get ooouuut Yoghurt’s way!
Smoke that shit, chicken! Blastin’ ass today!
Yoghurt Baba got a baby and he makin’ whitey hay!

Otis paused for a moment.
Cassie felt uneasy.
She paused.
‘Otis…’ she whispered.
Otis gazed heavily upon his former love.
‘I… I thought it was OK. I mean, like our little private joke.’
Otis finally opened his lips, seemingly drained of all energy.
‘Are you a nigger. Cassie?’ he asked her, still maintaining some kind of baseline decency and civility.
Cassie’s normally pale face, already flushed from flesh plonk and a full three hours of sporadic lovemaking, turned so crimson that a dispassionate third party observer would have expected her face to blow any moment.
Cassie paused. She didn’t want to say anything. She wanted this moment to go, and to go forever.
Otis paused himself.
The question again.
‘Are you a nigger, Cassie?’
Cassie never cried. Or so she thought.
‘No…’ she whispered. ‘No… Otis. You’re not a nigger.’
Otis narrowed his gaze. ‘How very peculiar. I thought I had just asked you precisely the question that we may take to be, if you will, at issue.’
Cassie’s lip quivered. ‘No. No… I’ve never seen you in that way.’
Otis wiped his brow with his silken handkerchief.
‘There is evidence to the contrary, I do believe.’
Cassie tried to say more, but the words wouldn’t come out.
‘What do you think should be done to these… these niggers, then?’
The enunciation was merciless.
Cassie exploded into a veritable bloodbath of tears.
‘I swear, I swear, I will never, ever, ever sing that shit again. I mean… It’s just… It’s just…’
Otis groaned inwardly.
The very soul of artistic pretension.
Or…
Pretence?
‘There are 324 Federal dollars on that table, and a Nixon memorial freedom tablet. You may choose to have the humility to take them, and dispose of them as you please.’
Cassie’s face emptied of her last traces of wine-flushed glory.
‘Are you… sending me away?’ she breathed, helpless under the iron spell of her beloved’s glamour.
‘I have never sent away a living soul, as long as I have been on this earth,’ enunciated Otis, although his voice was uncharacteristically near to choking.
‘Did I… did I send myself away…?’ whimpered Cassie, her voice practically inaudible, even to ears as keen as those of her common-law houseboy.
Otis paused. The warm air pulsed and vibrated for a season.
The moment was lost.
The opportunity was nevermore to be found.
‘Thou sayest,’ murmured Otis, deftly springing off the bed to seek a toothbrush.
An owl hooted.
By the time Otis returned to dim the switch, there was no-one there.
He furtively searched under the pillow, as though he ought to be ashamed of his unworthy, cloying sentimentalism and undignified, gushy tenderheartedness.
Enough of this.
It will be mere waste paper, and I shall know soon enough.
Only an utter buffoon would hug close a lover’s note in the stead of a lover?
Nothing could be more foolish!
…
Could it?
The pillow…
Off it goes!
…
There was nothing there.
I see.
Well.
That is not so much to be deplored, perhaps.

Bitch gimme dollar girl,
Gimme dollah moh!
Yoghurt’s got a blue-eyed ho
Mr Cracker got a…
Excuse me, dear fellow. But I do believe you are appropriating my culture.
…
Ha! Another nigger! Hm! Fuck this guy! Whatever happens, yoghurt gonna muvvafuckin YOOOGHURT! Hm! Yer better believe it, bitches!
Hm.
That was more or less what I anticipated.
If this is a dream, then it is greater than reality.
Greater… and ever bit as pitiful, mediocre and contemptible.

Chapter 7: Humanitarian Rape

Senator Bubble’s day had finally arrived.
But most of all, it was America’s day!
Wait… did I get that one the right way around?
‘Freakin’ straight on, Bubble!’ Alan roared.
Bubble cleared his throat.
He cleared his bowels, and then his throat again.
Well, might as well make an effort, huh?
‘Alright, everybody!’ Bubble roared.

Aeons and endless universes away, Otis bowed his head and scribbled like buggery.

‘For the last flamin’ time!’ the shameless pen-waver bawled. ‘It is your word against his! What the hell do you expect me to do? Unless you’ve got some evidence the boy fucked with you, what the hell am I supposed to do? ‘Oh, by the way, Mr Judge, this Miss Willow girl says Benny Pilder (of all the goddamn unlikely people in the world, for Chrissakes!) might just have got fucking dicky with it, and y’know, maybe just, like maybe just, on the off chance, you could maybe see if there’s some truth in the story?’

‘Fuckin’ brown sugar,’ Cassie moanie-moaned, bobbing her head in runny-shit-ridden-ecstacy.
‘Fuckin’ brown as fuck, and goes down like a bomb.’

Let me tell you all!
Marcus is the boss!

‘Bitch! You for real? I ain’t sayin’ it’s not true. I’m just sayin’ who the fuck knows either way! Don’t you shake that fist at me, girl! FFS… why do these bitches always get rowdy like this? It’s nothing personal; we just don’t have the resources to go investing speculative rape claims, of all things! I mean, who the fuck knows what’s true and what’s false?
‘Boys will be boys, they get a bit rough and shit gets messed up; I mean, it could be true, for all I know. And if so, well hey, it’s a bit rough on you girl, I can imagine you must be pretty butthurt about it. But this is the laws of economics. If we started prosecuting shit like this all the time, we wouldn’t have time for the really important stuff.
‘Anyway, it was your party that bombed that poor old bitch in Lebanon that the flamin’ Jew Ziomedia are kickin’ up shit about. Don’t you talk to me about that shit. Poor old lady probably hadn’t done shit to us here in the US, she didn’t deserve that. So don’t you ever talk to me about sexism? I don’t even know what I’m going to say to you? I’m not going to say anything yet, in case you folks use it against me. The police have no power in this country. And you have the damn cheek to call me an abuser of power? In this country, the politicos run the whole damn show. By this point in history, I’d rather be a whining Jew or a goddamn nigger than a police boss. Just shut your… Ah, forget it. I’m about done with this shit!’

Shall I read it aloud? Well, why not. Cassie, this is for you. I do hope you enjoy indulging in the white heterosexual lifestyle. In the next several months, the last of my dwindling savings will have been squandered on the medicine that is keeping me alive.
Then it will be food stamps.
Then the diagnosis.
And then…
Well, you will appreciate this little charming ditty, nonetheless.
Let me do my best to put it in character.
I hesitate to say I am ‘whited up.’
Now that… is surely none of my business.
Still.
In due course, I shall be pale enough, God knows.
I must confess to a qualm or two.
I am hardly amid my best heart’s ease at my callous dispatching of la belle cassie de cette belle maison.
But you will, perhaps, understand that reasons of the heart are not to be likened to reasons of state.
In any case, let us commence!

Alright, everybody! Now, for what it’s worth, I’ve come here pretty well prepared. I haven’t got any wingmen, that’s one thing for sure! I mean, we have a great party. You know what, I just love our party. I think it’s just the best. Do you know what I’m saying? This party. This nation. Do you love the Republican Party? Do you love Ameeericaaaaaaaa?
Wooooo! No shit! Well guess what, people? For what it’s worth, you’re not alone. You know what? I love America too.

Saul Friedman spat in fury.
‘It’s true! So it’s frickin’ true after all! Dickie fuckin’ Klindel and his boys have been coachin’ this bitch to get more of a, more of a frickin,’ frickin’ persona about ‘im! Fuck this guy! Fuck this guy to fuckety-fuckety-fuckety-fuck-fuckers…’

If you were here, Cassie.
If you were actually here.
It might be easier.

‘Who am I to judge?’ Cassie bawled. ‘Who am I to judge? That’s what he actually told me!’
The priest she had cornered on the corner outside the police station squirmed with repugnance; a repugnance, however, that was not entirely untainted and unadulterated with some shadow of compassion and sympathy, however inauthentic and ineffably guilty such a poor admixture of better feeling may have been.
‘Woman is under the authority of man,’ the priest pronounced. ‘Only the Lord alone can tell why some few unworthy men overstep due boundaries in their guardianship of the precious sex.’
Speechless with fury, Willow pelted down the street towards the river.

‘Well hey there, our cheap-ass lil Friday special!’ Sally grunted. ‘Go and tell that Jew imbecile he oughta quieten down and quit making a fuss! Oh and yes, before you ask, you can tell from me that yes, he is indeed a Jew imbecile, and if he doesn’t like it, he knows where the fuckin’ door is!’
Jim stepped up cautiously to Saul. ‘Mr Saul,’ Jim murmured. ‘Hm! Say what?’ Saul roared, although he was already mellowing a little. ‘Mr Saul,’ Jim repeated, his knees trembling. ‘Hm! What is it? C’mon, spit it out, son!’ murmured Saul, a ghost of a smile trembling around the corner of his lips by now.
‘Mr Saul,’ said Jim. ‘Sally says that you are a Jew imbecile, and, and that, and that…’
‘Ohhh, for Chrissakes!’ spat Saul, too taken aback to really be angry.
‘And, and, and that, and that Mr Saul oughta quieten down and quit makin’ a fuss, because, because yes, Mr Saul is indeed a Jew imbecile, and if Mr Saul doesn’t like it, Mr Saul knows where the… where the… stupid door is.’
Immediately Jim’s heart sank in his chest. He burst into tears. He lied! He lied! Purely in order to spare Mr Saul’s feelings. But all that didn’t matter. He told a lie! He lied! He lied! He lied!’
‘Hm. Is that so. Well, Mrs Sally Cameron can get fucked. I’m finishing this drink, and I ain’t leavin’ for shit! You can tell her that from me too? A’rite?’
All of a sudden, Saul realized that the whole time he had been saying this, Jim had been quivering in fear and guilt.
‘Ah, c’mon son!’ Saul groaned. ‘I ain’t sore at you, Jim. C’mon, uncle Saul is just fuckin’ butthurt that yer, yer frickin’ Sister Sal has been comin’ out, I mean, she’s been comin’ out with this fuckin’…
‘I lied!’ wailed Jim, running full pelt behind the bar, onto the staircase, up and up, God knows where.
Saul frowned and toyed with his Fraulein Mercer. The cinammon tasted of raw crap.
It wasn’t like that in the student bar a few decade back; that’s one thing for frickin’ sure, Adi son!
Sal walked by with a brush.
Saul didn’t see.
‘He lied? He lied?’ breathed Saul, a wondrous slumber grasping his soul, every thread by gleaming thread.
‘But isn’t that exactly what you’d expect her to say?’

‘So you sent her packing?’
‘Yeah! She was a tough one, though! I mean, they all are!’
‘Good call, dude! I mean, last year the number of failed rape prosecutions was just unreal. It’s a flaming waste of everyone’s time. I mean, every man’s bitch and her sister is accusing men of rape these days! Anyone would think rape was some kind of, y’know, actual commonplace thing? I mean, most men know you don’t do that shit! You look at 20th century stats, and you mean, it’s flamin’ unreal! You seriously telling me all these men were guilty? I mean, it’s just an awful historical injustice. How awful all these, y’know, stupid drunk student kids and all those folks had to be shamed and ridiculed like that. It’s literally worse that slavery. As far as I’m concerned, unless you actually take the bitch by the throat and shove your fuckin’ dick up her bleedin’ ass, how in the flaming fuck can that shit actually be rape? Oh, c’mon! Ohhh, please!

My love is like
A black, black dick
That’s newly sprung in NYC
My love is like an Otis Spengler
That’s…
Hey! Shut the fuck up, a’right? Fuck that guy! There are already too many niggers on TV! I know we’re all fucked off our asses on heroin, but there’s nothing worse than a blue-eyed bitch that literally hates her own race!

‘So anyway, yeah! Things change, yeah?’
The monthly monitor was over.
‘They sure do change. They sure do,’ muttered Palmer Miller.
‘Well, keep it up.’
Palmer shook his head.
‘Uh… what?’
The green-eyed and greener still graduate kid dropped his tablet in horror, his eyes wide with horror.
‘You heard. This job is not for me.’
Benny Turpin gaped in horror.
‘No, no, c’mon dude! I mean, look at this shit I just wrote, I’ve given you so much, I mean the stats, they are just…’
‘Did you hear me the first time!’ Palmer Miller roared.
Benny’s specs flew off his face as he doubled back in horror. His loins blazed with fury as an ever-spreading patch of raw piss lurched across his hindquarters, hungry as the see, feel and callous as the drones of princes.
The police boss choked in fury.
‘I just had a girl in here who has been raped! Do you hear me? She was fuckin’ raped? And because, and all because of flaming, stinkin’ pen pushers like you, I had to send the poor lady away and tell her there was nothin’ doin’! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?!’
Benny burst into tears. ‘They will have my ass if you resign. They told me if another guy…’
Incandescent with fury, Palmer Miller threw the empty bottle of Super Dew.
As unerring a shot as ever!
‘Ooooowwwwww! Fuck saaaaaakes, duuuuuude,’ moaned the arrogant little quality-dweeb, who look more repugnantly pathetic than he ever had.’
‘Haul your flaming ass out of here, boy. Right now! The Amber Hornet is only just reaching full thermometer, and by hellfire am I gonna have one damn fine lap-chasin’, boy! Now get the hell out and let me attend to my proper business, by God! Alright? No buts, son! You’ll damn well regret this shit, alright?’

Chapter 8 Captain America’s Got Blown in the Office
This is it,’ breathed Senator Willow.
That bastard…

‘Jesus H. Hubbard on a frickin’ cosmic love-pogo!’ spat Saul Friedman. ‘That coaching has made the bastard ten times the frickin’ slithery fuck he was before! Can’t believe even what I’m frickin’….’

But the speech was an artifact of history…
What history was due to yet proceed from this hideous rant?

Ok! Alright, everybody! Now, for what it’s worth, I’ve come here pretty well prepared. I haven’t got any wingmen, that’s one thing for sure! I mean, we have a great party. You know what, I just love our party. I think it’s just the best. Do you know what I’m saying? This party. This nation. Do you love the Republican Party? Do you love Ameeericaaaaaaaa?
Wooooo! No shit! Well guess what, people? For what it’s worth, you’re not alone. You know what? I love America too.
But you know what? Not everybody loves America. Am I right?
Wooooo! Yeah! Now I wonder why that might be?
Huh? Oh quit it, look! Yeah, we are giving those guys too much money, but look, I tell you what! You have my word, once we get our other things sorted out, then… those guys… well, we might have to rethink our Mid East strategy a bit. Alright?
Now, who is that’s really pissing us off right now?
Ha! Bingo! Got in one!
Look, I am sick and tired of the liberal left and the conformists within our party. Now, I wouldn’t go so far to along with Dr Daniel Krebs, and say that the only moderate Muslim is a dead Muslim. I kind of think we don’t want to go down that road right now, do you? Look, these ideas are not representative of our party, but for sure, they’re around, aren’t they?
Well, look. I know exactly why you are angry; and I’m angry too, and you can be sure of this, my anger is not idle. The fact is that Islam has been given too much leeway in this country. I mean, look, under the law, you can be whatever you want: Christian, Buddhist, Muslim… J… J… er, let’s say, Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Hm. Alright, smart aleck. What’s so funny?
Afraid to s… afraid to say what? Shut your flaming, I mean… woah! Woah! Just kidding! Gotta scare ‘em like that ya see. It’s like disciplining kids, yeah?
Well hey! Woo! For what it’s worth, I don’t think we need to get into semantics about this stuff. The First Amendment guarantees us religious freedom. But this Amendment is a product of its time. Nobody in those days knew what would come of it. Kinda like Dred-Scott, huh? Uh, no wait, that’s uh…
Well anyway, let’s cut the pointless intellectual bullshit! That isn’t what I’m about…
And let’s be honest, that’s not what America I about? I mean, right?
Owch! Give us a wooooooooooooo!
Now, I know that President Clement Schleisser has offered me the highly honorable post of Secretary of State. But you know what? We don’t even have that much time left, and much as I value President Schleisser’s strong leadership and wisdom, these are extraordinary times. And it’s times just like, y’know, that, where probably need a pretty extraordinary leader! Huh?
Unoriginal? Huh? Oh, alright kid! You wanna come up on this platform and do it instead? Huh?
I don’t think you heard me. Do you want to come up here and do this shit, girl?
Oh… woooaaah! Not a girl! Well, you coulda fooled me, heh heh!
WTF… a transphobe? You outa your frickin’ mind, lady? If I were afraid of you, I wouldn’t be standing up here on this platform and handing you your ass on a plate, would I?
Oh. Oh. Waterworks again, huh? Well, that figures.
Anyway, where were we.
Well, you know we need a leader; and improving upon President Schleisser’s excellent record of hammering the asses of the enemies of our country, primarily within, but also without…
Ha!Ha! Did I get that one the right way round? Woooooo!
Well… It sounds like this boy enjoyed it anyway.
What?
Oh sorry, didn’t hear ya.
Shout it again!
Yeah, that’s good, nice and loud.
…Wooooooooooooo! Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble for Senator? Well, that’s the first time I’ve hearda that one! You know what? Now that’s pretty smart. I like smartness. I value it. I mean this guy is no egghead, he’s just really in tune with our traditional American common sense, self-reliance, and…
Oh, well hey! You’ve not been planted here by any chance?
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ohhh, the way you people are laughing. Anyone would think you had a sneaking suspicion this guy might just be a…
Well, anyway. Curiously enough, I am just here to announce precisely that!
Well hey! President Marcus Charleston Bubble! How’s that sound?
Wooooooooooooooo!

‘How does it sound,’ Sally drawled, bored to tears by Bubble’s inane political revelry.
Saul practically vaulted the moon.
‘How does it sound?’ he roared. ‘It sound frickin’ awful as fuck!’
‘Hey, listen old man,’ Sally murmured, too tipsy to really give a rat’s ass: ‘It wasn’t an actual question.’
Alan wasn’t quite so dispassionate.
‘Anyone would think you was frickin’ special, like Jihadi Jim over here!’ Alan roared, appalled at Friedman’s most un-Jewish habit of taking the second shittiest Scotch every single damn time!
Saul slammed his glass down on the table.
‘Nothing frickin’ special about me!’ Saul muttered, his blazing blue eyes casting sparks of decades-brewed resentment about the tavern.
‘If yer ever even knew who ol’ fuckin’ Saul Friedman was, that’s the last word yer would all be usin’,’ Saul muttered as he staggered out.
‘Hope you get hit by some clumsy-ass bus, you crazy-dick fuckin’ Jew comedian!’ Sally roared.
‘Yeah! Fuckin’ Jew! Fuckin’ Jew! Fuckin’ Jew! Fuckin’ Jew-Jew-Jew-Jew-Jew!’ Alan bellowed, a good few paces too late.
‘Sheesh,’ Sally sighed in resignation. ‘Alan, you sure are an immature little bitch, arntcha?’

Chapter 9: Tomorrow For the Brave

‘Well?’ snorted Bubble.
‘Here, sssir, is the audio and shlide show you ettshpecktickled,’ Klindel slithered, dribbling out of both corners of his mouth.
Firstly, the notable humanitarian pop star and radical artistic performance artist, Klubber Bonez:

Phwoar! Mate! U S of blumming A, I tells yer! Just look ‘ere me lad, me ‘as a literally bangtabuloso future President Marcus Bubble! This lad, ‘e wah be a proper, proper humanitarian lad, me old son!
Hur-huuuurrrr! Gotcher! Bang-bang!

What the hell is this, Dickie? Huh? What is this… this pretentious crap?!

Hark! A-hark! And hearken well again, my dear chums! It is I, Tarquin Binnett of Albion, notable public figure and future UKIP counsellor of Little Winchester! Now do permit me, my lad, to make a most politically expedient speech upon this simply splendid young man Marcus Charlemagne Bubble. He seeks a renewed and traditional America, with nary a wop and a dago about the place!

So you got a couple of stuck-up limeys? So what else is new, Dickie? Huh?

Luv-luvvie-Bomb, Luvvie V Vedanta
In the pre-e-e-e-si-den-tial!
Ooo, girly play with me, with your bo-bo-ba-ba-ji
Or your bloody nation must be fahcking mental!

‘Who even cares what the Pakis think… ohhh, you…’
Senator Bubble threw an empty bottle of Karadzov Bleijer vodka. Damned briefing machine hadn’t a chance.
‘Well… I am mossshhht outraged!’ spat Dickie Klindel, curiously animated just this once.
‘Why don’t you get me a proper endorsement? Who the fuck are these stupid assholes? How much of our money did you wasted with this crap? Huh? You wanna play white boys and Indians, huh? You wanna play white boys and Indians, do you? Huh? Huh? I don’t want even want to be fuckin’ breathing on this campaign, if you’re still on it! Huh? Huh? Huh? Listen, Dickie, listen! Give me a FUCKIN’ ANSWER!’
Dickie Klindel’s lips quivered, as Bubble’s chunkier-than-ever New Jersey fists pounded upon his motionless shoulders.
‘Do… give me leave to shussshhhpect, dear shhhir, that thish ish not merely the Dharmic conundrum and erotic dialogue comedian Luvvie Vedanta, but alshooo, the notable radical erotic performance artist and senshuuual indie chat show compère Roger Pickering, of Englandzh Bedford, home of the world-renowned English Defence League and Home Counties Finest Unofficial Rick Astley tribute band, the Acid Rolls, formerly of Klubber Bonez and now the…’
Bubble threw up his greasy palms in utter horror.
‘Find me some real heroes, bitch!’ he roared.
The corners of Dickie Klindel’s lips twitched uncontrollably, like the decapitated big half of a fishing worm.
‘I am mossshht sorry, dear Shhhirrr, but Dickie izh doing zhe besht he can. Even Zgniew Brzezzzzinski, Henzzzzhy Kissssssshingggggg…’
Bubble smashed his chunky New England fists once more upon Dickie Klindel. Klindel peevishly yielded his skull for a second blow.
‘You are nothing? See these heroes? Look, there are only two Presidents in the history of our shitty, backward country worthy of the name: Lyndon Boris Johnson, Richard Milton Nixon and William Hamilton Clinton! And even these guys were fucking pussies, when the spirit took them to sell out. Who do you think I am, Dickie? Huh? Huh? Huh?!’
Klindel stood silently, too sickly and craven to even wipe the blood from his brow.
But there was not the merest tremble of his legs. A true humanitarian interventionist to the end. Such cold, emotionless monsters were hardly a rarity in the Potomac cesspool or among the notorious military-industrial complex, one rivalling even Nero’s or Caligula’s or Stalin’s or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s relentless and remorseless war machines.
Or so at least, a freaking pinko traitor like Saul Friedman or…
Now wait a second, what was the other guy’s name again?

Chapter 10: Reds Have More Fun

‘The fuck? They really beheaded the guy?’ grunted Bubble.
‘Oooooooo, yeah, baby! Took that pussy round the corner and chopped his freaking limey-dimey Kopficle around the head; you’d better believe it, bitches!’ Benito Scarlett Muskogee looked as though he were about to genuinely take off like a prodigious Obamadrone, as he whirled around the ‘Special Gentleman’s Fever Cone’ of the Amber Hornet.
‘Listen, son!’ groaned the Senator. ‘I don’t have time for all this rowdy behaviour.’
‘Woo-hoooooooo! Give us a fuckin’ bump, Bubble Boy!’ Benito brimfully bubbled. ‘Ya know who my frickin’ ancestor was? Heh heh! Fuck yeah, baby! Lyndon fuckin’ Johnson, see this here boy, he’s the son of L B J, L B J, how many dicks have you washed today?!’
Bubble was at the end of his tether.
‘Shut the hell up! You even sound like that liberal asshole! Everyone knows that piece of shit is overrated.’
Benito suddenly dropped to his knees and, startled at some imaginary devil, rolled over and put his hands over his face. Presently, he began to weep gently.
‘Well, well, well, Marco boy!’ was the rich and barely gushy intoning of Eva Vernon Letterman. ‘It does appear there is something in all this here ‘lead poisoning’ talk after all.
‘Well, hoo-hey, chicken! Waheeeyyy! Maybe you’re right! Guess that flaming Jew comedian Saul Friedman… well, what is it they say? A pacifist abacus counts her up proper once a day, right?’
The rich, hearty, Southern belle dame de Wyoming guffawed. ‘Hm. Marcus, I would quit this stuff right now. Don’t you be getting into the habit of insulting Eva Vernon Letterman; because you never know who you might end up with in the White House!’
Bubble’s rather poor attempt at gallantry went up in flames.
‘Hey, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Who the frickin’ hell is supposed to be choosing my people?’
Letterman smirked gaily, with a flick of her gorgeously rich and radiant curls. ‘The hand behind the throne.’
Bubble’s joie de trollerie revived immediately. ‘Whew! Tell you what, if you’ve got a good hand under the throne, there’s nothing a good president can’t handle!’
Letterman nodded in the direction of the private shower.
‘Hmm…’ Bubble grunted.
Eva slipped off her dress.
‘Hey, can I fuck with her too? I really like redhair bitches! They are sooooo fuckin’ hot, baby! Come with me and I’ll give you a flamin’ locker-room scissor-fight you gonna never fuckin’ forget, baby!’ groaned Benito.
Letterman leaned over and whispered in his ear. ‘Next time, honey.’
With a coy wink, Letterman strode over, raising her hand to Bubble’s cheek.
‘Pity fuck, much? Ohhh, that poor little freak will believe anyth…’
With one long, clumsy swipe (albeit one wholly unmistakable in its intent and its significance alike), Bubble levelled Letterman to the ground. She didn’t even have time to scream.
Bubble momentarily gazed in horror. ‘What the fuck did you say to him?’ he roared. ‘What the fuck did you say?!’
Dickie Klindel, pedantically timely as always, slunk into the Fever Cone.
‘From a purely value-free and neutral tacsickles and strategggic pershpectivvvvvvve,’ he slizzzhhhered, ‘it would be a rather pragmatically exshpeeeeedient devisssshe, to transport the cadaver to a less consssshhhpicuoooooussh…’
Bubble almost flattened Klindel too.
‘Oh, really? Well, you are one smart sun of a Mongol!’ he spat. ‘Seriously, make yourself useful and sort this shit out. I’m not going to have people besmirching my good name.’
‘Such value-laden ethical premises are not my conssshhhern.
‘Now, meditating merely on the purely objective and value-free given constellation of strategic constraints and opportunities, the least systemically disorderly response to the stimulus…’
Bubble grabbed Klindel by the throat and raised his chin, so that Bubble could see his eyes. Klindel’s sea-grey irises, empty of all life and the merest trace of joyful creativity and of any artistic and poetical purpose whatsoever, stared forward without any real interest or significance.
The moment passed.
Bubble let go of Klindel’s collar. Klindel righted his stance with, if not a composure or poise, at least an astonishing absence of awkwardness of anxiety.

‘The campfire is ready,’ Senator Willow murmured.
As she sat, she did not hear the owl, lamenting the loss of her eggs; oh, so cruelly stolen from her by the ill fortunes of the sun, the wind, the storms!
‘The English journalist,’ she muttered. ‘How curious. Journalists don’t dress daintily like that, I am quite sure of it.’
The newspaper fragments fluttered in the breeze.
The forlorn cadaver of Captain Cattybums, caught in a gasp of abject horror at some unmentionable evil now consigned to the security of a memory no longer accessible to we the living; for there was no more sea, no voice that could elucidate the agony of the glossy fop.
The rags and remnants were committed to the flames.
The mushroom stick was plunged into the flames.
So also the ‘scarlet letter’ of her sexual degradation.
In her heart, she reverently intoned:

In the Name of the Lesser Good.
My Interest, not the National Interest.
My Good, not the Good of Humanity.

Not one thing accomplished for Humanity.
Not one thing devoted to Humanity.
Not one person under the shameful, unbearable and thrice-damned slaver’s yoke of Humanity.

Crimes against Humanity are Victimless Crimes.
Not so crimes against the Individual.
Everything I have ever done, has been in the name of human beings, and not of humanity.

I owe Humanity nothing.
And Humanity owes me nothing.
All the good that has ever been done me…
Has been done by people.

I, for one, am not Humanity!
But what sayest thou…
To the individual?

Chapter 11: Legitimate Genocide

Adolph Adams gasped in awe as he thumbed over the words of his warmest and bitterest best frenemy of all.
If Humanity Exists, then All is Permitted: Germany’s Recognition of the So-Called Korean Genocide is a Horrific Act of Presumption
Dr Saul Friedman, formerly of the Libertarian Party, the Classical Liberal Party, and the Republican Party.
The German government’s recent unilateral declaration of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ in Korea is a truly horrific development. This opportunistic Realpolitik move is an utter catastrophe.
As a Jew, as an American, and most of all, as an individual and not some mere token of a type, I am 100% opposed to setting up a hierarchy among mass atrocities. The distinction between a ‘Crime Against Humanity’ or ‘Genocide’ and a ‘mere straight-vanilla mass atrocity’ is not a scientific one, but a rhetorical and polemical one, driven by cynical, partisan Realpolitik.
It is truly horrifying to see yet another government (no less than the government of the main perpetrator of the Nazi Holocaust!) demean and trample all over the victims of all mass atrocities, by perpetuating practices of illicit privilege and hierarchy. If they had the slightest shred of respect for people massacred in the Korean mass atrocities, or anyone else heartlessly butchered in any mass atrocity soever, they would hold their peace, and not desecrate the memory of the innocent by continuing this perpetual sacrament, this eternal mystifying mummery of self-interestedly hierarchising and privileging some mass atrocities over others, by baptising them with nonsense words cynically calculated to signify that these particular mass atrocities, and ONLY these, are of any real significance.
It is merely a power game. Let not one fool or idle speculator be mistaken. The ruthless and ineffably violent arms race and beggar’s pokerfest of ‘which one is a Genocide?’ and ‘which one is a Crime Against Humanity?’ is a race to the bottom, and it will inevitably corrupt and taint beyond measure all those who give in to the temptation. This is not about justice, or decency, or commemoration, or power; it’s merely cynical, self-serving, malignant opportunism. And who is it, then, who practices such opportunism? Cynical, self-serving, malignant opportunists.

Adams paused.
‘You were right, dear friend,’ he breathed.
Saul’s half-ironic chant still resounded in his head.
‘And if I am not for myself, then who?’

Chapter 12: A Riddle Thickens

Ruby Chandra De Montevideo ushered the eager, scarcely 35 year old Seamus Riddle into her office.
‘The last time anything big happened in this office,’ Ruby murmured seductive as sin, and as eternal rank benevolence, ‘it was truly something! But this will be bigger. I assume we have no reason to distrust your loyalty to The Party?’
Seamus Riddle smirked and reeled it off pat the Sibling’s Oath of the Blue Humanity Common Interest Supercaucus. So this, after all, was then no myth?
One Free and Vigorous Democratic Nation.
One Unified, Abundant and Dynamic Global Village.
One Robust Commitment to One Great, Grand Glorious and Unified Common Humanity.
We are all in this together.
The good of one is nothing, without the good of all.
The good of all will come to nothing, without the effort of all.
I ask not what I shall do for myself, but what my people shall do for my people.
Even if I were bound to harm every last individual on earth, I would still be sworn to the public good, the national interest, the global village, and the greater good of our common humanity.
Nothing for the individual, nothing against the individual, nothing in the name of the individual.
One for All, and All shall gaily shepherd every one!
So far, so pious. But let us now see what Saul Friedman is getting up to.

‘Bastard better be here,’ Saul’s husky voice breathed. The whiskey didn’t seem to be doing him the same good. His throat ached.
He crumpled, dropped, discarded the ancient sophomore’s sophomoric satire pamphlet. His old schoolmate’s satire echoed in his head:
Hey, everybody! It’s yer best buddy Jumbo Johnson here! Everybody loves a bit of good old NON-GOVERNMENTAL Human Rights Organization shit, huh?
That’s right, bitches! Time for one damn fine bit of unpatriotic pinko analysis of the notable patriotic human rights NGO, Freedom House! Ooo, SHIT! I LIIIIKE the sounda THAT!
Well hey, baby! Everybody loves freedom, right?!
Yup! No shit, chicken! I mean, I literally can’t imagine what kind of an ignorant, bigoted asshole would hate freedom; can you???
So, here we go. Snuggle up a little here, baby, and have your cosy ol’ sneak peek at lil Jumbo here.
I hear that pathetic little Euroweenie bastard Anglo-Harry, like, I say, I hear all my jerk-ass lil vanilla-bitches be sayin’:
Hm. This rather bears, shall we say, a passing resemblance to a certain… as it were, official view being shat out over the American airwaves from time to time…
Well hey; never mind that there Pacifist-Socialist-Cultural-Marxist-Command-Economy garbage!
Can’t think of a better way to smash the old Jumbie-jumb Arab than, than to vilify and sneer at all them goddamn Russkies, and patriotically endorse the Vast Freedom-Wing Fast-Food-Ification of liberty: swift, surgically dubious, greasy, deeply satisfying (for some!) and very, VERY close to ‘free’ (as all the Big Bossmen, at least, are gonna be tellin’ ya), and leavin’ you freaks hungry again within a matter of moments, and just gaggin’ the ol’ Chiefie here for some more.
(After all, an Obamadronie-bonio shitstormtroopertastrophe ah innocent ‘collaterals’ takes matter of seconds, if that!)
But guess who’s been fundin’ up this damn fine institution?
(Give yer shit-credits for italicisin’ emphasis for good ol’ Jumbo here; you’d better believe it, bitches!)
According to this tiresome, hateful polemic against my National Interest, two names that ‘raise the steak’ of ol’ Jumbo here are: Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.
Well hey, girl! Turn that grubby ol’ trout-pout west-side snout, baby! Cos, ya know, Wolfowitz, that there guy ain’t no fool! He’s a frickin’ notable American scholar, and all that jazz!
Well, hey: American Enterprise Institute, anyone?
By the way, those boys, well their motto is:
Competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society.
Or in other words: You’re either with us or against us!
Well, fuck yeah, freedom-baby!
Kein frickin’ Scheisse, Scherlocke! Freedom House.
Well, hey!
Say what?
Say, what the fuck is that, my patriotic lil cute-ass charmer?
Well, it could be many things.
An established and unshakeable foundation.
A stony edifice.
An imposing fortress A golden palace. A home of freedom. Whew! Lovely name, ain’t it?!
Ooo, shit! FREEDOM! That one gets me goin’ every time. Well, snuggle-ya-later, honeybuckles!
Ol’ Jumbo here has to make for rearrangement of his fine ol’ Jumbokin pork-platter.
Cos ya know see ol’ Jumbo here, he just loves the stench of freedom in the morning, baby!
Oh, and by the way.
If ever you’re ever be wantin’ some freedom: Believe me, good Ol’ Jumbo will be just here. Just right here where ya need me! OOO! Shit! All about the frickin’ rhetoric, baby! OOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
… Shit! Whew! Oh my frickin’ gosh, that was one HELLUVA…
Whew! Would ya just look at that!
Hm. Now, where’s that bastard, shitty little Mexican when ya need ‘im…

Adolph Adams softly intoned the words he had penned for his graduation. It grieved the orphan deeply that, at that most proud and precious day of his life, his ‘big brother’ (Saul was two years younger and quite a few inches shorter) had been too angry to wish him well.
If only Saul had known how much he owed to Adams.
Their paths had diverged a great deal. Professor Friedman, as brilliant and creative as he was disorganized and clumsy, would have made a superlative Einstein. And yet as a politician, he had never quite hit the heady heights reached by Governor Adams; a former hacker and ruthless shit-stirrer who, staid and sober and plain of speech as he was, had made some truly superlative achievements. Under the steady aegis of ‘the electric Quaker’ (Adams had no religious beliefs to speak of, or at least none that he considered worth to be publicly flaunted and dickwaved-about-it, and about), the miracle had been achieved. Mississippi, the erstwhile ‘graveyard of liberalism,’ had been hauled into the terrifying and chaotic No Man’s Land of solid, reliable, indeed ever-and-always-dependable swing-statery.
His stubby fingers traced every drop of ink.
His heart was troubled.
His heart was ever free, anew.
THE PLEA OF EUROPA
My Dearest America:
An ardent and blazing ocean of love…
Upon you and amid you! We are friends, and brothers, and sisters; and we are ever far apart. But whatever our squabbles, never forget that if the USA surrenders to the tyranny of mediocrity and the mediocrity of tyranny, we in Europe have even less hope of resisting the advances of the Empire of ‘Humanity.’
There is a time to weep; and a time to let a thousand pens blaze!
We condemn your leaders not because we despise you, but because they want to destroy your heritage.
If there is no perfection on earth, the US Constitution is one of the greatest miracles of history.
The Empire of the Individual blazed forth in a broken land, when even the dazzling patriots of Paris and of France could not recognize the beauty of her splendor.
We implore you to keep your candle burning; and we in Europe will exchange with you whatever light we can. When you are at your best, we will be more free, because your nation is always the greatest when you lead by example, and not by force!
America is an impossibility; but time after time, you have triumphed over adversity, and shown that mere impossibility is no excuse for accommodating tyranny!
A day is dawning for America, just there, over there, out on the horizon. A day where the snoopers and humanitarian interventionists and rabble-rousing shills will be the Dred-Scott intellectuals and faux-enlightened slavers de ces jours-là; and never once du jour! All that is of this earth will pass away; but your dream will never pass away!
Forgive our impatience, and remember that every cord you unbind will be unbound for others also; and every knot you fasten will be fastened also upon us. As one of our own sages has proclaimed:
You have every right to mind your own business. But mind how your business affects mine!
Your business is liberty. And if we in Europe forget our business, we hope and pray with all our hearts, that you will not forget yours.
The shadows are darkening here, and you too are seeing the encroachment of ghouls and phantom bugbears.
Do not abandon us in your hour of need; but better still, do not abandon your own people!
Because you are the individualists of this world; and if the eternal throne and dominion of the individual is shaken in your precious land, what can be said for us?
We are fearful. But we fear for you; not merely because you are our best example, but because we owe you too many things to count or to even acknowledge without a blush.
Do not let the flame retreat.
For if ever there were ever a true meaning to American Exceptionalism, it must surely be this:
Power through humility.
Friendship with all peoples, cynical allyhood with none.
Seeking partnership, and never dominion.
Neither national egotism nor rootless globalism, but the common life of free individuals across the countless prairies and cityscapes of space and time, holding hands without fear, and without recrimination.
Forget thou not these tears, America.
You have given us what no-one else has given: a strong example to emulate, and not to obey.
This is an inconceivable treasure, and our pearl of great price.
Don’t trade it in for anything.
In love and eternal friendship
Europa Hawah
And everyone who will blaze aloft
The humblest, most exalted banner of the individual
And of freedom
And of liberty.

‘And do you know what I want you to do for me, Mr Riddle?
Ruby’s seductive, full red lips glistened with the crystalline longing of the finest of cognacs.
‘I am at your service, here and forever,’ Seamus breathed.
Ruby’s spotless, chubby fingers descended to the point of decision.
‘You are mine,’ the rapist murmured, overcome with a frenzy no more of this world than of hellfire.
‘Make sure you give me what I want. You are my good boy now, aren’t you? And you shall be loyal forevermore, as you are right now?’
Seamus dropped his trousers and mopped his panting brow against his Savior’s crotch.
‘The night is young. We have 17 hours until the press conference. Do you think you can satisfy me sufficiently.’
‘I must be such a fuckin’ potent guy,’ he moaned.
Ruby pushed away the head.
The uselessly bewildered humanitarian idiot gaped up at her in horror. At this shameless, indeed unforgivably barbaric, denial to the Universal of his No-Less-All.
‘See how you do tomorrow. There is love enough and to spare when you thrill and excite more than any other man has inspired and stimulated me; precisely 11 o’clock tomorrow night.’
Seamus burst into tears.
Ruby laughed and laughed and laughed.
Seamus staggered, woeful, on his way.
…
The next morning he could not remember the slightest thing.

‘It’s 5 a.m.,’ Saul croaked. ‘This piece of shit better be fuckin’ comin’. You watch out, you, you, you, you-you-you-fuckin’ piece ah…’
The ringing stopped.
So, the power disconnect was finally happening here.
Even here.
‘Ye gods, Saul muttered. ‘Whom the gods want to destroy…’
But what was this?
The…
The other phone?
Saul dashed to grab the cellphone, setting a whole battery of pans (rank and scrubbed alike) clattering to buggery.
‘You!’ Saul almost shrieked.
‘Good morning, Saul,’ the old familiar voice… well… not rang out; but certainly resounded. After a fashion.
‘Fuck good mornin’!’ snarled Saul, overcome almost more with joy than rage. ‘Well? What are you sayin’, son?’
‘Brother Saul, I have been seriously considering your proposal. I have simply found myself entirely unable to find any peace or rest…’
‘Yeah yeah sleepness nights, the usual crap, yada yada yada,’ Saul whispered, almost suffocating in his attempts to choke back the sobs of a long-reeling hope, a single one life’s final, forlorn, most finely-forethrown dream.
‘There is a lot to be said for it. I do not see anyone else who is in a position to do it. The question…’
‘The question,’ Saul almost sobbed, but the words remained tightly buckled up his throbbing, surging heart. The blood of millennia of oppression and of innumerable generations to an iinner voice and never once an outer, coursed through his veins with an infinity of joy and desperate, overwhelming liberty of spirit that threatened, with a single flick of the wing o’ the dove, to cast Saul forever into the abyss of the most divine and most demonically transcendent of intoxicated madnesses.
‘The question, Saul… is not “if,” but how.’
Saul whispered something, God knows what!
And staggered away from the phone.
He remembered nothing, when he awoke the next day.
Or, almost nothing.
This is the song that Saul Friedman sang, as he rose and stood before the beauty of this great, grand, open, shining window:

There is None Good, Save One! (Hymn to the Individual)

All Hail the Individual!
Thrice Mighty is his Name
He towers above the maggots
Of empty pride and fame

His Endless throne is virtue
His courage is thy splendour
Without this burning brander’s torch
Thy soul has no defender

O Nation, Race and Species!
Cast down thy crowns of mud
Be washed away on freedom’s day
Bright harvest of our blood!

The ailing tree of liberty
Must needs be refreshed, anon
My neck, this soul, your chopping block
I offer to my throne

The piteous foes of darkness
In dusktide’s murk they chatter
But freedom’s call must summon all
Now cease your pitter patter!

The feast of glory’s rapture
Will burst upon our eyes
Whilst acolytes of ‘greater goods’
Bewail their sad demise

There is no power in time and space
In Heaven or Earth or Hell
Can e’er defile the Individual’s Brow
O tyrants! Mark ye well…

“Really, old chap? Beheaded in the very street? Well, I’ll be buggered!” Morton Megaraparthenon tutted. The Home Secretary glared at him distrustfully. The Trade Secretary squirmed anxiously, awaiting his opportunity.
A cough from somewhere.
The moment?
Lost.

A thud.
The devilish Korean Gulag thug raised his club to deal one final blow to this miscarrying mother.
Michiko tried to raise her head.
But her eyes were already caked with blood.
Her spirit pierced him, nonetheless.
‘You will not win,” she spat at him, though she could no longer move a muscle.
She awaited the final blow.
The final blow never came.
…
Her bones did not even have a chance to rot.