Naming the Beast

I have seen the face of the Wyrm.

We summoned this Leviathan long ago, to fight what we believed was a greater evil.  To survive the terrible trials facing our nation, we created a fierce, terrible hydra with many heads.  With our own hands and our own wallets, we built this beast out of iron and sulphur, coal and uranium.

There are others who have struggled to name this beast.  The names were cumbersome and awkward and often covered only one facet of this homebrowed monster.  Each head had a name, often followed by the words "Industrial Complex" as if such a ravenous, mindless entity were capable of either Industry or Complexity.  Military.  Corporate.  Prohibition.  Education.  Media.  Credit.  Charity.  Environmental.  Religious.  Police.  Each head of the Hydra snarled and hissed at the other heads, seeking to devour more of the dwindling resources of the vast slumbering body, an eternal tempest of discord.  Yet the heads all acted in concert with regards to one thing-sustaining their own existence.

Some will say our forefathers in the greatest generation were great men.  I will not dispute this.  What I do know is that the Leviathan they raised from the deep is still awake, and despite having no true purpose in a world without global war, it will lash out terribly out of simple self preservation.  Many would call this immoral, but in truth morality does not apply to the Beast; it is a mindless hive entity devoid of morality or true compassion.  It is simply a self sustaining machine attended by drones of the New Mandarin Class, built for the sole purpose of sustaining a great war with no thought to the consequences that come after.  The devastation wrought by those well meaning men will be like nothing in human history, when the inevitable conclusion is reached.

And yet there is hope.  The heads of the Hydra will not function if the nutrients stop flowing.  The people control the muscles, the heart, the arteries, the nerve centers of the body.  It can be stopped.  But there will be buckets of gore before this thing is done, and you know what?  We deserve it, America.  We deserve it because this is the monster we have made for ourselves and that we clung to long after it was no longer useful.  It's eyes never stop staring, it never stops sharpening it's teeth, it never stops devouring more and more resources even in the face of massive shortages.  It is a monster with a thousand fangs and no soul.

I have seen the face of your enemy, America, and it is much larger than Barack Obama, despite the absurd level of focus on him from miscreants and shills.  You would do well to remember it-during the election, and long after.  Because when the smoke clears, the people who remain will surely have among their number at least one who will sweep aside the ashes of the Leviathan and start assembling a new beast out of the wreckage.  And on that day, with all the terrors of a changing world around you, the only way to human salvation, even human survival, is going to be someone with the courage to say "I have seen your like before, Leviathan.  And I will not allow this evil to pass before my sight."

I pray it will be you.