The Surge: A Tale

[salin]

Once upon a time in another time and place with a royal court called jerkistanzia there was a little king with a Napoleonic complex. This king had a desperate need to outdo his father (the former king), and to pillage the land's treasure as he cemented his place in history.

The little king ruled by 'fear of other'. His criers across the land warned of doom and gloom from 'the others' if the little king was not supported by taxes and the gift of at least one child per family in the kingdom. This scheme worked well for the little king for many moons, until the people grew weary from living with the stress of constant threats and weakened by their "gifts" to the little king.

Just as the little king was about to lose his grip over the people of the kingdom - a real threat (to him, not the kingdom) appeared to him. He was warned in a vision by an ominous giant figure called "Demos" (nicknamed "The Real Will of the People version - 1.untethered"). Through his vision he saw that if he could not answer adequately a riddle that the people would rise up and overthrow him. But not only did he not know the answer to the riddle, he didn't even understand the words of the riddle.

Desperate to keep his people in fear and to keep his kingdom, the little king drew his circle of advisor's near. "Go Forth and seek the land for someone of wisdom to answer this riddle. But be careful not to let the people know of your mission, lest they realize that they have nothing to fear - but fear of me finding the answer to this riddle." And off went the advisors. The advisors looked high and low for many moons but found no answers for their little king. Instead they brought back word of a plan to put off the pending overthrow until they found the answer to the riddle.

The advisors had run across an evil wizard who could stall the little king's downfall one day at a time - but the cost was one life from someone in the kingdom a day. Thankfully the little king had been receiving one child per family to fill his 'army' and had plenty of young men and women to sacrifice. The little king worried not a bit about meeting the price of the evil wizard. He had his advisers tally up the number of soldiers in order to determine how many days he would have to locate someone to give him the answer to the riddle. He was told that he had about two years worth of sacrificial soldiers.

So the little king kept one adviser at home to manage the daily ritual of sacrificing a child of the kingdom to the evil wizard, and sent the rest of his advisers back out to scour the land for an answer to the riddle.

After one and one-half years, the supply of sacrificial children was running low, and the advisor's had not yet located anyone remotely close to having an answer to the riddle. The little king once again recalled his advisers for a strategy meeting. After absolutely no gnashing of teeth, a plan was devised to raise the 'tax' on each family by a second child. Now every family in the kingdom must relinquish two children to the king. The king painted pictures of gloom and doom and disaster for the entire kingdom if the children were not relinquished to him. And the evil wizard kept the kingdom's people entranced so they would continue to forget any idea of questioning the little king, let alone of revolt.

This new strategy forward would keep the little king safe for another two years while his advisers sought someone to answer the riddle. The little king sent all but one of his advisers back out to scour the kingdom for the answer.

As time began to draw down the number of sacrificial children of the kingdom the advisers found a pair of oldmen who reportedly had a partial answer to the riddle. One of these men had been of close counsel to the little king's father, when he had been king and had often gotten the little king out of self-created jambs when he was younger. However,as the little king had an Oedipal need to surpass his father, the little king was a little suspicious of this man.

"So I understand that you have a partial answer to the riddle, and that you believe that this answer might lead to the full answer in the future, and prevent my vision from being a reality" said the king. He was then told by the oldmen that the first part of the answer to the riddle required that the little king admit before the royal court and the kingdom in general that he had made a mistake in engaging the evil wizard, and that if the little king did not change course now that all of the remaining children of the kingdom would have to be sacrificed.

The king fumed at the idea, and he knew that because he was fuming that this was not the answer. But his advisers had scoured the land several times over and found no other answers. If the little king did not start to answer the riddle with the admission of a mistake, than the cost would be to lose all of the children of the kingdom. His advisers begged him to listen to the oldmen.

With a scoff and a sneer and a quick kick to a dog, the king said - go forth once more and find me an answer! You have two months! With that send-off the advisers scurried out and the sacrifices to the evil wizard continued. But the people were growing weary again, the wizard's magic was weakening. The king was growing desperate - but he knew he was right, he was always right, and that the sacrifices he was asking of the families of the kingdom was right, because it kept his hold on power over them which he knew was right. Thus in all of his righteousness he didn't even have to have a second thought about admitting any mistakes or about sending away the two oldmen.

As time was running out the little king noticed an oft overlooked, irrelevant court jester that some of the rightwing nobility used as a source of amusement and self-justification for their superiority over the rest of the peoples' of the kingdom. One of the tricks of the jester was to spew unintelligible 'answers' to silly questions. The little king thought to himself, maybe the answer has been within my court all along. Maybe the this silly jester with the silly answers to the silly questions is the key to my dilemma.

The king approached the jester and asked his name. "Jesterkagan, little sire. I am he of the National Review, I use words to flatter the empty nobility that make them feel self-important and righteous." The little king asked: "Do you have the answer to this riddle?"

Jesterkagan replied, "I have an answer that really doesn't fit the riddle, but you can use it and my strategy and all will work out. You see, I just wrote a paper that praises all that you have done, so that shows that I am a wise man - does it not? You do not really have to have an answer, sire - you just have to convince the people that you have an answer and that the answer will keep them safe from the fear you keep spreading. You don't have to admit to any mistakes, but in order to get out from the bargain with the evil wizard, you have to 'surge' the sacrifices send two a day - and hope that it will be more than he can handle and digest and then *maybe* you can overwhelm and overpower him so that he agrees to end his bargain and to erase the vision that you saw in your dream four or five years ago."

The little king recalled his advisers to tell them the news. Some of the advisers were familiar with jesterkagan and tried to warn the little king of the foolishness of the jester and to beg the little king to take the advise of the oldmen. The little king promptly sent the advisers to join the pool of sacrificial children (and now sacrificial advisers). The rest of the advisers quaked in their boots but feigned support for the little king's new plan, though they recognized that the jesterkagan was simply escalating the depletion of subjects in the kingdom, and that the 'surge' was nothing more than a plan for depopulating the kingdom. But the surge allowed the little king to admit no mistakes, to 'stay the course' and to delusionally think that he had firm control over the kingdom.

In the end the jesterkagan's surge failed. The vision the little king had, where he lost his thrown, came to pass when the Demos and Elections arose to claim the will of the people. The little king was run out of the kingdom along with his family. But they really didn't care - they now had the treasury of the land incorporated into a multinational corporation called Carlisle&Halliburton.

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salin's after note:

This is a long way of saying that our president is unhinged. He couldn't find a way around the disaster he created so he looked for a court jester to supply him with an 'answer' that let him stay the course. The fairy tale of all of this ... is that it is now being discussed as if it is a *real* policy - a *real* option, as if it could address any of the very real complexities on the ground.

May we yet find the path to save our country.