Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

Excelsior dips low, skimming six feet off the ground. This is the part where the bad guy usually starts running. Only this guy isn’t running. He’s not moving at all. He’s just standing there, looking stupid. Oh well, thinks Excelsior, batter up. And he swings.

But when the I-beam connects with the guy, something funny happens. The I-beam hits him and stops dead. The force rebounds through the steel and Excelsior knocks the wind out of himself. He’s so shocked he falls down. What the hell? That’s never happened before. He looks up. The guy is walking over to him. His face is a little red from where the I-beam hit him, but other than that, he appears to be unharmed.

“Okay buddy,” Excelsior says as he starts to get up. But he doesn’t get there. The guy grabs his foot. He looks so harmless, and is so nonchalant about it, Excelsior doesn’t even see it coming. People aren’t supposed to grab him. They’re supposed to be afraid of him. Excelsior tries to twist free. But he can’t. He can’t? He’s almost got enough time to say, “Hey!” before the guy lofts him over his head and slams him into the ground.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Back and forth, back and forth. Even after the first couple of impacts, it’s still kind of a joke to Excelsior. He’s never been beaten. And there’s no way this guy, with his messed up forehead and his eyes too close together, is going to be the first. Enough is enough, thinks Excelsior. He tries to fly away. But it doesn’t work. The guy is too heavy! How is that possible?

The earth keeps slapping him around. This is getting bad. Excelsior panics. He starts flailing in every direction, but it’s no use. The guy just keeps bashing him against the ground. He bashes Excelsior so many times that the remnants of a nearby building just gives up and collapse completely. Everything goes dark for Excelsior.

Hiding behind a pile of rubble, Topper sees the whole thing. Cocky as he is, at this moment, he’s glad he’s small. He had no idea Barry was so powerful. He thinks of all the times he slapped Barry and feels a little queasy. Barry grows bored with hammering the ground with Excelsior. He tosses the limp body over his shoulder like a child who is no longer interested in a toy.

“What a beast!” Topper thinks as he watches Barry lumber off. “What could possibly overcome a beast like that?” As soon as he asks the question, the answer becomes obvious.

Edwin is not depressed. He is absorbed in thought. Since no one has said anything helpful to his present line of thinking, he has not seen the need to respond. In the fundamental monotasking of deep thought, all else was noise in the signal.

Edwin is certain that the world has become dumber as a result modern technology. There are simply too many interruptions. Deep thought — original thought — required a quietude that is in danger of going extinct.

To make matters worse, the modern world had also been seduced by data. And why not? It is easier to crunch numbers than to reason. Numbers offer such reassurance. Reassurance and more. When you combine these numbers with the theoretical framework of the physical sciences, they seemed to deliver the insight of a god.

The volume and pressure of a gas are inversely related. The motion of a body with a known velocity and mass can be described by a parabola. With these two bits of knowledge, even the dullest sheep can plug the right numbers into the right tables and use artillery to blow apart the world. Napoleon proved this when he used the intellectual wonder of calculus to conquer Europe.

But the concepts of the physical sciences are ill-applied to a world filled with acting men and women. The psychologic, the economic, these are matters for which no equation can reliably provide guidance. For today’s statistical relationship is sure to be turned on its head tomorrow by a change of preference or fancy. Electrons can be excited, but they do not panic. Observe as many favorable conditions for a riot as you like – better yet, set them – and still, a riot may not occur. Most frustrating of all, you may never know why your plan of domestic unrest was foiled.

Edwin’s father had been with British Intelligence during the war. He had become a master of the dirty tricks of the business. And, unwittingly, he had passed some of these skills onto his son.

Of course Edwin’s father had not done this consciously or overtly. What kind of man would sow such seeds in his own child? But Edwin was exposed to a certain way of thinking. As a precocious child, eager for his father’s affections, he had learned quickly and well. Even now, as Edwin sits in his high office, towering over the lesser people, his father’s words are with him.

“No matter how smart you may be. No matter how much money you have at your disposal. No matter strength of arms or argument, you simply cannot force people to do a thing. It costs too much. For all the bombs we dropped, for all the lives that were lost, in the end, this is why the Nazis could not prevail. There is not enough money in the world to truly command and control a populace. All you can reasonably hope to do, is create a situation where it is easier for people to do what you want, than it is for them to do what you don’t.

“Then, none will oppose or seek to thwart your aim. It will appear to them that you are merely helping them do what they want. In the end, there is no defense against cooperation.”

In this pearl of remembered wisdom, Edwin sees the error of his ways. He has tried to control Barry. And he has done so without a proper mechanism for control. That was the flaw. It’s not as terrible of an error as it could have been. He had not attempted to work against Barry’s native instincts, but he had tried to limit him to the destruction of a single building. Predictably, this had proved costly, unwieldy and impractical. Barry was not a surgical instrument. He was an avalanche. But how to take advantage of the avalanche?

Edwin watches hour after hour of news coverage of Barry’s rampage. For the time being, the destruction has stopped. And hard-working news organizations are using all of their skills to whip people to a fever pitch, even though nothing is happening. They show clips of buildings collapsing, walls of dust engulfing fleeing people and pointless interview after pointless interview with the men and women on the street. As if the ordinary people mattered?

It is what Edwin calls the hysterical blindness of democracy. How can the ordinary person matter in a world where some can knock over buildings and others can fly? Why do the sheep not see it? Why are they not outraged? Why do the sheep not rise up to trample the wolves?

As soon as he asks this question, the answer appears on the screen. A young man with a tattoo of ram’s horn covering half his face and bits of metal protruding from the other half, speaks with all the sincerity he can muster. “Yeah, I don’t want anyone to like get hurt or anything. But I feel for him, you know what I’m saying? Sometimes I just want to bust shit up. Take it to the man. Like, like, all these corporations. He’s like a, a symbol. Like a spokesperson. You know. For all the little people.”

Surely this one is the smallest of the small, thinks Edwin. And still he identifies with the mighty. And in that insight the secret is revealed. They do not tear down their violent and destructive idols because they like to believe that they too are mighty.

Edwin’s desk is covered with information about Barry. Pictures, school transcripts, protective services records, anything that has ever been committed to paper. And in the middle of it all is a picture of Barry in the 3rd grade. His hair is mussed and his smile looks wide enough to split his face. Scrawled across his forehead in red magic marker are the letters C R O. The letters are in a child’s handwriting, but far from innocent. They knew they were taking advantage of the dumbest kid in the class.