Michael Bunker - WICK

He waved his cane at the crowd. They watched him.

“… and what that means.”

Silence.

“In America, as we speak, Republicans and Democrats are at war, and neither side will ever win because they want the same things, only at different speeds and with different details. The third side will win, because there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats. Both sides will accept annihilation and totalitarianism because neither side truly wants freedom.

“They are all statists. Do you know the meaning of this word? Yes, those of you who were my students…

“I have learned this, so listen to me. The Russian and American people do not want war, but they will have it. Why? Because the third side wants it! The third side always wins!

“I will give you a most poignant example. Black separatist Malcolm X and white separatists heading the KKK were both controlled by the CIA in the 1960’s.”

Stomp.

“Malcolm X admitted this in his autobiography! Why? Because democratic socialists in the government and around the world did not want fascism or communism, they wanted Martin Luther King.”

Cough.

“And if you want Martin Luther King—who would never have even been received by Americans willfully—you use The Nation of Islam and the KKK to frighten people into embracing MLK.”

Wheeze.

Aaahhrrggh. Clay felt as if he was going over. He felt himself dipping. He was sitting watching this old man seem to draw strength from the crowd and he began to feel as though the man drew even his own vital energy. He was growing woozy.

“If you want democratic socialism in America, you do not just propose democratic socialism! You produce a far left Democrat party and a far right Republican party who both want statism regardless of what they say!

“Do you know the word? Do you know that word? Statism?” He stuck out his chest and rose to the crowd. An angel floating over head at just that moment might have seen a giant magnet in the center of a box with a million tiny metal marbles spread around the walls of the box, just vibrating, ready to make their break. To run to the man. To freedom.

Clay wondered how, if they did, if the crowd did surge forward toward Volkhov, he might swim through the crowd, through the chaos, to the door to the valley and make a break of his own.

The man continued, but in a quiet, more reasoning tone, “They are all statists, only with different winners.

“And the people will embrace democratic socialism! All of them will. Both sides. They already have. But you can never tell the people that, can you, because you see their lusts and their drive for comforts… you see… all of them are statists.”

He let the word sink in.

“They are all against real freedom.”

He let that sink in.

“Your political pundits, your crazy activists, your radio show hosts are all successful precisely because they do not uncover the real and simple truth. Do you hear me? The truth. As long as they stay away from the truth, and play their audience into the hands of the dialectic, then the money flows and they get to keep their seats in the game.

“But the truth, perhaps that is too big to swallow entire. Let’s begin with a bite.

“Every false conflict is precipitated. Think about it… Every false dialectic is put forth by someone… someone…”

He let the statement hang in the air.

“… because the third side wants something that the people will not freely give. If people wanted freedom, they’d turn off their televisions and move from the cities and grow their own food and just say ‘NO.’”

“Did you hear that? No .”

The crowd sat in silence.

“No, to everything that is contrary to their freedom. No. Simply… Not marching, or petitions, or voting, or organizing, or gathering signatures… Just No .

“It is hard to believe, but sometimes just saying ‘No’ is a revolutionary act.”

Absolute silence.

“But they do not want freedom. The crowd. They want peace and safety and comforts without cost.

“In America tonight people are fighting one another in the streets, and people are burning down businesses, and people are shooting one another at the gas pumps, and the economy has plummeted into the abyss. Why? I will tell you why. Because in the last century or more, so-called ‘patriots’ and so-called ‘communists’ have whipped the people into a frenzy and given them the false idea that ‘voting’ is the only arbiter and guarantee of their peace.

“And now… now… now some of them believe that ‘voting’ has been taken from them. Their only hope. Their great ‘god’.”

Clay wondered at the oddness of the talk for a moment. He was beginning to come back to his senses after the fainting spell and he was listening to the man enough to have picked up that many of the things he said sounded familiar, but in a far off kind of way.

“We all only have one inalienable right. Only one! It is not the vote. It is not. It is, instead, the right to say ‘NO’ to all of this manipulation.

“And then we must be prepared to accept the consequences of that singular, valorous, and revolutionary act.

“But that is the one thing that modern people just will not do.”

He let that word sink in. Will .

“We are enslaved by our possessions, and imprisoned by our wants.

“I am just an old man. I’ve lived my life without a country. I have made a lot of mistakes, and I’ve caused a lot of pain and even death no doubt. But I have learned something. I believe that all of this, every bit of it, is about power. Power is the ability to coerce others to do what they would not otherwise do.

“All of history is a lesson in the third side using lies and wars and manipulations to get what they want. The Russian people do not want war.”

The crowd shuffled their feet on the floor. They looked at him.

“But the third side does. So we will have warfare.

“The American people do not want war, but the third side does, so we will have warfare.

“The powers-that-be finance both sides of every conflict, and the third side profits, and the people don’t care as long as they are comfortable and well fed and have some neighbor to hate.”

He paused again and let that sink in.

“Let me ask you a question, those of you who condemn me for switching sides—which I did not do, by the way—but if you say I did, well… there is always the public’s opinion. But let me ask you a question. Why, if I switched sides as you say I did, isn’t America moving to stop what I told them is going to happen? Or why didn’t they listen to Golitsyn, or Stanislav Lunev, or Vladimir Bukovsky, or any of hundreds of other men just like them. You know these names. I have taught you all of them.

“Defectors. Dissidents. Refuseniks. Risking life and limb, leaving family and home, to go off into the wilderness of public opinion… and to freedom. Why, if I have switched sides, do the Americans treat us defectors as defective?

“I told them that my country planned to destroy America within a quarter century of 1992. And to what end? Did they listen?

“If the-powers-that-be in America had wanted it stopped, then they could easily have stopped it. Could they not? But why, then, did they not?”

He swallowed, and let the crowd wonder.

“Just Golitsyn’s testimony alone ought to have been enough to convince them. It has been estimated very conservatively, and yet, even in that tentative suggestion, it has been argued persuasively that almost all of his predictions, almost all, have been fulfilled. And most of them by 1993!

“Trotsky, in The Revolution Betrayed , predicted that just such a thing may have to come to pass in order for the worldwide revolution to take place. Are you telling me that the American leadership never read Trotsky!?”