J Marsh: Apocalypse Rising

From this little office, the marshalling of forces against the provisional government should not be taken as a suggestion that compromise the provisional government was meant to embody should have succeeded had it only been given a chance. In any war between the forces of good and the forces of evil, any compromise between the two is a moral and intellectual fraud. Given its inherently fraudulent character, the provisional government was destined to fail, corrupt as it was from its inception. Whether Williams the wealthy man or Schlager the officer understand the character of the provisional government is irrelevant, as is their conception of their own actions and motivations as noble is irrelevant, as our history shall show men like them to be acting in service of the interests of oppression and in so acting reducing themselves to the level of objects to be manipulated according to the whims of the forces against which we fight. As we stand still on the precipice, ready to cast ourselves into the abyss, I urge you to keep in mind the propaganda disseminated by they who would seek to preserve the way of things in the face of an overwhelming campaign for justice. They convince others, even many working people that the rebel’s cause is meant to oppress them, that the cause of justice and dignity is, in fact, the cause of injustice and indignity, that the rebel and his supporters the worker, the student, and the parishioner are marshalled in service of oppression and not liberation. Aboard the Borealis , the ship struggles forward. “We’re hit!” shouts a crewman, a second round striking forward. “Keep the engines ahead full!” orders Dmitri. “Helm’s sluggish,” says the helmsman. “Keep her straight and steady,” says Dmitri, “we just need to make around the next turn in the river.” He turns to the gunner and says, “keep firing, fire as fast as you can. Don’t aim, just keep shooting.” More fire crashes around the ship, erupting columns of water over her bow. All it’ll take is one more square to break the cruiser’s back. It seems all is lost. Then, deliverance.

From this little office, it may seem to the conspirators plotting to overcome the rising tides of history as though they can plot out a course through to safe waters, but this is a fraud. As their plot is still in its infancy, they are as governed by the currents as is the working man fighting against them. If these men had not met to hatch a plan, then someone else would’ve, and if no one would’ve been there to hatch that plan and take the actions these men are about to take then someone or something else would’ve stepped in and forced an attempt to counter the revolutionary fervour gripping the streets. As the working man rises, so too does the wealthy man engage in a counter-rising, the experience of these two forces clashing in a fight to the death a necessary and inevitable precondition for our collective advancement through to the next stage in our history’s future. Still in this tentative early time when neither the forces of good nor evil have assumed their ultimate form, we see this conspiracy form away from the still-growing influence of the dark essence in the streets, in the hearts of working men everywhere, whether they realize it or not. The dark essence is dark not because in its darkness there lies the blackened character of evil; rather, because it is made to live in the dark, in the little crevasses where shadows lie. After all the wealthy man’s propaganda had begun to fail him and after the thin visage of prosperity he’d built had begun to fade, the dark essence slowly emerged from its hiding place in the shadows and exposed itself to the light. While the dark essence has found men like Valeri to use as a vessel with which to grant itself expression, still it occupies a place neither spiritual nor physical, even as it has come to embody both of these mutually exclusive sides at the same time. On the Thames, explosions erupt ashore, followed by the heavy rattling of machine gun fire. The batteries targeting Borealis fall silent, suddenly. With the Borealis having lost fire control, her guns spit out fire at random, until falling silent themselves, not out of ammunition but jammed. “What’s happening?” asks one crewman. “Steady,” Dmitri orders, “keep watch. Best speed ahead.” But inwardly Dmitri realizes they are all but lost, and he’s determined to go down fighting. He’ll live to fight another day, though, as forces have aligned to deliver him and his men from evil.

“Attention cruiser Borealis ,” squawks the radio. This voice’s different from the last. “This is Private Craig Thompson. We have pledged our men to follow the banner of the Popular Front and we have silenced the batteries targeting you. Proceed on your course. We’ll cover you.” At once, Dmitri radios back, acknowledging the signal, then orders the helm to proceed on course. Slowly, the Borealis limps out to sea, making good for the Coast Guard station on the Suffolk coast. Safe, for now, Dmitri takes a breath, knowing full well the real fight is yet to begin. But enough, for now, of all this talk of a dark essence, of rising and of counter-rising. In our immediate future, the task of individuals simply to survive the night, each night. With all that’s happened, we must never lose sight of the fact that there’s still more to happen in our history’s future. After all the bombings, the gun battles, the riots and the massacres, it may seem the state of affairs could hardly get any worse. It may be a bit of a letdown to rely on a cliché such as this, but so long as there’s hope we can never fail. In the heart of every working man who’s given himself over to the struggle for a better future there’s hope, and so long as this hope remains unconquered by the forces arrayed against it then the cause of the working man shall remain triumphant even in the face of certain defeat. Men like Williams and Schlager can plot and scheme all they want, it will never change the inevitability of our final victory. All that remains to be seen is how much pain and suffering the enemies of our final victory will put us through before we destroy them, before we smash them so utterly that it will someday be as though they had never been. Still there’s more blood to be spilled, here in the streets and across the world in battlefields hot and cold, dry and wet, high and low. But when we are victorious at last, it will be as if there’d never been any blood spilled at all.

As gunfire rattles intermittently in the early morning after, Valeri stands watch, looking out over the city as if to follow the sound of the rattling gunfire to its source. But it comes from all directions. Troopers manning roadblocks fire back, aiming at nothing in particular, seeming to fire just to hear the sound of their own gunshots cracking across the morning. Even as Valeri had been fully aware of what’s been going on all his life, it seems as though he’s woken up and suddenly found himself immersed in an alien world. Still in its early stages after all that’s happened, our revolution is not yet won, our revolution gaining strength even as its enemies are in ascendancy. In time, our revolution shall be won. But our revolution will not be won by our arms but by our aims; so long as we set our aims as no less than total victory we can never fail. We, the working men, fight for a democratic way of life, while our enemies, the wealthy men, fight for an anti-democratic way of life. It is inadequate simply to state this truth. We must assert it, vigorously and unapologetically. We must believe it, with all the passion and sincerity of a pastor ready to die for his faith. And we must brook no compromise with the forces arrayed against us, the forces who would assert and believe in the righteousness of their own cause. Theirs is lies, and ours is truths. In our campaign for a democratic way of life, we must become convinced on the moral superiority of our cause. So long as we come to steadfastly and honestly believe, we can never lose.