Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“But this is not my primary concern.”

There is a long pause.

“What is your…primary concern?”

“The reactionaries are winning, people. The Dark Ages are coming. As you fight the Sarmatians to increase your influence and your power, your very lifelines are decaying in front of your eyes. The wealthy are no longer building for the sake of themselves and the nation — they are pilfering the wealth of this country, indulging in the grossest of decadences. Whatever they cannot spend, they move to an offshore account, just like the Russian oligarchs of the nineties. If the American people continue on this route for much longer, they will find that they have surrendered all of their ideals for the sake of the rich, who have squandered the boon of empire in so hedonistic a manner that it would be appalling even to Theodora.”

“Who?”

“Theodora? The wife of Justinian? You have never heard of her?” Shrugs. “She is probably the most lascivious woman in history. She once said that she lamented the fact that she only had three orifices.”

“Wow.”

“It's right there in Procopius.”

“Who?”

“Really? You've never heard of Procopius?” with a deflated sigh. “What about Salvian?” Nothing. “See, Daphne, while you mock my admittedly over-zealous interest in history because you think it doesn't apply to very much in life, you fail to note that the most basic thing one gains from the study of history is the knowledge of what not to do. As Horace said,

…Insuevit pater optimus hoc me,

ut fugerem exemplis vitiorum quaeque notando.

Sic transit gloria mundi —via ignorance, my friends.”

“What the fuck does that all mean?”

“It means that Horace's father taught him how to live via the bad examples set by others.”

“I see.”

“Empires crumble under the weight of their own ignorance, their own arrogance, their own narcissism. Men suffer no different.” He looks to Daphne. “Women, too. We had the opportunity to become history's greatest generation — we, of course, meaning in the industrialized world, not just Americans. Our choice was very simple: continue with our lethargy, our sense that everything will work out because it has always worked out in the past, or realize that Postmodernism is the espousal of a world without proper legitimacy, and that, in the absence of legitimacy, most will consign themselves to the most traditional means of authority. They will latch onto jingoism, to patriarchy, to the most mystical forms of spiritualism. In the end, they will reject the material world; they will perceive world events as prophecy and miracle. This is how the Dark Ages began. Fuck the barbarians, inflation, taxation — the downfall of Rome was due to lethargy, Christian masochism, and the collapse of public institutions. My friends, we are approaching the event horizon here.

“We have abolished all legitimacy: our economy is based on a confidence that can be decimated by the utterance of truth. Our physics is based on theories that can be justified by the addition of theoretical dimensions that are said to exist because they justify said theories. Our metaphysics is based on social constructions that are both subjective and objective, that become objective once the community unconsciously validates them. Our epistemology is digital, subject to neither matter nor spirit. High art is nepotism. Low art is deception, at best nothing more than a satire of itself.

“We can accept it. We, here, can deal with the lack of legitimacy. Most men, most women, cannot. And this lack of legitimacy bothers them. So they look for legitimacy, and they realize that it was not even available in the Modern Era. So even this, they reason, must be fully cast aside. Do you understand me? Do you understand that the reaction we are about to face, the reaction to our world — this world without the concrete and easily discernible constructs and structures of Positivism and its allies — does not embrace the institutions of the eighteenth century; they abandon even this, and they consign themselves to God, and to God alone. So we are not confronted with people who will battle our claims with empiricism. To them, any errancy in our theories confirms the inerrancy of the Bible. Yes, I know, it doesn't make any sense. But it's getting worse. One well-intentioned scientist proves that there's an inaccuracy in a putative belief, and the fanatics say it's proof in the infallibility of the Bible. We tell them that this is not the case; the two components of their proposition are not conditionally linked. What does this lead to? A character assassination campaign. And so we lose. We lose in the eyes of the public. They provide unsound premises to counteract our arguments, and people believe them. Because they sit and believe everything these men, these fat white men, tell them when it comes to the miracles of Jesus. You see. They are operating on faith as opposed to reason, and these pastors exploit it. Reason, critical thought, is suspended in order to accommodate the Gospel, but the pastors are not just giving them the Good News; they are filling them with right-wing ideology, conspiracy theories, schizophrenia, xenophobia. And the language is getting more violent, more reactionary, more Manichean, nationalistic, jingoistic. The Evangelicals are giving Paulist arguments for the sanction of torture and unilateralism. My friends, Rome has ceased to be Babylon: The Sermon on the Mount now comes from atop the Tarpeian Rock.

“This is the problem advanced during our generation, but, more importantly, it will become the primary problem of your generation,” he says as he looks to me. “You do understand that we've failed, right? We did not seek to usurp the generation prior to us, and for reasons I cannot fully understand we now face a backlash that for decades, if not centuries, has been waiting to materialize.

“You do understand that our greatest minds decided to embrace cynicism as opposed to action, and that we have now become the generation of self-pity; of bubble economies because we have neither the foresight nor the hindsight to understand the virtue of moderation; of art that says nothing because we know nothing; of politicians who demand more power but refuse to accept any responsibility. We are the generation that fails so completely so that you may succeed.”

“This is all on our shoulders?” I ask.

“Another generation such as ours will forfeit the world to superstition, demagoguery, chaos.”

“Patrick, you're just drunk,” Andreas says in a light German accent I had not previously noticed.

“Am I?” he asks himself. “Yes, I undoubtedly am. But what did Generation X do? It has sought nothing but personal gratification and petty rebellion. And what's left? What's left of our rebellion? Corpses and fucking Fundamentalists. The former are dead because they did not have the will power to control their addictions; the latter have returned to Christianity because they fear responsibility. They cannot deal with it. They blame society, they blame their parents, they blame everything that they fucking can, and only find what they are looking for, the one thing that they need, in Christ — the innocent lamb they believe themselves to be. They are always victims, underdogs. Rich, white men complaining that they are the victims! It's fucking preposterous. But it points to the deeper problem that I see everywhere in this country. The most sacred virtue of the new America — surrender, forfeiture. That is the great goal of our generation: retirement.”

“What about us?” Tomas asks.

“Maybe the two of you can change. Maybe the two of you are younger at heart than you appear.” He shakes his head. “But it's that one that I place my hope in.”

“Are you now going to ask Mr. Baggins to return the ring of power to the fires of Mordor?”