by Arthur Bliss
secretive cabal of elect scientists and administrators had supposedly developed a weapon that would only be used militarily once in the more than seventy years since its unveiling. Massive propaganda insisted for the next several decades that the weapon was absolutely terrifying. Not only was it massively destructive in the instant of detonation, it salted the earth and became 'the destroyer of worlds.' Only the United Nations could ensure the always tense negotiations necessary to avert World War Three, the apocalypse.
"But in February 1946, de Seversky, consultant of the United States government on the damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reported that the damage was no more destructive than that of conventional firebombing as in Tokyo. The nuclear weapons were apparently being grossly exaggerated in their destructive capability.
"The old spy, like countless other defense workers through the Cold War, knew that nuclear weapons had a limited effectiveness and could be readily survived if you were not unlucky enough to be within a couple miles of the blast radius. Or maybe nuclear weapons simply don't exist at all.
"The more the man dug, the more such unthinkable blasphemes seemed plausible. Much of the propaganda and lies used in World War One was now clear. How could anyone say that their government wouldn't resort to lies of such magnitude once it already has? The lies that led to the Federal Reserve and New Deal, to both World Wars and nearly all other engagements, to the Cold War, to the War on Terrorism, to the War on Drugs (even as we illegally ensured the supply of those drugs), to the vaccinated, fluoridated, medicated, polluted, intoxicated, bought and sold population that thinks it, the slave itself, rules the world when it hands over its vote.
"And what is needed to keep the lies believed? What was needed to keep the Jews obedient to Yahweh, what corrected them even as they fell back to worshipping the old god and goddesses of their past? What burned away the pagans, Cathars, Sufi mystics, and other heretics? What brought the colonies and possessions under one Christian scepter? What keeps us at war with the Godless Reds and the bloodthirsty Muslim extremists and the ghetto thugs and the noose-wielding rednecks and the dirty immigrants? What keeps us at war with each other and with ourselves? What does the threat of climatological world disaster present?
"The answer is of course fear. The real weapon wielded by these powers was always fear. A fear created, taught, reminded, and enforced. Reasonable fear, irrational rear, it mattered not. What mattered was the pliancy that the afraid presented. The slave returning from the frightful woods to the stern, but loving master. The prodigal son forgiven and absorbed into the servant caste.
"Under their rule, we are never at home, never at peace, no matter the pretense at safety and community they tempt us with. We are never one with the nature that created us, that beats in our hearts, and creates our dreams. And the more desperately we crave and seek solace in the their solutions from the frightening world they weave, the more we are trapped in their illusion. No, there is only one way to real freedom: we must break their spell. We must break the chains that enfetter us and run free into the great wilderness of life."
I looked around at the others. They looked confused, expectant, uneasy with the old man's strange "story" and rant. The old man caught their looks and himself appeared almost embarrassed.
"I am sorry for boring you with such a tangent to the story. Any way, in the end the old man realized he was just very tired. He was tired of the disappointment that believing too strongly in any dream presents. So, his wife having passed a few years before and his daughters far away, he decide to live the rest of his life in reclusion from the illusions that he had previously imagined so important."
"Wait, he didn't go and try to change the world?" someone asked.
"Why would he do that?" the old man asked, "Who is to say the elite are wrong or that they are doing a worse job than all the individual petty rulers would? And, after all, if you really believe there is something greater than the tempting madness of world power, then why not let that great power, nature, simply take its course? Does she actually need our help or is that more illusion?"
"But what's the point then? What's going to happen?"
"The point is to not lose yourself in the illusion, to not mistake fear and desire for truth. The point is to trust what is more primal, more fundamental than all this silliness. The point is to not fix the world. That's the point."
"Trump will be elected in what seems to many people to be a stolen election. The economy will boom under him, while half the country will hate him and all those who support him. You see, there's really nothing Clinton can do that Obama could not already. But a Trump presidency will have license both from his supporters and his detractors to make much mischief, particularly with a strong market.
"The baby boomers, the final significant hold out of private wealth, largely uninterested in securing the future of their own offspring, will become liberal in spending their savings. Risky investments and small businesses will thrive. And finally, in the second term, a great, world-wide economic catastrophe will transfer that private wealth into the hands of the banks. Many baby boomers will die poorer than they've ever been before, utterly dependent on public charity.
"The banks, which gained complete control over the world economy in the twentieth century, can create this catastrophe at will and there is no real danger of it until and unless they wish it to occur. Likewise, they can rapidly provide economic relief at will and in conjunction with the policies they wish to encourage, similar to the deliberate manipulations that both created and relieved the Great Depression.
"To solve the catastrophe, purportedly caused by Trump and similar quasi-nationalist policies, a vast and permanent welfare program will take place in reaction. Such a program is already sought as the baby boomers retire and over-burden society relative to the much smaller output of younger generations. In 2015, the UN decided the implement the 15-year Sustainable Developmental Goals, the largest and, by far, most expensive global social welfare program in history. All these forces will converge in a new, global society where all will serve the elites, with Africa, in particular, providing millions upon millions of new wage slaves.
"Then, just as now, they will not really care if you know the truth or if you step outside of the illusion. If you control the schools, the press, the entertainment, the politicians, the religions, the science, and even the visible dissenters, what do you care if anyone breaks free? Democracy is not an individual that can be swayed with truth, threats, or veniality. Democracy is, like wealth, a numbers game and the wealthy will always win.
"The truth is that you could have absolute evidence of total conspiracy, take over the feeds of every television channel, and broadcast it for 24 hours and nothing would change. An explanation, an excuse is all that would be needed. They pronounce it lies, disinformation, propaganda, a conspiracy theory, and it vanishes from plausibility like water in a desert. The world's rulers are invincible, save from the laws of nature herself.
"So what is left but to be free? Surrender a nonsensical war and be free to live your life. That's the point."
The old man stood up and motioned towards a clock on the wall.
"It's 6 AM. The food truck will be passing the road in half an hour. I'm sorry that you haven't slept. I would have thought my boring story would have done the trick," the old man smiled, "You should get ready to flag down the truck."
Soon afterwards, the six of us stood by the road, wool blankets shrouding the pajamas that we still wore, our clothes and belonging neatly (and, in Austin's case, not so neatly) piled next to us. I went to check the time on my iPhone and realized I had left it in the cottage.
I explained and hurried back to the cottage. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. I waited and knocked again, and then opened the door.
The old man was nowhere to be seen, but my iPhone had been conveniently placed on the wooden table. I went in to pick it up and found a small wallet-sized photograph had been laid on top. It was a portrait of a neatly dressed, gray-eyed man
photographed in front of an American flag. Below the portrait the caption read, "Sr. SA George Washington (1962-2005)." It was then that I noticed all the photographs and other personal effects had been removed from the walls.
I couldn't stop looking back at the cottage when I got back to the road. The food truck arrived a few minutes later, just as the old man had said it would, and we were soon riding in the back of the cargo area to the top of the mountain. I never returned to the cottage again. But I'm sure he's still out there somewhere running free in the great wilderness of life.