Forbidden Thoughts

by Milo Yiannopoulos

  Lity had climbed out of the hansom behind me, hugging herself and shivering. “Don’t all the men of this world carry guns? Shoot the thing, and get the inducer. Use it on yourself, and we can live here happily ever after.”

  I took a step forward, but now my force of will was returning, and I was going through some of Ashwathama’s exercises in my mind, making my soul like an ocean, a substance that yields but never surrenders, that always returns whenever it is shoved back. Unwillingly, I took a step back.

  “That happy ending may not work out, partner mine,” I said. “I am having, damn it, second thoughts.”

  She snorted in disgust, and strode forward, hips swaying in her silken gown, her heels clattering on the roadstones, as she marched toward the dog. “I have always been an animal rights activist! Come here, doggy, doggy! There’s a good boy and/or girl!” This was all in the least soothing tone of voice imaginable.

  “Your girl does not seem to get the hang of dogs,” I said to myself, aloud. And I answered in a slighter higher pitched voice, “Yeah, well, she’s always been sort of a city girl.”

  The dog put the device down, barked at her outstretched hand, growled, flattened his ears, and said, “Back off, lady.”

  She stepped backward pretty quickly. In fact, it was a nimble jump, and skipped back behind me and hid behind my shoulder. It was something she never would have done back home, turn to me for protection. I felt an odd tension in my spine, a tension I had not realized was there, suddenly vanish like a slip knot pulled free, and my spine straightened. I raised one arm and reached behind me, as if to shield her. With my other hand, I reached through the open door, and under the seat cushion of the cab, and took out a tire iron.

  I said to the dog, “Who the hell are you?”

  The dog said, “Someone with cleaner language than yours, brother. Not every beast has the divine gift of speech: it is best not to demean it.”

  She pointed a trembling finger at the dog. “It’s impossible! Impossible! Dogs don’t talk! Not on any world!” I had never seen her shake before. Perhaps it was just the cold. She was not dressed very warmly.

  I said over my shoulder, “So says a woman from another dimension who can cross between alternate timelines by autohypnosis, and take over empty bodies.”

  She said, “It’s impossible. That’s you. Don’t you recognize the tone, the rhythm of the words? Don’t you recognize your own voice?”

  I stared at the creature. He sat down on his hind legs, and raised his nose, peering at us. At that moment, the moon came out from the behind the clouds. The moon was bright enough and low enough to cast the beast’s shadow across the road toward us. The full moon was not that far above the dog’s upright ears. The device was invisible in the moonshadow, but no doubt was between the dogs paws.

  I hefted the tire iron in my fist. “Speak up, pooch.”

  “That is Father Francis to you, Frank.”

  “How can you talk?”

  “It is one of the disciplines I learned from Ashwathama. I am not actually talking, I am merely making you understand what my mewls and growls mean.”

  “Who—What are you? Where do you come from?”

  “She is right,” said the dog, nodding at Lity. “I am you. One of you. As to where I am from, that requires an explanation. Rudolf Maximilian Höll in my world was cherished as a wise and brilliant discoverer. The evil of allowing some men to take over the bodies of other selves in parallel worlds was so obviously horrible, that the art was placed under strict and draconian laws. What could it be used for? One cannot carry any physical goods from world to world. Only ideas, literature, inventions, philosophy. Höll shared his discovery with his other selves in the other worlds. In so doing, he broke the world. Before about 1750 AD, all the history lines were parallel, and all events are the same. After that point, thanks to the different uses the different Höll versions made of the discovery, the worlds diverged, becoming less and less alike. Like you, Francis, I am a member of an order that seeks to persuade the shattered worlds to rejoin the main trunk of history again.”

  I said, “What makes the different lines differ? I assume there is one where the South won the Civil War? Another where the American Revolution failed?”

  The dog said, “She knows.”

  Lity said, “It is nothing like that. Philosophy is the only thing that makes a difference in history. All the wars turn out exactly the same. All the people are the same. Hegel was a philosopher in my world who inspired a man named Marx, who inspired the Progressive movement. There are others named Nietzsche, Comte, Schopenhauer, J.S. Mill. But especially a man named John Dewey! If it were not for him, my home timeline would not exist at all. And Rawls, of course.”

  The dog said, “In mine there were men named Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Hayek, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis.”

  I said, “There are all these writers in my world, too. Why are the different worlds different?”

  The dog said, “In her world, they listened to Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche. In mine, they did not.”

  “That is the only difference? Whom you listen to?”

  “Whom you follow. The Ashwathama of my world is ageless, born with a magic jewel in his brow that protected him against any attacks of ghosts, demons, stinging insects, venomous serpents, vicious beasts. He is immortal, was cursed by heaven to roam the age of this world for the slaying of the five innocent sons of Draupadi, wife of Pandavas, those heroic brothers, sons of fallen angels and mortal women. In your world, he hid himself for shame, and so he is unknown, thought to be a myth like the Wandering Jew or the Flying Dutchman. In my world, he repented utterly; he came to be the most famous and holiest sage of India. He met with Höll after seeing from afar the world-shattering discovery to be made, and traveled across land and sea, no easy journey in those days. He taught the Jesuit and learned from him. Together, they unlocked the deeper secrets of so-called animal magnetism, and discovered a variation on the art which involves no abduction of another man’s body, using only a willing animal as a vessel. So you see me here. Back home I have a body like yours. Exactly like yours, in fact. Well, my haircut is different.”

  It was too weird to take in. “No, wait. To cross between worlds, you have to have an exact match of brain to brain, close as twins, or closer! Maybe a cousin can sometimes, ah—” But I remembered the rumors about Ashwathama from my world being able to possess an ape.

  The dog snorted, which is an odd noise for a dog to make. And he bared his teeth, but only because he could not smile. “And you think the silly little magnets are what do the work? It is your faith in them, my son. It is a placebo effect. The real mechanism is purely spiritual, purely a matter of the mind. It is a matter of love. All you need to do is find a dog willing to be your dog, and you must be willing to be his master. He is glad for the company. Dogs get lonely too.”

  “But—you are living as a dog! Sleeping in ditches, eating raw rats! What is worth life as a dog?”

  “To spread the gospel. Everyone from the Hegelian world, they spend their lives spreading their sick gospel, a gospel of envy and license and despair, and yet neither Dice nor Lity counts the cost, or regrets being thrown into one strange world after another.”

  “But why not just come into my head, like I did? Like he did?” I said, pointing at myself.

  “To be sure, there are advantages of taking over your self’s life in the new world. You can steal his clothing and his money, for one thing, not to mention opposable thumbs. But consider the disadvantages.”

  Now the dog stooped his head, and, taking up the device once more in his jaws, he bit. The metal cracked and shattered under his powerful teeth. With a toss of his head, he spat out the fragments.

  I said, “What the—why did you do that! Now she is trapped here!”

  The dog said, “But you are safe.”

  I said, “Until I build another one. It only takes an hour, and materials one can get at any hardware store.”

  “You will not have
an hour.” The Irish Setter turned his nose toward the girl. “You now have a choice to make, and it will save you or damn you. Fear not! I could never hurt you, my child. You are the image and likeness of my own beloved Marianna, whom I wed on her deathbed and lost to consumption. Nor will I harm you, Francis Ward or Workmans Paradise. Both of you, like me, fell into a very dark place in your life. Francis, you pulled yourself out by hard work. I, by prayer. Dice, you will pull yourself out of your dark pit by the virtue of love, of which there is no greater power in the universe.”

  I said, “What do you want of me? Either of me?”

  He said, “From world to world I have hunted you down, doggedly—if I may be permitted that expression—chasing you, seeking you, and only now finding you. If I told you for how long I sought, you would not believe me.”

  I stepped back, half-urging and half-pushing Lity back too, and hefted the tire iron. “Hunted us for what?”

  He said, “I am a Dominican, one of the Hounds of God. I have hunted you across the world to find you and forgive you. To offer you the opportunity to be forgiven for your black crimes, your murders, your lies, the abduction which occurs each time you possess one of your twins on another world.”

  She looked at the scattered bits of the device, the only thing that could have forced her brainwaves out of synchrony with the body she now inhabited. “Forgiven, eh? For living my life the way I chose? So what happens if I tell you to go to Hell, instead?”

  The big Irish Setter raised his mouth to the night sky and let out a long, high, mournful howl.

  Immediately, the wind picked up, and the hansom cab behind us rocked on its shock absorbers, swaying. The clouds rushed like a dark armada under full sail. The trees lashed their branches like harts rearing and shaking their antlers. The moon vanished behind a cloud, and darkness spread as if a giant hand had extinguished a candle flame.

  I exorcise thee, every unclean spirit, in the name of God the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord and Judge, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, that thou depart from this creature of God, Mary Ward which our Lord hath designed to call unto His holy temple, that it may be made the temple of the living God, and that the Holy Spirit may dwell therein. Through the same Christ our Lord, who shall come to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire.

  I could not tell if the words were coming from the howling mouth of the dog or the howling voices of the wind. Lity threw herself on her face, regardless of the dirt and cold of the road, the hardness of the roadstones, the fineness of her dress. She was crying out something, babbling hysterically, begging.

  I was too, before I even knew what I was saying.

  The wind died down immediately, as if a window in heaven had snapped shut. Leaves and dust fell directly to the ground in the sudden, eerie silence.

  The dog said, “I will hear both your confessions. As for penance, you both already have guessed what would be proper to ask of you, without my saying.”

  I said, “Our penance is to return to our world, and die.”

  “No. To return to your world, and fight. Sell your coat and buy a sword.”

  “If you banish us back to our world, the powers that rule there will kill us.”

  He said, “You will not go back unarmed. You have been trained by your masters to suborn and undermine whole nations, races, and civilizations through slow and patient lies. You therefore know, with no further need for instruction, how to uplift and heal whole nations, races, and civilizations with the truth, which you will be impatient to tell, because you will burn with love of truth. I will tell you a name you can call upon to banish the spirits possessing your leaders who have made your world into an imitation of Hell.”

  I said, “The struggle is hopeless!”

  He said, “And if this lady discovers that she truly and deeply loves you, now that she has seen that, like the men of this brighter and saner world, you are willing to chase her beyond the end of the world, defy all authority, cast aside all caution, and protect her with your life and soul and indeed to die for her, what then? Is she worth challenging a world to single combat?”

  I lifted my face out of the dirt of the road. I saw Lity also kneeling. Her face was toward me, but, in the gloom, I could not see what her expression meant.

  I said, “Her love will arm me with such a sword as could crack the sky from its crown to the horizon, and topple the wreckage into hell, to crush the screaming demons. For her, I would fight a thousand worlds.”

  The dog cocked his head and raised one ear, looking at her.

  She said to me, “I have been waiting my whole life for him to say that to me. Not those exact words, but—damn you! What took you so long! So many wasted years while I waited and wondered!” There were tears in her eyes. Who understands women?

  She said to the red dog, “Thank you. Die or live does not matter now. I found him. I have been living with him for five years. Only now, just now, have I found him. You helped me find him.”

  He said, “That is what the office of a dog is for.”

  I said to the dog, “You are a priest. You can marry us.”

  The dog said to her, “And you, my daughter, your penance shall be to restore the Mary Ward of this world to wholeness before you depart. I will not charge you to tell no one of the deviation point of this world: no one of the Hegelian world would be allowed to believe it. And, now, my son, step away. Her words need privacy while I hear what her contrite heart must say.”

  I stood up and said, “But you can marry us, right? The old fashioned unbreakable marriage vows that last until death?”

  The dog said, “Perhaps you should ask the girl, first.”

  -1-

  As it turned out, I ended up performing two weddings on that world, one that night, and one exactly a year later, in the woods, with no humans save for Mary and Francis, her parents, and her wide-eyed sister, Vivian. The birds and beasts, the roebuck and stags, rabbits and foxes and lambs, dogs and cats and leopards who had gathered around to witness were men and women from my world, who had taken time away from the summits and audiences with kings and presidents to be here. And a great lion came to bless us all.

  So, you see, there are advantages to avoiding doing any harm to yourself, but only good.

  Lord, forgive me for how jealous I was, for Mary looked so much like my beloved bride, whose embrace I never knew, wedded for an hour! There are happier worlds than mine.

  “Yet stay, fair lady, turn again,

  And dry those pearly tears;

  For see, beneath this gown of gray

  Thy own true-love appears.

  “Here forced by grief and hopeless love,

  These holy weeds I sought;

  And here, amid these lonely walls,

  To end my days I thought.

  “But haply, for my year of grace

  Is not yet passed away,

  Might I still hope to win thy love,

  No longer would I stay.”

  “Now farewell grief, and welcome joy

  Once more unto my heart;

  For since I have found thee, lovely youth,

  We nevermore will part.”

  The Friar of Orders Gray—Thomas Percy (1729–1811)

  THE RULES OF RACISM

  By

  Tom Kratman

  How charges of racism work for the Left and the Right

  The Left’s 20 Rules of Racism:

  1. If you believe that general intelligence exists, is heritable and at all testable for, you’re a racist.

  2. If you point out that liberal philosophies and programs intended to have a good impact have had a disproportionately bad impact on the ethnicities targeted by liberals, you’re a racist.

  3. If you notice that other cultures have some problems, you’re a racist.

  4. If you notice your own culture has had some successes, you’re a racist.

  5. If you try to identify subcultural problems, you’re a racist. If the problems exis
ted or got worse under liberalism, see item 2, above.

  6. If you’re mainstream American culture, and don’t hate that culture, you’re a racist.

  7. If you’re capable of noting unpleasant facts about subcultures and discussing them without your brain fogging, you’re a racist.

  8. If you won’t kowtow and grovel as soon as someone accuses you of racism for one of the reasons above or below, you’re a hopeless racist.

  9. If you do not believe that mankind is a tabula rasa for liberals to make whatever they think would be good to make of man, this week, you’re a racist.

  10. If you don’t take personal responsibility for all the evils of slavery, you’re a racist. This is true even if you only arrived from Poland last week.

  11. If you’re white, you’re a racist.

  12. If you’re white and just arrived from Poland last week and don’t accept that you’re a racist, you’re a racist.

  13. If you try to interject logical thought into a discussion of culture, you’re a racist.

  14. If you refuse to admit culture is a racial matter, and a liberal wants to conflate the two, you’re a racist.

  15. If you believe that race and culture are indistinguishable and a liberal decides that you shouldn’t conflate the two, you’re a racist.

  16. If you believe that black or Hispanic girls who are paid by liberal-inspired programs from the age of 13 to have babies will have babies, you’re a racist.

  17. If you believe that girls of whatever color who are paid to have babies will then have babies but then, insensitively, observe that a smaller percentage of white girls do, certainly because they haven’t been targeted for as much “help” from liberals, you’re a racist.