The class war is over… we won. ~ Warren Buffett (paraphrased)

This morning, i woke on the heels of a very strange dream. In that spilled neon netherworld between wakefulness and full-bore dreaming, i saw a TV debate of the most grotesque and farcical kind. A clash of larger-than-life personalities that seemed to pulse with the beat of a mournful tune. The exchange left an assembled host slack-jawed and angels reaching for their smelling salts. On one side, Raoul Duke, the fictional alter-ego of Gonzo Journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, a bit disheveled from what looked like a three-week bender in the heart of the American Nightmare. On the other side, Grigori Rasputin, peasant turned confidant to the imperial family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia. Basically, an unsanctioned agent from Hell, officious as ever in a full-length black tunic, his beard scraggly, his eyes glittering with infernal amusement.

The subject of this bizarre cage match? Nothing less than the relative merits of the Beatitudes versus the neo-reactionary agenda of a lavishly funded, high-tech, anti-democratic, ethnonationalist wrecking crew.

Duke, surprisingly, championed the Nazarene’s teachings, albeit with a somewhat impaired countenance suggesting he might have misinterpreted “turn the other cheek” as an invitation to sample every substance in his kit bag. He blathered on about meekness, mercy, and loving your enemy as yourself. His arguments punctuated by tics of paranoia and a banshee howl that rattled the walls.

Rasputin, meanwhile, was in his element, his sardonic wit honed to a razor’s edge. He expounded the neo-reactionary talking points with a gleeful malice, projecting contradictions, absurd fantasies of racist discrimination, and thinly veiled appeals to violence and hatred onto the distracted Duke. With the confidence of an operative well versed in Curtis Yarvin‘s litany of insipid Matrix anecdotes and historical cherry picking. He painted a portrait of red and blue pills, medical experimentalists, and treasonous enemies within, with minds controlled by a monastery of elites indoctrinating youth with a bankrupt philosophy of “the woke.” His heart filled with a venomous envy of anyone with a slightly brighter enlightenment, or an accurate take on Eric Raymond’s thesis of the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

“These libtards,” he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt, “prattle on about the merits of diversity while simultaneously demonstrating their utter intolerance of white male energy. They yearn for a mythical world of brotherly love that could never exist, a paradise of fools and dreamers lost in the mists of their own addled imaginations. The very embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect, their ignorance so profound it renders them incapable of recognizing their own stupidity.”

Duke, roused from his stupor by Rasputin’s shameless belligerence, attempted a rebuttal, but his words were lost in a torrent of incoherent babble. He stumbled over his own feet, his bucket hat askew, his kit bag waving erratically like a train conductor’s lamp gone haywire. Even in this impaired condition, he mocked his interlocuter’s obsession with gender ambiguity and critical history, his ludicrous claims of religious hegemony, and his pathetic attempts to cloak his bigotry in the mantle of patriotism.

Rasputin, sensing the rabble on his side, pressed the attack. “These are not patriots,” he thundered, “but parasites, feeding off the carcass of a once-great nation. They’re the enemies of freedom, foes of common sense, the very antithesis of everything that is good, sweet, and true in the human spirit.”

The debate, if one could call it that, ended in a whimper rather than a bang. Duke, thoroughly distracted and utterly outmatched, collapsed in a heap of red herrings and non-sequiturs. Rasputin, victorious but strangely melancholic, vanished in a puff of brimstone, leaving behind the lingering scent of sulfur and the echo of scathing laughter.

The assembled onlookers, meanwhile, were left to ponder the spectacle they had just witnessed. Had a cartoon character just delivered a wobbly, but eloquent defense of Christian values? Had the wizard of Petersburg just leveled an aggressive defense of neo-fascist philosophy? Had the world gone mad? Or was this just another Tuesday in the heyday of the New Apostolic Reformation?

One thing was certain: the universe has a wicked sense of humor.

Strap in, loopers…
…the ride has just begun.