People love stories! Coherent frameworks for making sense of the often-unintelligible chaos of existence. If a truly good story is unavailable, a vapid stinker will do. And this desperate embrace of the easily digestible is what we might call the Deification by Default… the human brain settling for any compelling fiction, no matter how empty.

And the believers… they congregate in concrete echo-chambers, modern-day amphitheaters for a new kind of spectacle. Their gaze is fixed on an angry face projected onto a giant, 16k screen, a digital idol spitting vitriol like a croaking raven or territorial baboon.

They see our guy up there. And what a Guy. He is not merely human… he is a creature of pure, unadulterated id, a walking monument to the most cherished American religion… Getting Away With It. He is a living testament of the belief that consequences are for them. That rules are for suckers, despite the fact that he’s been tried and convicted of transgressions that would usher lesser mortals into country club prisons. And so on. The universe, in its indifference, allows such animals to prosper. This particular specimen has been fined millions for frauds so brazen, so loud and brassy, they transcend mere criminality and achieve a perverse kind of art. He’s the zero-sum game personified, a playa whose existence dictates that for him to win, others must lose. He is a babbling font of perpetual-grievance, forever the victim, endlessly fueling his sad tale of victimhood and defiance. He can’t even stand up straight, a physical manifestation of his moral scoliosis. He is covered in a fine orange paste, a desperate veneer masking the gray, clammy, countenance of a moldering corpse.

And the people… the God-fearing, the church-going, the hands-praying people, look at this babbling, orange vessel, and astonishingly proclaim: “Yes. Him. He is our champion.” Not so much admiration as an act of religious conviction… a leap of, what Mr. Bierce’s sarcastic dictionary might define as: “FAITH, n. The acceptance without evidence in the words of one who speaks without knowledge of things inexplicable.” It is the suspension of critical thought in favor of comforting delusion, the embrace of narrative that fills a void, regardless of its factual basis or internal consistency.

The human brain is funny about credulity. It needs reasons, rationalizations, even if they’re entirely bogus. The brain conjures prestige labels to slap onto zircon-encrusted baubles in order to justify worship. So, in this desperate search for legitimacy, the people dug up a relic from the annals of biblical history. They found Cyrus the Great. Cyrus! The Persian! And they told themselves, with remarkably straight faces, that this tangerine-hued Nero… was the new Cyrus. They called him a “flawed vessel,” which is precisely what you call a boat that has already sunk to the bottom of the sea. 

Very well: “VIRTUE, n. In a king, that quality which keeps his subjects from sharpening their knives.” It is not necessarily about moral uprightness or inherent goodness, but about the practical efficacy of governance, the ability to maintain order and loyalty through action, not just rhetoric.

Cyrus II was a profoundly practical man, a shrewd statesman and a brilliant conqueror. His actions were dictated by strategic advantage and pragmatic necessity. Tolerance? It was not a deeply held philosophical conviction but a calculated policy. He observed the Jews moping by the river, exiled and dispossessed. Click-click-click went the imperial abacus, weighing the costs and benefits. He permitted them to return home. He didn’t smash idols or persecute local religions. Why? Because it was simply cheaper than cleaning up the inevitable riots and rebellions that religious intolerance would provoke. Mercy? A merciful conqueror, in Cyrus’s view, was one who spent less on garrisoning ruins, who avoided the costly and protracted business of subjugating a rebellious populace. Generosity? A king who hoards all the gold for himself, who starves his populace and his armies, soon finds his head in a basket, a grim lesson in the economics of power. Cyrus understood math, the cold, hard logic of imperial administration.

And now, our guy. The Cyrus of the Golden Commode, a man whose reign is marked by ostentation and vulgarity rather than strategic brilliance.

• On Tolerance: Cyrus the Great managed a vast, multi-ethnic empire, understanding that stability required a degree of accommodation. Our modern Cyrus, however, manages a cable-news cycle, a perpetual loop of manufactured outrage. His entire machine runs on intolerance, a relentless jihad against phantom gremlins labeled “wokeness,” creating divisions rather than bridging them.
• On Inclusivity: Cyrus the Great let diverse peoples in on the grift of empire, integrating them into its functional framework. Our Cyrus, conversely, wages a cultural war on letters… specifically D, E, and I (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)… and openly dreams of an America built solely of pale, northern European peoples. He welcomes an imagined homogeneity while demonizing actual diversity.
• On Compassion: Where Cyrus the Great understood the practical value of a measured mercy, our guy’s philosophy can be succinctly summarized as: “Fuck the doomed.” There is no pretense of empathy, no concern for the less fortunate, only a brutal, unvarnished disdain.
• On Wisdom: Cyrus the Great was a strategic genius, a master of statecraft. Our guy’s intellectual prowess, by his own proud admission, extends to being able to identify the difference between a camel and an elephant. 
• On Fortitude: Cyrus the Great was a formidable warrior and empire-builder. Our guy’s most celebrated display of “fortitude” was his aggressive and ultimately successful war against the Vietnam draft.
• On Generosity: Cyrus the Great understood the strategic importance of a king’s generosity. Our guy’s much-vaunted “generosity” extended to giving billions to Argentina… a country, not coincidentally, where many unhappy Germans went for a long vacation in 1945 and conveniently forgot to go home. Astonishing Coincidence?

So, what is this comparison, this desperate attempt to link a modern figure with an ancient legend? It is not history… it is a pet-rock fad, a shabby attempt to pass off an empty metaphor as genuine good, to assign a false provenance to something entirely unworthy. It is a magical story for magic junkies, a comforting fable for those who have abandoned the pesky demands of reality for the soothing embrace of fantasy. It gives us a new definition, a diagnosis of a collective delusion… sound familiar?

Now, back to our Bierce-esque sarcastic dictionary: “CYRUS-COMPLEX, n. The political hallucination wherein one mistakes a bankrupt casino boss for a Persian philosopher-king.” It is the fond, almost childlike belief that a man who cannot manage a golf score without cheating can, in fact, be trusted with an empire… a testament to a complete divorce from logical reasoning. It is a bedtime story for those who, having consciously abandoned reason and critical thought, must now shop for their saviors not in the marketplace of ideas, but in the remainder bin of historical analogies, grasping at any discarded narrative, no matter how ill-fitting or absurd.

It is all very, very silly. And so on. The endless, circular dance of self-deception continues, with profound and often tragic consequences for the bewildered animals who crave a story, any story, to light their way.

And… there it is… warts and all.

I got a black bomb…
It’s tickin’ away…
Gonna take it out…
…on the Blue Highway!