King

Audiovision: The Cyrus Delusion

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!

Audiovision: The Folly of Oz

So… here we are… in the Hays Public Library with a mission to tie the Oz parody in a bow in order to make room for the book project planned as a capstone to the Hot Springs or Busk tour. The relevant characters have been sketched… the basic outline drawn. So… i guess… without further adieu…

Audiovision: The Folly of Oz

We begin with a narrator. Picture the Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, smoking a characteristic cigarette. Behind him, a projection screen shows stylized, harsh-lined images of a yellow brick road winding through lush green fields. He addresses his audiovision audience thusly:

“The Yellow Brick Road, they called it. A path to salvation. Hah! In Oz, all roads lead to a single, glittering lie: Riviera City, where the Wizard, a paper-tiger wrapped in loud noise, holds court.”

The narrator continues, “And so, our pilgrims gather, driven by the oldest, most pathetic of human hungers: the desire for an easy fix. There’s J.R. Murgatroyd, the Scarecrow, a poor fool who’d traded his common sense for a bowl of good-time gravy. He clutched his straw-stuffed ears between which a brain should be. He yearns for an education, for the power to understand the rigged game of Oz.”

The audiovision director signals a switch to angle #2, The narrator flicks his cigarette’s ash, exhales a billowing cloud of blue smoke, looks directly into angle #2’s vision and says, “Beside J.R., Milo Woodsman, the Tin Man, stood stiffly, a polished monument to unfeeling ambition. No heart, but a singular, cybernetic goal: to be more than flesh, to be a god in the cloud. A heart? Sentimentality! He wanted to be a cyborg, a machine of pure, cold efficiency.”

A glint in the distance as the sun rises behind shimmering Riviera City. The narrator continues, “Then, Delicate Donny Goldencalf, the Cowardly Lion. A beast of magnificent self-promotion, selling a magnificent lie. He desired a crown, a throne, a kingdom built on his own vapid image. He was the Emperor with no clothes, surrounded by sycophants who whispered, ‘Surely, this lack of character is a profound statement!’”

Presently, we hear a small dog’s bark in the distance as the narrator describes the final leg of this pilgrim’s stool, “And finally, Amelia Wolfe, the interloper from Kansas, a nurse, whose flying machine had done the world the small favor of flattening a minor Oz bureaucrat, the Wicked Witch of the West (WWW), they called her. Amelia was the unwilling participant, dragging her terrier on a frayed rope, utterly bewildered by the local legends.”

Then, from the top of the frame, a stylized puppet of Glinda the Good appears, her motions rigid and deliberate… Our narrator introduces her: “Enter Glinda the Good, Queen of the Quadlings and a master of the Persuasion Paradox. Forget your spells! Her magic was simple observation, a well-placed question, the quiet, surgical dismantling of loud, stupid arguments. She showed the pilgrims a vision in the poppy fields… a glorious battle, a hard road to the Wizard, who, she promised, held all the answers.”

And so, the setup… a real hero’s journey… a quest for truth.

But Glinda, our “Good” Witch, was engineering events and she conveniently omitted a few details. For one, Amelia Wolfe could have flown her sorry ass back to Kansas at any time. The red shoes were the key, a free ticket out of the entire mess. But Glinda needed a blunt instrument to achieve her ultimate aim, the death of the WWW, mid-level bureaucrat whose groveling to the Wizard, Oscar Ambrose, was a political liability. And who better to deliver that blow than an innocent outsider? And when the Scarecrow caught fire in the ensuing battle, Amelia, a nurse, in the process of putting out the fire, gets water on the Witch… an unfortunate coincidence, but a very tidy political assassination masquerading as a rescue mission… all engineered by Glinda.

And here is where we interrupt the narrator for a Morality Play Interjection: We see for want of a brain (Scarecrow) and the desire to help a friend (Amelia) can lead to the death of a clever operator’s inconvenient obstacle (WWW)? In Oz, good intentions are just another whammy-bar to jiggle.

So… then we cut to SCENE 2: The Wizard’s War Room… A dimly lit chamber where Oscar Ambrose, the Wizard, sits on a throne made of oversized, gilded holograph projection equipment, and Dorine of Omaha paces, her face a mask of permanent battle readiness.

Wizard Oscar speaks into a microphone, his voice echoing, distorted, and overloud. “They came for me! My opponents, armed with a morbid curiosity… a fetish, i tell you… for the personal! They paraded my dear friends and co-workers, my ‘victims,’ they said! They tried a high-tech lynching! A political assassination!”

Oscar pauses this Wizardly monolog to wipe his brow, dramatically, as Stan Diller, the Flying Monkey, creeps from behind the throne, whispers into the Wizard’s ear, then ducks away.

Oscar resumes his diatribe, his voice is suddenly flat, adopting Stan Diller’s twisted rhetoric, “The powers of the wizard… will not be questioned,” he declares pompously. “The personal… must never be mixed with the political! I am the victim here!”

Dorine of Omaha slams her fist on a small table. She wears a pin that says’: ‘DESTROY THE ENEMY.’, “The enemy,” she said. “They shamed me. They spoke of my personal vulnerability! But now, i have him! Oscar Ambrose! A fully reformed Orange Oompa Loompa!” Taking a deep breath, she bellows, “Together we will rise! Together, we will destroy them all! We are at war with the woke half of this wretched country, and we will win!”

Presently, Curtis Loki, ranking flying monkey and agent of chaos, enters, bowing low. He simps at the Wizard’s feet. “Exalted Wizard! I have invented a new doctrine! The Inherent Wizardly Prerogative! It states that whatever the Wizard does, by definition, is legal, necessary, and virtuous!”

The wizard nods vigorously, instantly adopting the new phrase. “Inherent Wizardly Prerogative! It has a good, loud ring! Loki, you’re a genius!” And as Loki was reveling in his plan coming together, Stephen K. Moros, the Winkie gatekeeper burst into the antechamber. Breaking Loki’s reverie, Moros began to shout incoherently about “Uniting the Quadlings” and the necessity of “all means necessary.” With this outburst, Oscar waved a dismissive hand.

“Too much! Too extreme, Moros! Out! I want chaos, yes, but controlled chaos. You’re making the quiet part too obnoxiously loud.” With that, Moros is escorted out and “Lindsey” O Boq of the Castleforce Guild enters bowing deeply to Dorine and then to Oscar. With a ghastly, insincere grin, he grovels at the Wizard and Dorine’s shoes. “Esteemed, magnificent leaders! My Guild, the Castleforce, is with you! Unquestionably! We support the current power. Whomever holds the big stick! We are advocates for… for power!” As he is prostrating himself, the Befuddled Witch of the East (BWE) represented by a puppet on strings glides into the room, head bowed so low it scrapes the floor.

“Oh, Great Wizard! Your every pronouncement is a diamond! Your every flick of the wrist, a symphony! I adore you! I worship your power! Your enemies are swine! I am nothing! A mere crawling servant!” And just as fast as this puppet appears, it glides back out of the room.

The narrator fades, full body, into view and briefly addresses the audiovision audience, “The machinery of power. Personal attacks become a shield. A lust for status becomes a political manifesto. And the sycophants… the Boqs and the BWE’s… they merely lubricate the machine.”

As the Wizard’s antechamber fades to black, The Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Amilia stand under a single, harsh spotlight.

J.R. Murgatroid, The Scarecrow, his voice, a plaintive wail complains, “They said Glinda was Good. She promised answers. But she sent me to a fire. I was meant to burn! And Amelia, she saved me. But to save me, she killed the WWW! I have no brain, but even i can see the algebra of it: my life for the Glinda’s convenience. The supposed good serves itself with my straw-filled body!”

Next, Milo Woodsman, the Tin Man, in a cold, metallic voice added, “Glinda presented a problem, and a solution that benefitted her. Oscar, the Wizard, simply reframes every corruption as a virtue. Amoral, efficient, both of them. One uses observation, the other uses noise. Neither cares for true justice. I seek efficiency, but this is merely a shell game of power. I still have no heart, but i believe i see how useful the idea of one is to those who wield power.”

Not to be forgotten, Delicate Donny Goldencalf, the Cowardly Lion, sobbing theatrically, puffs out his chest. “I want to be King. King of the forest! But every King in Oz, even the ‘Good’ one, must walk through the mud to get there. Glinda used a nurse! A nurse! Oscar used the personal low-blow as a stepping stone! It is all a show, a magnificent, terrifying show. Perhaps my lack of courage is simply the wisdom to see how dirty the crown truly is! But I still want it.”

Finally, Amelia Wolfe, the nurse, practical, exasperated spoke for all, “I am a nurse. I put out a fire. I saved a life. That’s my job. I didn’t intend to kill anyone. I don’t care about ‘Wizardly Prerogatives’ or ‘Persuasion Paradoxes.’ I just wanna go home. All i see is a frightened man on a loud throne, and a woman who uses people as pawns, and a political system built on deceit and noise. This Oz of yours is a sick place, and i can’t treat everyone for collective delusion! Where’s my flying machine?”

The spotlight on our pilgrims fades and the smoking narrator reappears among the surrounding darkness. Snuffing out his cigarette, he launches into an epilogue, “And there you have it… the journey continues; the Scarecrow is no closer to a brain; the Tin Man is no closer to his cybernetic godhood; the Lion is no closer to his crown; and the Nurse? She’s still stuck in the middle of a political disaster, simply because she acted on instinct. The good are not always good. The evil are not always evil. They’re all simply people, or figures, or tin, or straw, pursuing their own ambitions.” And with that, the narrator fades to black, and a panoramic shot of glittering Riviera City fades in.

And the moral of this Audiovision presentation, if you can call it that, is simple: In the end, it doesn’t matter if you are a Munchkin, a Monkey, a Nurse, or a Lion. If you stand in the way of power, or if you serve power too completely, you will be used, you will be discarded, or you will be extinguished. And the Wizard? He sits on his throne, protected by noise, protected by the same Quadlings, Gillikans, Winkies, Munchkins, and naturalized Oompa Loompas he abuses. He’s the master of the turnabout. But is he a symptom of Oz corruption, or the cause?

The panoramic shot of glittering Riviera City fades out and a single, large banner drops, bearing the stark motto: “THE POWER OF THE WIZARD… WILL NOT BE QUESTIONED!”

Or will it…?
Who decides?

Audiovision: Meet the New Baus

Delicate Donny Goldencalf the Third, a lad whose lineage boasted more dollars than sense, awoke with a start. Not from a dream, mind you, but from the lingering echoes of a rather unfortunate encounter with a gastroenterologist and his trusty colonoscope. He found himself not in his gilded, monogrammed boudoir, but in a… well, a place. A place teeming with flora of improbable hues and fauna that looked like they’d escaped from a particularly vivid opium dream.

Goldencalf, you see, harbored a secret ambition. Not a secret secret, mind you, as he’d bellowed it from the rooftops of his father’s Fifth Avenue penthouse often enough. He yearned to be a King. A great King. Powerful, virtuous, the whole shebang. The slight snag in this grand design was that Goldencalf’s experience with courage extended only to ordering the household staff to adjust the thermostat, and his virtue was mostly theoretical, confined to dusty volumes he’d never actually read. However, he possessed a talent for self-promotion that would make P.T. Barnum blush. He’d convinced a surprising number of sycophants that his utter lack of substance was, in fact, a profound and nuanced form of… something. They just had to, you know, overlook the fact that he was, metaphorically speaking, starkers.

Now, here he was, in this outlandish land, feeling more metaphorically naked than ever. He’d heard whispers of this place – something about a yellow brick road and a wizard. A wizard who, presumably, could bestow upon him the kingly qualities that he so desperately lacked. So, with a newfound, if somewhat shaky, resolve, Goldencalf set off.

He hadn’t gone far when he encountered a signpost, helpfully pointing towards the aforementioned road. “To the Riviera,” it proclaimed, in lettering that seemed to shimmer with an almost sinister glee. Goldencalf swallowed hard. He’d faced down his father’s investment bankers without flinching, but this… this was different. This was uncharted territory.

He found the road easily enough. It was remarkably yellow, almost garishly so, like a jaundice victim’s complexion. He trudged along, the silence broken only by the frantic thumping of his own heart, which he tried to convince himself was the sound of his burgeoning courage.

Suddenly, a rustling in the undergrowth! Goldencalf froze, his eyes wide with terror. From the bushes emerged… a small, fluffy dog. A lapdog, really, the kind that rich ladies carry in their handbags. It yapped, a high-pitched, insistent sound. Goldencalf yelped, leaping back with a cry that would have shamed a banshee. His carefully constructed facade of bravado crumbled faster than a cheap pastry. The dog, unimpressed by this display of royal fortitude, continued to yap, tail wagging expectantly.

Goldencalf stared at it, his face pale. This, he realized with a sinking heart, was not going to be as easy as he’d thought. He’d faced down dragons in his limited imagination, but a yapping Terrier? That was a foe of a different caliber altogether. He was, it seemed, the naked, Cowardly Lion. And the quest for courage and virtue, he suspected, was going to be a long and humiliating one. After all, how could one rule a kingdom when one was empty of conviction and terrified of a fluffy handbag accessory? The irony, as they say, was thicker than appointing someone rich from government contracts to oversee the federal treasury.

Stay tuned, for more ironic adventures… Rohlfie

Loopcircus