Of Fools and Demons

The Nature of Our Adversaries

Our adversaries are not serious men; they view the world through the lens of fiction. I do not mean to say that fiction has nothing useful or true to say about the real world, for it surely does; rather, I would highlight that there is a stark difference between pondering the issues raised by a fiction author and assuming the persona of one of his characters — the adversaries, almost to a man, do the latter. These supposed men clearly believe that they are superheroes in some grand narrative. One would think that the necessaries of daily life would disabuse any man of such delusions, but some ignorance is invincible and some delusions are unassailable. Worse, these men will flatly deny that they view themselves in this way while conducting themselves before all the world in a manner that is proof positive of their actual views.

In point of fact, these adversaries are more dangerous and more reprehensible than many of our enemies, for the adversaries often lie and deceive in the name of the good with a (thin) veneer of respectability and believability covering their rotted, wicked cores. Where the opposed enemies will lead few (if any) of our own astray — for their evil is manifest —, the adversaries have the very real potential to lead many astray — for their evil is hidden beneath a seemingly innocuous or even good exterior.

The open enemy is always preferable to the traitor.

In fiction, great colossi stride the fields of battle and turn the wheel of history with their personal efforts; in reality, great men in the realm of politics and war are great precisely because they are the kind of men others will willingly follow. There is no such thing as a leader who has no following — leader is more properly a description than a title. These fools who oppose us believe themselves some sort of self-sustaining and self-contained individual who not only stands alone, but also has no true need of others. Certainly, they will appeal to institutional authority or group consensus when it suits them, but, in truth, they harbor nothing but contempt for their fellow men. Your problems are not theirs, and they care about them only insofar as they can use them to manipulate you. The adversaries are virtually solipsistic narcissists, just without any self-awareness. If they were self-aware, then, as narcissists, they would surely aspire to better aesthetics and less embarrassing and discreditable personae and tactics.

In war — and make no mistake, we are in the middle of a long war —, real men suffer and die. The adversaries do not realize and most certainly do not understand this; they are too accustomed to their comic books and the equivalent movies — to their propaganda —, and so they care only for those who are located stage front. Much could be said for the careless, cold, even calculating way in which so many lives are terminated or destroyed in these genres, but the point here is that the adversaries view themselves as being in the lead roles — and they view you as one of the ‘little people’ who are crushed or killed in the background or somewhere off-stage. Why else would they care so little for what happens to your neighborhood, your town, or your country? Your concerns are not their concerns, and their concerns take no account of you or yours.

You may have noticed that aging actors seldom (willingly) disappear from the spotlight. Many of them have amassed great fortunes — enough to spend many lifetimes living in comfort and luxury, or devote themselves to charity without negatively impacting their own standard of living — and yet they seem compelled to continue to seek public attention or approval. It is a deficiency of self and soul that drives them; for such a person, there is no such thing as enough. We see the same thing among Capitalists: A man with more money than could be reasonably spent by a thousand men in as many lifetimes will pursue more and greater wealth with a fervor a starving man could not muster for pursuing bread. It is mania, obsession, and wickedness that drives these men. The adversaries are much the same. They do not care for you or for anything that you have or hold dear, but they fiendishly covet your approval and your praise. Just look at how they lash out against anyone who would dare to challenge or to oppose anything they say or believe — a wounded and trapped animal would be more measured and circumspect. There is an irony in the fact that God has ordered things such that these men who so deeply covet approval and accolades often make the most ridiculous fools of themselves in these pursuits.

But these men are not just fools. If they were nothing but fools, then we could dress them in motley and bells and send them on their way. No, they are wolves seeking to devour. We must always remember that men such as they have no boundaries, no lines; they will destroy, devour, and pervert anything to feed their ego. Whether the obsession, the mania is wealth, approval, or something else, it is always a proxy for ego, which is, of course, part of why these men view an ‘attack’ on their obsession or anything connected to it as an attack on them personally. If a man has made wealth his idol and wrapped up his ego in its accumulation, then he will view anything that threatens his wealth as a threat to his person, to his very essence and being. The same holds for any such idol, whether attention, approval, office, or something else. If you threaten their ego-bound idol (or even merely do not show sufficient deference or pay sufficient homage), then you will be perceived as an enemy, as an existential threat. The adversaries will destroy you, yours, and everything you hold dear with a ‘clean’ conscience because they will always believe — implicitly and viscerally, even if they would explicitly deny it — that they are acting in self-defense, and nothing for these men trumps the self.

Each man must, naturally, view and experience the world from his own perspective. You cannot see with another’s eyes, hear with another’s ears, or think with another’s mind; you must do all of these for yourself and with what God gave you. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between the man who sees himself as the lead around whom all else must revolve and the man who recognizes that he is but one part of a much greater whole. The adversaries answer the problem of other minds by concluding that they do not matter — this is a conclusion we do not share. You are not in your essence a background character in someone else’s play. All men are ends unto themselves, but they are so in connection to and with all others who are themselves also ends. Some storylines rise higher than others and have a greater reach and a deeper impact, but no storyline is irrelevant, unimportant or expendable. We have a word for men who, like the adversaries, view others as mere means, not ends:

Sociopath.