The name of this blog, which is a riff on Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 Nazi propaganda film The Triumph of the Will, is meant to be incendiary. The writers here at The Triumphant Will think that there are many things that are very, very wrong with the world today, and it is our intention to share as best we can what we think are the most pressing problems facing our planet. Much of what we have to say is politically incorrect, offensive, abrasive, and caustic to the standing order. The reader should take care to check his or her feelings and presuppositions before glossing over our pages.
What exactly is wrong with the world? This is a question we will explore intensely in the time we will soon spend together, but to start we could provide an over-arching, but insuffiencient, list:
Capitalism is dehumanizing man and destroying the biosphere
Global socialism, considered by most to be capitalism's antithesis, perverts the natural order and undercuts the excellence of the highest human acheivements
The ideaology of democracy has convinced a bulk of the world's people that morality is to be found in the majority, when nothing could be more firmly stated to the contrary
Consumerism has sapped the spirit of creativity and transcendence from our species
Technology, including political and economic techniques, threaten to displace human values and, eventually, man himself
Globalization is destroying our connection to history and heritage
As a species, we have largely lost our connection to the earth, and by extension the moral truths that the earth and its vast web of life had programmed into us through three billions years of adaptation and selection
Swaths of our universities examine the world ideologically, rather than scientifically or spiritually
The weak and stupid reign while the strong and intelligent toil to support them
Political correctness makes it difficult to address these problems honestly and openly
An incomplete list, to be sure, but a good one to start with. You may find that, as we address these issues, we come off as derisive, cyncial, or even misanthropic. Well, to this charge we attest that a healthy dose of misanthropy is exactly what we need to initiate the discourse necessary to address the sicknesses that are afflicting us. But such misanthropy is born out of a belief that we could achieve so much more as a species, that our future can be bright indeed if we can simply shake free from the delusions we have been feeding ourselves.
To quote the iconic Howard Beale from classic 1976 film, Network: "First, you've got to get mad!"
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Parasite
My encounter with the Parasite began innocuously enough.
"Hey you," an obese, pasty, middle-aged woman said bluntly. "Shepherd poles. No, not you Angie, this guy here. I'm at the Home Depot." She was also talking into shiny new iPhone, and the party on the other end, this mysterious Angie, must have mistakenly thought that the Parasite was asking her about shepherd poles.
"I'm Matthew."
"Shepherd poles," she repeated firmly.
"Right this way, I'll show you."
"He's showing me where the shepherd poles are now. I know, I couldn't believe it... [insert dozens of reality television references here]."
"Here you are, ma'am, shepherd poles. See any you like?"
Agitated, she pulled the iPhone from the greasy, black hair that dangled about her ear. "These aren't the ones I was looking for. I want the ones in your ad."
"I haven't seen the ad, ma'am. What do they look like?"
"You haven't seen the ad?" the Parasite was astonished, and I think Angie may have gasped. "How long have you worked here?"
"Three months, but it's finals week so I haven't had time to look over our ads for this week." I was trying to placate her; in truth I never look over the ads.
"If you're going to advertise something you should have them. It's false advertisement." She shook her head and pouted with her round mouth and several chins. "False advertisement," she repeated. I got the feeling she wanted me to join in.
"You are absolutely right, ma'am. Perhaps we sold out because of the ad. Maybe alot of people saw them and thought the same thing you did."
"No Angie, they don't have the fucking poles," then, turning her attention back towards me, "who does the ordering around here?"
"I'm not sure."
"How long have you worked here?"
"Three months."
Back into the iPhone: "Well, what should I do? Uh huh... well I'll just pick out some other ones I like. Uh huh." Back at me: "I'll have two of those."
"Alright."
"You have to load them for me, I'm on disability. My back." The shepherd poles weighed perhaps three or four pounds each.
"Alright."
On the way to the register the Parasite informed me that she was hot, that this Georgia heat was too much. I concurred, even though I thought it was a beautiful day, and that working up a sweat in the streaming sun was cathartic and empowering.
The sun to me was more of a gift than a curse.
After checkout I walked the Parasite to her car. It was a very, very slow walk to the handicapped spot, perhaps eighty feet from the garden gate checkout. She was wheezing, slightly at first, then rather heavily.
"[Wheeze]... they oughta put the handicapped spaces closer... [wheeze]... to the entrance. It's... [very annoying wheezing] inconsiderate."
I nodded in agreement with the Parasite, then smiled at an elderly couple who had parked several rows back and were making their way to the entrance.
When we reached her car I saw why she had brought me along for loading assistance. Every inch of the interior was covered in trash. McDonald's wrappers littered the passenger seat, empty Milk Duds boxes were scattered about. A Starbucks cup, whipped cream spilling from the top, was lodged underneath the break pedal.
"Uh, ma'am, I'm not sure how these shepherd poles are going to fit."
"My car's plenty big enough. Just slide them in. You may have to move some things in the back seat. Go ahead."
"I may have to move alot of stuff."
"How long have you worked here?"
"Two weeks."
"Um, hum."
I began rooting through the landfill that was her late 90s model Chevy Lumina. Diffused in the greater mass of filth were dozens of paperback books from authors like Janet Ivanovich, Laurel Hamilton, and Michael Crichton. I could tell that she was the kind of person who would interrupt your reading of War and Peace to ask if you've read Stephen King's latest. She was, in a word and in her mind, educated. She was one of the few intelligent people in America, and her massive collection of six dollar novels was testament to as much. That many of the books bore ketchup stains did not seem to bother her.
Quickly seeing that displacing trash from one area would only cause more trash to fall from another, I decided to change my strategy. "Can these back seats come down?" I asked.
"Yes." She was growing impatient with my lack of progress.
"Ok, how is that, ma'am?"
"I don't know." It was obvious that she loathed me for making her use those three words in conjunction. She knew more than any idiot in an orange vest, whether she could lower he back seat or not.
I found the straps that, with a hefty tug, lowered the back seat. I pushed the shepherd poles, one at a time, through the rotting mass of feculence. As I pushed, ducking my face down into the filth to ensure the poles were as far back into the trunk as possible, a particular piece of debris caught my eye:
a medicaid entitlement form. Seeing that the Parasite was again enraptured with her iPhone, I picked it up to get a better look.
"Reimbursement for Home Services. $985.79."
My ears got a little red. Placing the slip back into its proper place, I noticed that, lying beneath the slip, was an empty carton of Salem cigarettes.
In a moment of pure rage emanating from the more primitive areas of my brain, I thought of murder, of strangulation. Then my higher faculties gave these impulses color, movement, and form. My hands, calloused from long shifts of lifting paving stones and loading bags of topsoil, closed around her flabby, rotund neck. Terror filled her eyes. She gasped and whimpered for help, but the one who had, unknown to her, been unwillingly helping her for her entire Parasitic existence had finally turned against her. Her revolting body squirmed and she gargled as my working hands crushed her larynx. She died in confusion, having always believed that she deserved life, that she deserved comfort. An agonizing death proved to her the great axiom of the universe: she deserved nothing.
The host had at last shaken off the Parasite.
But my fantasy, intensely pleasurable as it was, proved fleeting.
"You done yet?" the Parasite demanded.
"Oh, yes ma'am. You're all loaded up. Please come back and see us soon." I smiled the convincing smile of the slave.
At home later that night, I checked my electronic paystub from Home Depot.
Gross Pay: 586.50.
FICA-MED: 8.50
FICA: OASDI: 36.36
FED INC TAX: 10.30
GA STATE: 15.65
Net Pay: 514.69
I thought of my gross pay. My net pay. My bills. My tuition. I thought of how helpful that 71.81 would be to me.
Then I thought of the Parasite, sitting in her air-conditioning, smoking her Salem cigarettes, admiring her shepherd poles through the window, and waiting for the doctor to show up.
And then, only briefly, I again thought of strangulation.
"Hey you," an obese, pasty, middle-aged woman said bluntly. "Shepherd poles. No, not you Angie, this guy here. I'm at the Home Depot." She was also talking into shiny new iPhone, and the party on the other end, this mysterious Angie, must have mistakenly thought that the Parasite was asking her about shepherd poles.
"I'm Matthew."
"Shepherd poles," she repeated firmly.
"Right this way, I'll show you."
"He's showing me where the shepherd poles are now. I know, I couldn't believe it... [insert dozens of reality television references here]."
"Here you are, ma'am, shepherd poles. See any you like?"
Agitated, she pulled the iPhone from the greasy, black hair that dangled about her ear. "These aren't the ones I was looking for. I want the ones in your ad."
"I haven't seen the ad, ma'am. What do they look like?"
"You haven't seen the ad?" the Parasite was astonished, and I think Angie may have gasped. "How long have you worked here?"
"Three months, but it's finals week so I haven't had time to look over our ads for this week." I was trying to placate her; in truth I never look over the ads.
"If you're going to advertise something you should have them. It's false advertisement." She shook her head and pouted with her round mouth and several chins. "False advertisement," she repeated. I got the feeling she wanted me to join in.
"You are absolutely right, ma'am. Perhaps we sold out because of the ad. Maybe alot of people saw them and thought the same thing you did."
"No Angie, they don't have the fucking poles," then, turning her attention back towards me, "who does the ordering around here?"
"I'm not sure."
"How long have you worked here?"
"Three months."
Back into the iPhone: "Well, what should I do? Uh huh... well I'll just pick out some other ones I like. Uh huh." Back at me: "I'll have two of those."
"Alright."
"You have to load them for me, I'm on disability. My back." The shepherd poles weighed perhaps three or four pounds each.
"Alright."
On the way to the register the Parasite informed me that she was hot, that this Georgia heat was too much. I concurred, even though I thought it was a beautiful day, and that working up a sweat in the streaming sun was cathartic and empowering.
The sun to me was more of a gift than a curse.
After checkout I walked the Parasite to her car. It was a very, very slow walk to the handicapped spot, perhaps eighty feet from the garden gate checkout. She was wheezing, slightly at first, then rather heavily.
"[Wheeze]... they oughta put the handicapped spaces closer... [wheeze]... to the entrance. It's... [very annoying wheezing] inconsiderate."
I nodded in agreement with the Parasite, then smiled at an elderly couple who had parked several rows back and were making their way to the entrance.
When we reached her car I saw why she had brought me along for loading assistance. Every inch of the interior was covered in trash. McDonald's wrappers littered the passenger seat, empty Milk Duds boxes were scattered about. A Starbucks cup, whipped cream spilling from the top, was lodged underneath the break pedal.
"Uh, ma'am, I'm not sure how these shepherd poles are going to fit."
"My car's plenty big enough. Just slide them in. You may have to move some things in the back seat. Go ahead."
"I may have to move alot of stuff."
"How long have you worked here?"
"Two weeks."
"Um, hum."
I began rooting through the landfill that was her late 90s model Chevy Lumina. Diffused in the greater mass of filth were dozens of paperback books from authors like Janet Ivanovich, Laurel Hamilton, and Michael Crichton. I could tell that she was the kind of person who would interrupt your reading of War and Peace to ask if you've read Stephen King's latest. She was, in a word and in her mind, educated. She was one of the few intelligent people in America, and her massive collection of six dollar novels was testament to as much. That many of the books bore ketchup stains did not seem to bother her.
Quickly seeing that displacing trash from one area would only cause more trash to fall from another, I decided to change my strategy. "Can these back seats come down?" I asked.
"Yes." She was growing impatient with my lack of progress.
"Ok, how is that, ma'am?"
"I don't know." It was obvious that she loathed me for making her use those three words in conjunction. She knew more than any idiot in an orange vest, whether she could lower he back seat or not.
I found the straps that, with a hefty tug, lowered the back seat. I pushed the shepherd poles, one at a time, through the rotting mass of feculence. As I pushed, ducking my face down into the filth to ensure the poles were as far back into the trunk as possible, a particular piece of debris caught my eye:
a medicaid entitlement form. Seeing that the Parasite was again enraptured with her iPhone, I picked it up to get a better look.
"Reimbursement for Home Services. $985.79."
My ears got a little red. Placing the slip back into its proper place, I noticed that, lying beneath the slip, was an empty carton of Salem cigarettes.
In a moment of pure rage emanating from the more primitive areas of my brain, I thought of murder, of strangulation. Then my higher faculties gave these impulses color, movement, and form. My hands, calloused from long shifts of lifting paving stones and loading bags of topsoil, closed around her flabby, rotund neck. Terror filled her eyes. She gasped and whimpered for help, but the one who had, unknown to her, been unwillingly helping her for her entire Parasitic existence had finally turned against her. Her revolting body squirmed and she gargled as my working hands crushed her larynx. She died in confusion, having always believed that she deserved life, that she deserved comfort. An agonizing death proved to her the great axiom of the universe: she deserved nothing.
The host had at last shaken off the Parasite.
But my fantasy, intensely pleasurable as it was, proved fleeting.
"You done yet?" the Parasite demanded.
"Oh, yes ma'am. You're all loaded up. Please come back and see us soon." I smiled the convincing smile of the slave.
At home later that night, I checked my electronic paystub from Home Depot.
Gross Pay: 586.50.
FICA-MED: 8.50
FICA: OASDI: 36.36
FED INC TAX: 10.30
GA STATE: 15.65
Net Pay: 514.69
I thought of my gross pay. My net pay. My bills. My tuition. I thought of how helpful that 71.81 would be to me.
Then I thought of the Parasite, sitting in her air-conditioning, smoking her Salem cigarettes, admiring her shepherd poles through the window, and waiting for the doctor to show up.
And then, only briefly, I again thought of strangulation.
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