TBT: The Brutal Truth

Spinning Our Wheels

The latest onion peel in the NSA spying scandal prompted a sound smackdown by Glenn Greenwald that I can find only one nitpick with, but it isn't worth wasting time and bandwidth on since it's more of a gripe than anything (and surely not Glenn's fault - hey, sometimes, even a potential truth tends to piss me off ... just not always on a frothing rant).

However, Billmon's response to it gives me some chills for it's aptly titled "Leviathan" and, although I'm not particularly a Hobbes fan, my predilection towards playing video games from time to time has accorded me with the knowledge of a modern-day Leviathan in the form of the squid-like Elder God from the "Legacy of Kain" series and not necessarily because the slithering parasite is voiced by veteran actor Tony Jay.

On the contrary, it's because through that entire series of games -- sporting a plot filled enough anti-heros and anti-protaganists, shady supporting characters, and replete with side orders of time travel, fatalism, prophecy, and religious persecutions that would make Shakespeare himself (or even the Catholic Church) blush -- I see not only art merely immitating life, but hitting too fuckin' close to home with it.

The chill stems from pawn and messiah Raziel when -- after piecing together all the scraps of prophecy and history of the world of Nosgoth together with the ways the Elder God had used both himself and Moebius to alter time and thus Kain and Raziel's true heroic destinies -- he discovers the real morbid nature and purpose of the parasitic Elder God's and His tyrannic "Wheel of Fate" that re-spins all souls into perpetual re-incarnation to replay the same life over and over:

But I was armed with newfound knowledge, and it burned within me. Moebius had never seen his master until the Soul Reaver purified his sight. Even the ancient Vampires had no idea what it was they so righteously worshipped. All the conflict and the strife throughout history, all the fear and hatred, served but one purpose: to keep my master's Wheel turning. All souls were prisoners, trapped in the pointless round of existence, leading distracted, blunted lives until death returned them - always in ignorance - to the Wheel.

In other words, all of Nosgoth's people throughout history were merely grist for the Elder God's mill and, conveniently, the Elder God is a spectral being and thus not constrained by time itself. Therefore, He can both feed off their souls while also re-spinning them back into re-existance simultaneously, giving Him an endless supply of nourishment without the threat of pesky things such as reality or free will ever toppling His carefully constructed time-loop gravy train for, by pulling Moebius The Time-Streamer's puppet strings, both free will and reality have been rendered as moot as an illusion.

In that regard, the giant Elder false God is the Leviathan of Nosgoth much like the great industrial military complex is the Leviathan of Washington D.C. The difference being we aren't ignorant of its machinations. Vietnam and Iraq made sure of that. Nor do the souls consumed by it get re-spun into existance. Again, Vietnam and Iraq is proof of that.

But even despite our knowledge to the true nature of America's own Leviathan deeply rooted at the heart of the Pentagon itself where its sinuous tentacles stretch to include the White House, Congress, The Senate, Wall Street, our churches, and just about every household in this country with its far-from-altruistic influence, we either prostrate ourselves before it in blind willing subserviance or are cajoled to do so against our will by our very "leaders" until we're broken and defeated (or mollified with an SUV or misguided by false religious zeal).

Thus, we merely make a prophet out of Dr. Gerry Lower:

We have come full circle only to see ourselves from beneath and behind ... and it is not a very pretty sight ...

It's not a pretty sight because, by coming full circle to see ourselves from beneath and behind much like our forefathers witnessed with European colonialism, we've no choice but to realize -- just like Kain and Raziel themselves did within the make-believe video game realm of Nosgoth -- that we are ultimately just as naked as the Chimporer himself and all his subjects. The sad irony? At least Kain and Raziel eventually break the monotony. At least, to a degree where hope manifests itself within Nosgoth for the first time in aeons and may not entirely be an illusion.

Our monotony has yet to be broken and may never will ...



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Wars and rumors
Of wars no one knows what for
Toys and soldiers
Deployed on some foreign shore
Lords and rulers
Destroy diplomatic rapport
Communists, dictatorships
Democracies, hypocrisies
Ask not what your country can do
To a one world governmental zoo ...

Extreme
"Politicalamity"
1992

posted by Sizemore at 8:11 PM

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