After the Iron Will of the Fuhrer and the Iron Curtain of Stalinism comes the Iron Mask for every brain. Can our species overcome this final test?

Homer Sapiens had been feeling out of sorts for some time.

Most of his body was pretty much OK, but every now and then he got these little twinges here and there. His feet were twitching and less than happy: the odd toe kept whispering, “Run like Achilles and leap under the duvet”.

His left brain kept insisting that the triumph of the right brain would lead to fear of shadows, viruses and omnipox. But then every media company, title and news site was full of exploding coffins, biolab weapons, nuclear responses, invisible killers, secretive Pharmcos, turning money into tiny synapses, perverted elections and the mental health of Vladimir Putin. He knew what was going on: a global hoax to convince the Wishful Unthinking Tendency that they needed protecting…and only a Great Reset alongside totalitarian planetary ideology could provide that comfort blanket.

Most people, he’d long ago decided, liked being told what to do…especially if the way of saying it made them feel both holy and powerful.

“You told us you wanted recyclable paper supermarket bags so we’ve ditched plastic”. (We also make a lot more money that way. Also they used to be free). That was bad enough, but he drew the line at “Shun, alienate, insult and throw stones at the unvaccinated”. Unfortunately, nine out of ten cats rubbed the line out and demanded forced jabbing.

He knew all the social, educational, welfare, job blackmail and ignorance of history reasons why so many had joined the queue for the showers. But diagnosis is never enough to cure. He’d read all the explanations, and now he was all explained out. He’d heard so many mothers retreating into agoraphobia: “I know what they’re up to, but I’ve enough on my plate protecting my family….that has to be my sole priority”.

Of late, he’d given up arguing about action and illogic, tyranny and liberty. Behind the eyes of the 88 per cent was an iron mask that kept every last piece of evidence, malpractice, pointless secrecy, insane excuse, blatant distraction and lockstep media lie well away from the brain’s subarachnoid thinking equipment.

Everyone among the 1in8 (he realised) had half a dozen reasons why mass obedience had happened; but nobody had a clue about how to stop it – let alone reverse it.

The Resistance blogged, got censored, got fired, got tired or got terminated, and above all were shunned and ‘framed’ as ‘wild conspiracy theorists’….“anti-vaxx nutters”, to use the Prime Minister’s consciously ignorant phrase. France’s Macron went one further to stress that “we shall not shrink from shitting on everyone who refuses the vaccination”. *

* He often wondered what a tame conspiracy theorist might be like, where the President was going to source all the excrement, and whether any medic would want to jab a wild conspirator who stank of shit

That excretia threat was the point at which Homer decided it was a war. But for the moment, it was a phony war: the masquerade employed by the misanthropes was used to the full (“mistakes were made and lessons would be learned”) but meanwhile we’re going to give Putin the dissident treatment.

In reality, Arab fundamentalism, Greece, unfunded State pensions, Italy, Brexiteers, entrepreneurial capitalism, mutuality, Sino-Russian currency ambitions and Putin all had one thing in common: they were in the way of EUNATO and its incorrigible obsession with the absolute power hegemony delivered by financial muscle and energy control.

Homer’s mind swirled with the hypocrisies involved: the appeal to patriotism as part of a scheme to smash nationalism forever; the depiction of a harmless virus as “deadly pandemic”, and a deadly bioweapon as “fully tested and safe”; the smearing of Putin as “mad” and “expansionist” on a planet where EUNATO had encroached some 1,300 kilometres towards the Russian border; the equation of happiness with owning nothing; the placement of obscenely empty taxidermy into the Oval Office; and even, of late, Texas police aiding and abetting a crazy gunman killing spree to strengthen the case for US gun control.**

** Anti-gun ownership diktat coming soon to a State near you

At times, although he found it hard to brand himself a traitor for supporting those emerging countries who wanted a counterbalance to the Dollar, he admitted that the decision seemed strange….there were many things he detested about the inequities of China, Russia, India and much of South America. But the gutless acceptance of totalitarian special pleading right across European and Anglophone First World electorates was too much to bear: if his fellow-Europeans wouldn’t unhitch the Gigarich’s yoke or dismiss the anti-white Woke, then the only chance of success – surely? – was to hope for the success of their “enemies”.

To get a quiet life required one to be a fully conforming Trappist. Was that really too big an Ask? Yes, he was sure: the Ask was nothing less than Rousseau’s Social Contract turned upside down and inside out. The State no longer worked for the citizen…he was paying tithes for the right to work for the Church of Mammon.

Homer had never been what the conformist “old media” called a radical. Ironically, brainless systemicism had radicalised him. Many felt he had lost a lot of kindness in his personality along the way – this too was ironic, but true to some extent. Sometimes, he would react badly with ripostes such as “this isn’t a tickling contest”. But what will it benefit a man if his determination kills his soul?

It was a circular argument as old as the hills. But still he came back to the biggest neon sign of the lot:

“The only requirement for the triumph of evil is for many good men to do nothing”

His mind went back to the old Jewish gag about the multitudes having misheard the old proclamation as, “The only requirement for the triumph of evil is for Manny Goodman to do nothing….and when we find Manny, oiveh are we going to kick the living shit out of ‘im”.

Perhaps everything was funny in the end. Maybe the preposterous strutting about of one half-baked species in a south eastern suburb of our constellation on one speck of dust was of no importance. He had heard the cynical cowardice so many times before. The problem was, he didn’t accept it..

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Once a species has developed the ability to introspect, Homer reasoned, the “Life is nasty, brutish and short” Hobbesian attitude becomes untenable – except perhaps when describing Anthony Fauci. From Gates via Sedwill to Schwab and Ardern – and indeed all the Clintons, Blairs, Thatchers and Sarkozies who inspired them – rigid ideology, engorged self-importance and a perverted search for imposed human perfection had instead created a predictable dystopia in the making.

Alpha Homo sapiens the overblown toolmaker had made a balls-up of it when it came to such expectations. We were still, he was sure, trying to fit a square emotional wiring circuit board into a small systemic hole. And now, the Grandes Fromages would make things worse by turning to Artificial Intelligence as a replacement for Kissinger’s “useless eaters”. They had failed, so We would pay.

Homer was more certain then ever that the human race was facing a kind of test to see if it was fit for purpose. The purpose surely was the attainment of maximum potential by every citizen regardless of background under the guidance of a libertarian State. Was his species capable of turning its own intelligence into wisdom? If not, then it would be dismissed from existence.

And the same thing applied if the citizenry couldn’t be bothered to overthrow the tiny minority of megalomanic psychopaths hellbent on proving the species was a dead end by imagining they were themselves Godless Gods.

He felt humanity was on the verge of a final realisation of the purpose of existence. He would carry on. He would seek greater Resistance effectiveness. And try, along the way, not to forfeit his own humanity in so doing. He wanted Good to triumph and the test to be passed, and the Universe to be kept safe from Lockstep Military Man.

But he was but one bloke, very obviously running out of time and energy. Far too often these days, he told naysayers that he wanted nothing more than “At least I f**king tried” on his headstone

John Ward would much rather write about neuroscience, natural science, Time, Lightspeed, books, movies and restaurants than amoral holograms. He remains crippled by the suspicion that the World should adapt to him, but informed by the belief that the World is divided into two types of people: those who think it is, and those who don’t