Herbicides and Hegemony

Dear George,

I would like to share a few disparate thoughts about our oligarchy.

Our country rode to world domination on the back of an oligarchy composed of our business and political elite. It was they who discovered the paradox of international politics—a weak nation gains strength by devouring other weak nations. Therefore, it is in our national interest to protect our oligarchy and, in doing so, maintain America’s strength and credibility.

One of the functions of the oligarchy is to protect America from her citizens. It must do so because the average American is too decent a human being to be trusted with formulating policy. It takes a tough dreamer to do policy. Your most brilliant policymakers are articulate sociopaths who, had they not risen to the top in business or politics, would have ended their lives as serial killers.

Those who would criticize our oligarchy forget that it serves humanity. It does so by sanitizing nature. Nature is a hotbed of fecundity, chaos and germs. The oligarchy follows in the grand tradition of the nineteenth century Protestant missionaries who civilized the savages by clothing their nakedness. Today, we civilize nature’s savagery by paving it over. As one poet so eloquently put it:

A feral bed of ivy
Is pissing on my grass
Making of my lawn
A cesspool of creation.

The ascent of Man demands a powerful herbicide, and our oligarchy is the one to apply it.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones