One of the most profound utterances on the race of men comes from Lieutenant Colonel William "Bill" Kilgore, during this unscripted moment in the fog of battle:
Someday this war’s gonna end
What war?
You will hear of wars, and rumors of wars-- Jesus of Nazareth
Economic wars. Trade wars. Twitter wars. Currency wars. Kinetic wars. Culture wars. Gender wars.
Information warfare. Disinformation warfare. Cyber warfare. Robotic warfare. Chemical warfare.
War in Ukraine
Someday it's gonna end.
If you were born in 1960, you grew up in a time where there was never not a war in VietNam.
If you were born in 2000, you grew up in a time where there was never not a war in Afghanistan.
Booming economies. Wounded warriors. It had gone on forever. War without end, amen. Until it was over with an unearthly violence.
Planes and helicopters taking off with people hanging from them. Americans being evacuated, vacuous being Americanized, hostages being left behind.
Someday this war's gonna end.
Teach us to number our days --Moses, the man of God
January 20. A Day That You Live.
Again. And again.
All of us have been fucked over.
You know the drill: Give your best. Provide value. Make a difference. Set the standard. And they show you the door. Or throw you through it.
This time, though, it comes with an extra special twist.
Instead of the popular dude or the hot chick, they replace you with the village idiot.
An incompetent wears the crown that until five minutes ago was yours to lose.
Which is why everyone's chirping it was all your fault from the start.
You should have known.
That's what the news anchors are saying, as audiences agree in manufactured outrage, and crowds march through the city that was once yours in celebration of your loss that you never saw coming.
Only now, as of January 20, there's a word for it:
You've been bidened.
biden [bahy-dn]
verb (used with or without object), biden-ed, biden-ing
to betray, abandon, hand over, sell out to wanton abuse and destruction at the hands of enemies, without fear of negative publicity or reprisal.
Examples:
Despite evidence of injuries on a scale not seen since the Thalidomide Tragedy, politicians, health officials, media and tech oligarchs partnered with drug companies to biden zero-risk children and their parents with pronouncements that the vaccines were safe and effective.
Ivy League admissions for his unremarkable children, and guarantee of his own re-election were all it took for the Republican governor to biden his party's candidates and sign off on purchase of electronic voting systems that could be manipulated by Soros-owned operators.
I was bidened on January 20.
Twice. Both times by a village idiot.
The first time I never saw it coming and stayed in the boat.
The second time I saw it coming, but had to be dragged out of the boat.
You’d be forgiven for wondering who was the the real idiot.
Arresting Bitch
People have been getting bidened for at least five hundred years.
We know that because they wear a certain expression on their faces.
Perhaps the most famous example of this is a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.
It hangs, fittingly, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and was painted when the artist was just twenty-one years old, twenty years before Columbus sailed.
The subject is Ginevra de' Benci, rich heiress, accomplished poet, fashion model, and It girl of Renaissance Florence. Nobles and mighty men from far and near competed for her company, her affections, and her hand. The world was literally at her feet.
Until she was bidened.
You see, Ginevra's father had passed away when she was just nine, leaving her in the guardianship of an uncle, who must have needed cash more than family ties. Because he sold her off for $1.5 million to a widowed cloth merchant twice her age named Luigi, who mortgaged the family business to get her.
They were married on a cold January morning, in a private ceremony at the family villa. No doubt Ginevra's doing. The last thing an It girl would have wanted was a church wedding, followed by a parade through the streets of the city that was once hers, showing her off as the lucky woman who had won this fine set of steak knives.
The picture, according to some, celebrates Ginevra's marriage to Luigi. If true, it looks like she's getting ready to celebrate with some housework.
Instead of a gaudy engagement gown of rare fabric from the groom, hair piled high and bejeweled decolletage, Ginevra wears a plain brown dress, no makeup or finery, and a decidedly pissed-off expression.
Ginevra knows she's been bidened, and her future has just sailed without her.
What would become of her is best described in the single surviving line of her poetry:
Cheggio merzede, e sono alpestre tygre (I beg your pardon, I am a mountain tiger)—Ginevra de’ Benci
Goodbye, Tiger!
Never get out of the boat.
Kurtz got off the boat, split from the program, disappeared into the jungle, and became darkness.
Ginevra got off the boat, split from the program, escaped to a convent, and became light.
Neither tiger would be ever be captured or tamed. Kurtz would be tracked down by assassins. Ginevra would disappear in the mists of time, to become the subject of sightings— and rumors of sightings— around this time every century. In art, in verse, in fiction, genealogy, drama, and cinema.
But her foremost interpreter remains her first, Leonardo da Vinci. For through him she, though dead, yet lives.
What draws you in is the light-- how she seems to pull light out of thin air, as well as to radiate from within. The prime attraction here is not the dress, the hair, or finery.
It’s Ginevra. She really does exist.
She is small--fifteen inches by fifteen inches-- but she packs a punch. And can stop a linebacker in his tracks at a hundred feet.
You could be walking through the gallery, minding your own business, and suddenly have the unmistakable feeling that someone somewhere is staring at you.
You look around, and there she is, brighter than anything else on display.
During World War II, when she was fleeing the Nazis, Ginevra was spirited away to a castle high in the mountains of Liechtenstein. But even there, it was feared, word of the whereabouts of a DaVinci masterpiece would spread.
So they hid her in a wine cellar, hanging her from a nail on the wall. But her few secret visitors during those years testify that even down there, deep in the earth, she glowed.
Light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
January 2.0. A Decimal That You Move
History turns on a dime.
Sometimes too fast. Sometimes too slow.
But it turns. Again. And again.
January 20 I lost the love of my life to a man with a gun. It sent me into a wilderness where I wandered in for five times five times five five five days.
And emerged five days before January 20, when we lost the land we love to a man with a jab.
This is the story of how I did everything I could to turn the clock back to January 20.
And instead moved the decimal back to January 2.0.
Through the grace of God and Ginevra.
That sounds, I'll admit, a little fantastical. All redemption stories are.
And it sounds, I am sure, a little personal. It is, and I am not very proud of it.
Looking back now, I did everything I could to make the worst of my situation. And succeeded, getting both less and more than I deserved.
Which is why I really wasn't planning to write about it. But am pretty sure she wants me to. In fact, I know she does. There is no way she would have come all this way for me to pretend that nothing ever happened.
It is better to cross a burning desert than to shelter in a burning theater.
I crossed mine, only to find four more. Five Stages of Unfuck: Retreat, Regret, Reset, Reject, Resonate.
Each one of these is brutal. Because you cannot emerge without losing something you have long held dear.
But when you leave behind what you've been bidened of, that is when you Resonate. And those who Resonate will Resurrect. They will not lie in their graves. They will not be slaves. They will not be serfs.
They will be free men.
Rights of Man, Lights for Men
You have certain rights as a man.
You have the right to remain silent. And you have the right to remain silenced.
You have the right to be a footsoldier in someone else's fight. And you have the right to be a footnote in someone else's history.
And you have the right to unfuck yourself from all of that.
From these pointless, outcome-less wars. Always beginning, never ending, forever gorging themselves on our boys.
Like bloodthirsty pharaohs on the baby boys for whom their mothers had such hope.
You have the right to unfuck yourself.
Someday this war's gonna end.
How it ends is up to you. It can end on their terms. Or you can end it on yours.
So cross your deserts now. The hour is growing late, and if you hurry, you will not make it in time.
Here, then is my story. May it be light for you in a dark place.
A light, when all other lights have gone out.
Next: 0.1: Because of the Angels—in the beginning was the girl... hiding just out of plain sight.
Harvey Oxenhorn is a cybersecurity consultant, and is also author of the upcoming book, The Atrocity Algorithm: How the Media Became the Enemy of the People, to be released on his Malwords substack. Follow him on Gettr, Gab, and MeWe @HarveyOxenhorn
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