Restrained by his guards, I looked upon the man who I’d once counted a friend.  He wound toward me like a serpent, or a villain in a pantomime.  Jesus, I can’t believe there are people who really do this, I thought.  Hasn’t he read the evil overlord list?

“It occurs to me that the reason that you individualists will never win is your inability to organize other people.  You assume that people will act in their interest or even know what is in their best interest.  In reality, people aren’t that sure. They’re so focused on whatever they’re told to pay attention to that they are thankful to have a strong hand to guide them.  They follow their shepherd right into the abattoir.

How else could we get people to give us their time, money, allegiance?  How else could we get elected again and again, even admitting our corruption and willingness to exchange “principles” for favors.  Long-term good for short-term gain.  Because they don’t care and even if they did, the average person is too stupid to do anything about it and too powerless to stop us.

So, what are you going to do, hero?  I know your kind.  You are opposed to violence and profess the value of reason?  Well guess what?  I am neither opposed to violence, nor am I amenable to reason.  I profit far too much from the current system to wish to return to your fabled more principled time.

And don’t think that this is something that I say because of the party I belong to.  The left uses radicalism, the right uses religion.  Hell, we even us the same sentences with only the basic terms switched.  We have a pope using science to gain followers for his mystical beliefs and scientists watering their discoveries with the language of religion.

You think that just because you follow the law you have nothing to fear?  That we will leave you alone?  Of course not.  Not while the fires of reason burn in your mind.  Not while you have a spine to stand erect.  Do you know who the last hominid species was who elevated the individual?  Homo Neanderthalis.  You know what happened to them, I trust?

We killed and fucked them out of existence.  Except of course a few throwbacks like yourself every few generations.  It’s too bad, if you were just a bit less principled, you could’ve been a shepherd.  Instead, we will destroy you, claiming all the while you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And please, for the sake of any past feelings of conviviality we may have shared, please don’t ask me why I sting you.  If you can excuse the mixing of imagery.  I sting you because, it is in my nature.”