OPEN LETTER TO MY FRIEND, THE SCHIZOPHRENIC MESSIAH

Dear friend-who-shall-remain-nameless;

My sincerest apologies. It has been far too long since we last shared brainspace. I also apologize for taking so long to respond to your long and detailed letter regarding Ingo Swann, your experiences as a remote viewer, and your assessment of the post-9/11 milieu in general. While I will be keeping your original missive private, I would like to respond to it publicly, as yours was not the first message of its type received by me. I used to receive them on an almost daily basis back when The Daily Dirt was up and running, full force.

I have always maintained as I still do now that, while I believe in some degree of quote/unquote "supernatural" abilities/entities/forces, it is my personal belief that Ingo Swann has been truthfully exposed as a pederast and a charlatan who used the aura of his supposed, self-declared-and-never-truly-tested "powers" to lure luscious young male anuses towards his penis, and nothing more. He is worthy of no further attention from me. I have seen and read enough to know about both him and his type (and believe me, he is of a type). Nor, despite my personal affection for you, can I bring myself to believe that you once cured a fellow psych-ward patient of amputation (or was it 3rd degree burns?) only to have a nurse re-amputate or burn the poor beneficiary of your then Messianic-level healing skills, as described by you.

I am not being facetious. I am being blunt and honest because I can see through the haze that there is a strong intellect there inside you. But it seems to me that it's been buried under a pile of red herrings. Who knows? Perhaps even on purpose, and from a young age. Maybe you do have some psi abilities. I know for a fact that Occam's Razor isn't as sharp as some would like to think, and I am not ready to cast you off as a friend, or label you indelibly as a kook.

However, I believe I am a bit older and - if I may be so bold - just a little bit wiser in matters of philosophy, psychology, the occult, Secret Societies of all kinds and even government malfeasance than you are. I'm almost certain you'd disagree. Coming into close physical proximity with certain high-visibility and high-powered individuals in this culture often leads to the illusion that one has tasted and discerned more accurately and/or intensely of their essence than one, in reality, has done. And I believe this may have happened to you.

Do I agree that membership to Secret Societies should mean de facto banishment from all levels of public service - or even lead to charges of treason, and thus the perpetration of state-sanctioned murder against that individual? Friend, I hope you are not surprised to find out that I do not agree with this. I do not agree with this, because I have studied the history of man, by a wide variety of individuals using a wide variety of standards and criteria - from the academic to the esoteric to the lunatic and the ridiculous. And one of the conclusions to which I have recently come is that Secret Societies, in and of themselves, are about as good and/or evil as fire, water, wind or wheat.

What do I mean by this? Three simple things.

First, that some Secret Societies have mankind's best interest at heart and some, needless to say, do not. Just as fire can save you from freezing or devour you, just as water can save you from dehydration or drown you, just as wind can steer your ship towards new lands or lead you to disaster, and just as wheat can feed your entire family for a year... or explode in the silo, flattening your family home on a bitter winter night, a Secret Society is not - in fact, is never - only one thing.

Second, that Secret Societies are entirely unavoidable, and impossible to eradicate without literally the kind of slaughter with which all of history is rife, and which I would never hope to see repeated in my lifetime. The 16th century, I have recently realized, rivals the 20th for sheer bloodshed. Kill the Aztec! Kill the Spaniard! Kill the Mayan! Kill the Portuguese! Kill the Basque! Kill the Huguenot! Kill the Jesuit! Kill the Lutheran! Kill the Catholic! Kill the Sunni! Kill the Sikh! Kill the shah! The King! The guru!

Kill the man! Kill the movement! KILL KILL KILL!!!

The cure, dear friend, is almost always worse than the disease.

Allow me to play at being Devil's Advocate for a moment. What has "the Illuminati" - a term I use here purely for convenience - led to that you find so distressing? The warm bed in which you sleep at night? The ability of any man of ambition on this planet to circumnavigate the globe if he so chooses? The X-ray machine that found the pre-cancerous tumors in my leg?

The atom bomb? The nuclear bomb? The nutron bomb?

Swine flu? SARS? Backwards messages on Ozzy albums and hidden hieroglyphics on Beatles album covers? Really, friend? Is that the best they can do?

The Powers That Be have Babylon in their teeth, and I can't help but think of the dog that's finally caught that truck it's been chasing. What does it do now?

It's been almost a decade since 9/11, friend. Of course something is going to happen again, soon, because - as time passes - SHIT HAPPENS. And by shit, I mean things. Events. Occasionally momentous, history-shaping events like 9/11. And yes, these monumental events - however they come to pass, by destiny or design - put The Powers That Be in a position to "do something"; a position that, for some, might be hard to resist. A position to make a lasting change, to carve one's initials into - or piss into the snowbank of, depending on your metaphysical point of view - "Civilization Itself".

If 9/11 taught me anything lasting, it's that Ozymandias' lesson remains unlearned. It's probably true that the future will be littered with even more giant marble feet in forgotten desert ruins of black glass and poison sand. And there's absolutely, positively nothing anyone can do about it. Because that's how time works. That's how history works.

Modernity, itself, is the disease, friend. And it's terminal. Every man's death is an Apocalypse, now, for every man is everything and nothing all at once, now.

You can thank or blame Christ for that. I mean literally... thank him or blame him. Before him, time was wheels within wheels, cycles within cycles. The universe was a constant... no Alpha or Omega - no beginning or end. It always was and would so ever be. But then, we got smart. Our brains got big. And then Christ came along, and, just before dying, he - or, well, the faith that mushroomed from his corpse - told us he would be back, and he would be bringing his Father with him, and we would all be sorry because he was going to put the stars out in the sky. Just you wait and see.

We've been waiting ever since. We ain't seen nuthin' yet.