BARBARIANS...

...At both gates.

A few weeks back, over lunch, a pal asked me what I thought the odds were that I’d make it to eighty years of age. I have no understanding of odds, or gambling, or what over/under means; that said, at my age of seventy five and a half, I give a moment over to consider my imminent and unavoidable death, at least in passing, every god damned day.

My reply, as I recall, was “Maybe, but not necessarily likely.”

Quite obviously, my time has passed. It is, for whatever that may be worth, legacy time. I am marginalized by the reality of my elderliness, made irrelevant by the passing of the majority of my generation to the current coming of age outnumberers.

My opinions carry no weight, since, clearly, I will likely have no part in any results or resolutions of issues on which I have strong opinions. History moves fast these days, but I’d like to think that I’ll be dead and thus unavailable to react and offer my thoughts on the next cultural tectonic shift.

But who knows? Things have been wildly rocking for me and those like me, socio-politically speaking, these past few years. I’m a Jew, secular, October 8^th variety, a disaffected leftist, with, despite that specific political stance, a long time, ornery and decidedly uncharacteristic of leftism aversion to multiculturalism that has confounded and alienated those on what had been my side of the aisle for years.

Talk about your dustbin of history, if you catch my drift.

As I copy edit today, the Democratic primaries in New York City—and, since this is New York City we’re talking about, all too likely the election—have been dominated by Democratic Socialists endorsed by a Democratic Socialist mayor. That smiling Jew hater might be satisfied if only more Jews—and New York City has a slew of them, many of whom voted for this--were willing to go all Dhimmi—or maybe not.

So much for “Hymietown,” it would seem. And as New York City goes, can San Francisco and Los Angeles be far behind? Stay tuned.

Now, I had recently announced my plan to write an essay on apostasy, with the Spanish Civil War as the linchpin of my argument, which I will certainly return to, sooner rather than later—as if anybody gives a fuck what I think. In this regard, I don’t much care what you think, either, and, to be clear, I’m not trying to change your mind.

But then I found myself distracted by the current state of socio-cultural affairs, being caught between two diametrically opposed domestic political movements divided in every way but one. These two soon to be mainstreamed ideologies are united solely in their inchoate loathing for Jews. This reminded me of yet another mid twentieth century sociopolitical event that resonates in this regard.

The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, signed a week before Germany moved on Poland to bring an end to the restive European interregnum that had existed internationally since the German surrender in November of 1918, was an agreement of convenience for the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, two totalitarian nation states representing the opposite poles of extremism, but sharing a top down and utterly corrupt gangsterism that would only surprise an innocent abroad.

For Stalin, the ten year non-aggression pact gave the USSR the time to build up its war machine, and to enable the Russian land grab of the smaller under defended nations of central and eastern Europe.

For Hitler, it gave Germany the golden opportunity to fight the still inept and under equipped allies, or as they might best be called, England, on a western front with no threat from a Soviet army from the east.

And both got to carve up Poland, Germany the western half, Russia the east, as well as the smaller countries of Eastern Europe. Needless to say, no one asked the Poles for any input on this partition.

Of course—perhaps that’s an assumption that’s too presumptuous, considering the historical incuriosity and cultural amnesia that’s become so fucking culturally endemic, so, hey, spoiler alert—Germany broke the deal before only two of the ten agreed upon years were up, and proceeded to invade Russia.

Germany’s operatically designated Operation Barbarossa, as perfect a definition of hubris as I can imagine, began the long, brutal and bloody process of losing Hitler the war and saving Western Civilization for at least a little while, as Stalin grumpily joined forces with the west, which, in turn, applied a shitload of effort to whitewash the Soviet Union’s horror show in the name of Allied unity.

I was about to deploy the Mark Twain quote, “History never repeats itself, but it rhymes,” but before I committed what would I feared might turn out to be a faux pas, I googled it and got the exact line, from the novel, THE GILDED AGE: A NOVEL OF TODAY, his collaboration with the forgotten Charles D. Warner, to wit:

“History never repeats itself, but the kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”

(To only briefly digress for a sidebar, am I alone in my puzzlement that no one seems to notice that Twain’s description of his time as “THE GILDED AGE” was hardly one of approval?)

The actual sentence is not quite so succinct as that almost lyrical misquote, but certainly dead on the fucking money as it reflects on where we are today. Which is, of course, to say there’s an exquisite, and, to be sure, queasy irony in a grandson of the shtetl feeling an awful lot like Poland lately.

Recalling that query about my expectations of my golden years expiration date, I considered the raisin wrinkled and wheezing ancients still holding the reins of power, Democrat and Republican, all perched, as I am, on the brink of death.

The vigorous and youthful replacements for these soon to die diehards are champing at the bit to step up and take their places at the table, and, as noted, that’s where I am both terrified for the future, and grateful, in my dotage as I am, to not have any such thing.

All that said, I watch as the Gray Panderers of what was once the Republican party do what little it can to satisfy the appetites of its increasingly ideologically incoherent base, while the Twitler Youth coming of age posse is all too ready to make tomorrow belong to them…

…And the elder hostages of Democratic Decrepteria are in a panic over the new kids on the block, praying everything is going to work out just fine, and that their Jew hating oikophobic jihadist threat to Western Civilization is just an adolescent phase they’ll outgrow.

Both cadres of these geezers are going to start dropping dead on a regular basis a shitload sooner than later, leaving the field open for that brand new roster of energetic players, ready for action on day one.

Back in the early 1980s, I created, wrote and drew a comic book that took place in the faraway year of 2031. I was thirty two, and raging, pissed off at what I regarded as the calamitous Reagan era. I got a lot right in my speculations about the twenty first century, some on the money, some stretchily metaphorical. Needless to say, I got plenty wrong, of course. All that lingerie, for fuck’s sake.

It’s worth noting that I never expected to live past fifty, living as I was a lifestyle guaranteeing that demise. It never occurred to me that I might change that way of living, and get within shouting distance of healthy. I did precisely that, and here I am.

Suffice to say the future I envisioned in what I described as a dystopic burlesque comedy was bleak, with smutty jokes to serve as connecting tissue for the despair. None of the specific socio-political details I posited have become literally true, but, to throw it back to the Sage of the Mississippi, there are rhymes.

And, just as Hitler and Stalin’s surrogates Von Ribbentrop and Molotov, despite representing two different narratives on authoritarianism, were able to find accord in their shared interest in conquest, I have little or no doubt that sooner, rather than later, when those ancient wizened fucks finally give it up to their ghosts, an Ana Kasparian could very likely have a kaffe klatsch with a Candace Owen, and a Hasan Piker might have a man to man talk with a Nick Fuentes, to find a brief détente in the civil war between these two otherwise diametrically opposed points of view, and finish the work of genocide their sociopolitical ancestors began.

And, whether you like it or not, Western Civilization will go down the chute shortly thereafter, to the satisfied delight of an international Caliphate.

Trust me on this.

As ever, I remain,

Howard Victor Chaykin…a Prince.