The Monster At The End Of This Book

“You figure it's all a scam, huh? All them folks? They’re just wrong?

Rustin Cohle: Oh yeah! Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey, "He said for you to give me your fucking share." People... so god damn frail they'd rather put a coin in the wishing well than buy dinner.” - The Locked Room; True Detective

I was watching TV the other day and I came across a documentary about cults, first it was the brotherhood of the God Saves the Earth Flying Saucer, then it was the brotherhood of the Nubian Nation of Moor, after that the brotherhood of Crazy Spaghetti Monster, and then… Then it hit me.

They’re all about family and stuff, brotherhoods, sisterhoods … But then the minute you join they tell you to leave your own family behind, kind of ironic don’t you think?

So I couldn’t help but wonder:

First of all, who the hell keeps coming up with these random combinations of words? And secondly, how does that brotherhood thing work exactly? Is it like an AA meeting where instead of a chip in the first session you get a couple of brand new siblings?

I couldn’t figure out the logistics at first because to me to consider someone like a brother, a long lasting friendship must be in place. Also an element of trust as well as some shared moments and experiences both good and bad.

All of these things require time and certainly don’t happen instantly, sprung out of thin air by the simple fact of joining the same club or holding the same banner.

But hey, go find consistency in collectivism!

I finally switched the channel because I thought that I had all the crazy I could handle for the day, so I switched to the a crazy political debate of which I’ll spare you the details, but let me tell you, it was quite the experience.
Long story short, you know when they say this is an hour of my life I will never get back?

Worse, I think my life expectancy decreased by a year and half.

So I puked in my mouth four times, took a pill for the nausea and quickly went for the remote before I morph to some hateful goblin or something. I went back to Documentary Channel, I wasn’t even two minutes into the show then the most unexpected thing happened.

So this show comes on about La Cosa Nostra and its inner workings, funny how they operate.

You see, as soon as the new recruits arrive the first things you hear is "Welcome to the family", but it’s not just the Sicilian Brotherhood, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Aryan brotherhood…It’s all of them it seems.

Déjà vu I thought to myself.

See that’s just the thing, from the Bratva (Russian for brotherhood) to the Brödraskapet (Swedish for Brotherhood) and the rest of these Emmy award winners, they all seem to follow the same technique where as soon as you enroll you become brothers so quickly that you beat Ramen in instantaneity, but I guess that’s what happens when you base your organization on a con-job model.

Either that or they have way too much love to give. Which one do you think is closer to the truth?

Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense. After all, what do we know about confidence jobs? That they require a certain element of proximity towards you mark in order to gain their trust, in fact that is their very basic premise. From that point on, it becomes fairly easy to make the connection.

Why pretend to be someone’s friend when you can be family?

At a historical level the same is true of course, whenever you find yourself locked inside a holy war of some type, just go find the dominant discourse and are bound to hear some of the following words attached to it: Holy Father, sacred mother, brothers and sisters...Guaranteed. In fact that’s the safest bet in the world.

You’ve heard that stuff too I’m sure, usually as a prelude to a more sophisticated form of human sacrifice, the jargon word in this case I believe is ‘War’.

"The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by." - Sebastian Junger

Brothers in Harms, Arms, Whatever...

You might think that I am overanalyzing this, maybe I am, just stick with me for a second here, which excuse did Lenin use to murder millions and millions of people? 'Mother' Russia, right? How about Hitler? The Fatherland, how about the Spanish dictator Franco? La 'Madre' patria... Do you see where this is going? Even at this very moment while I’m typing this there are cult leaders preaching for depopulating the planet for Mother Earth… Or their version of it anyway.

Which begs the question: Is all one big long series of never ending coincidences or is it more like a Modus Operandi for the preaching class?

The answer is simple: It doesn’t matter, because either way, you wouldn’t wanna be part of any club that sounds like the script of The Patriot Act - I mean Red Riding Hood.

“What big NSA you have, uncle Sam,” said Little Red Riding Hood.

“All the better to listen to your private conversations” answered the Big Bad Wolf.

“What big TSA you have,” said Little Red Riding Hood.

“All the better to search you with my dear,” answered the Big Bad Wolf.

“What a big DEA you have, uncle Sam” said Little Red Riding Hood.

“All the better to sniff you out, dear,” answered the Big Bad Wolf.

“What a big DHS you have,” said Little Red Riding Hood.

“All the better to seize you with,” said the Big Bad Wolf.

Fun Fact: Apart from grandma, only four words have been changed from the original tale: Ears, eyes, nose and teeth.

They say the greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist, I don’t believe in the devil but if I did, I’d think the greatest trick the pulled is convincing the world he’s family.

Meet The New Boss

Our grandparents and previous generations warned us about the dangers of falling for fatherlands and motherlands, Vietnam veterans warned us about Uncle Sam, Orwell warned us about big brother…

But while we were all busy fighting each other, no one was watching out for the Nanny.

If you guys liked this one, please let me know in the comments and I will write a comedy take on the nanny state, i hope you liked this one!