It is truly hubristic for anyone to believe he has a right to dissent — to disagree with one’s supposed peers and alleged superiors that what they call true is sufficiently true, and what they call good or just is actually good and just.

But I am not alone in my dissent. I am backed by some of the most notorious characters ever known — including a madman, and a treacherous coward, and a lineage of sketchy mystics whose vague mumblings clearly confirm my dearest priors.

Yet, here I stand, and here is my witness: the faith of our overclass is perverse; and that is why this faith holds manifestly false ideologies to be true, unprincipled exploitation of principles to be just, and glaring evil to be righteous. And this perverse faith grasps itself as epitomizing truth, justice and righteousness.

I can represent the overclass perspective only by standing on their vacuum of presumptions and method acting their nihilistic logic. And indeed, I often must, in order to avoid incessant social conflict and economic ruin. I know this faith, its language and its moves inside-out, as well as outside-in, and, for this reason, I understand it better than most of its own adherents, certainly better than anyone around me. I can steelman their own views better than they can. But they are incapable and unwilling to do the same, because, despite their claimed empathy monopoly, all they have is a bullet list of synthetic compassion recipes. If technik is your hammer, every Why is a nail to hammer with expert technique.

This faith cannot see from any perspective other than its own. It will “do the work” anywhere but where it is most needful. Were this faith to transcend itself, it would risk experiencing itself from an exterior position and become a witness to its own false nature and collapse in disillusioned self-disgust. In the words of Edwin Muir “He is the Lie; one true thought, and he’s gone.”

If I am wrong — and if I am, I would be the last to know — I will have to accept responsibility. I will give a full reckoning of my wrongdoing, ask forgiveness, and and start again on a better path.

But from here, now, I cannot ignore my intellectual and moral conscience, just because it was outvoted by the innumerable others who turned over their own consciences to the anonymous consensus.

I see things that demand witness, not in order to achieve some goal, but because Why requires it.

Here is the full poem:

He walks, the enchanter, on his sea of glass,
Poring upon his blue inverted heaven
Where a false sun revolves from west to east.
If he could raise his eyes he would see his hell.
He is no spirit, nor a spirit’s shadow,
But a mere toy shaped by ingenious devils
To bring discomfiture on credulous man.
He’s the false copy where each feature’s wrong,
Yet so disposed the whole gives a resemblance.
When he’s in anguish smiles writhe on his lips
And will not stop. His imperturbable brow
Is carved by rage not his but theirs that made him,
For he’s a nothing where they move in freedom,
Knowing that nothing’s there. When he forgives
It is for love of sin not of the sinner.
He takes sin for his province, knows sin only,
Nothing but sin from end to end of the world.
He heals the sick to show his conjuring skill,
Vexed only by the cure; and turns his cheek
To goad the furious to more deadly fury,
And damn by a juggling trick the ingenuous sinner.
He brings men from the dead to tell the living
That their undoing is a common fetch.
Ingeniously he postures on the Tree
(His crowning jest), an actor miming death,
While his indifferent mind is idly pleased
That treason should run on through time for ever.
His vast indulgence is so free and ample,
You well might think it universal love,
For all seems goodness, sweetness, harmony.
He is the Lie; one true thought, and he’s gone.