And It Was So: through history walls rose from distortions of truth and justice

And there was in those days, in the land quartered by the victors, a Curtain, an iron divide drawn after the War. It was plotted by those in the East and built to shield the Homeland and its people from the plagues rising out of the West, all that might infect them with material desires and distortions of Truth and distrust in the wisdom of their Leaders and turn them against their Comrades. This divide — at first only checkpoints and wire rolled out of the earth during the night and in the aftershock of War — was meant to be the People’s defense, their assurance of safety and security, the physical manifestation of the lines drawn by Men on maps.

And it was so.

But because some of the People of the land threw themselves at the wire and grasped for their begotten and betrothed on the other side, a Wall, soon bathed in light and lined with towers, grew. And there were men keeping watch over the People, and the days were accomplished that all was enclosed by trenches and iron, by concrete and stone, and the People were counted and confined.

And for a time both those inside and those outside the Wall endured. 

And as the days passed, the Leaders raised barricades and forbade all passage to and from the victors’ share of the quartered city, and those inside the Wall were sore afraid, for they saw that they had not the means to feed themselves or their children or their children’s children. But they need not have feared, for the West rose up, and food fell from the skies into the enclosed city, and for months hope was restored.

And so it was that the Blockade was broken. But the Wall remained and so too the divide between East and West, and in this way the days passed.

But many despised the Wall and distrusted those who were the Leaders’ eyes and ears and the Leaders themselves who commanded that it be built to confine the People. And the People watched and plotted against the Leaders, who reminded them that they provided all that the People required, and in return the People owed them work and obedience and loyalty. But some of the People defied them, and risking dogs and gunfire, imprisonment and death, cast messages over the Wall and crept through the wire and leapt through the lights turned on them and tunneled beneath the Wall. And the Leaders’ hearts were hardened against them, and they rained punishment down upon them.

And in this way the days passed into months and years, and the Wall remained.

And so it was that one from the West, He of the New Camelot, speaking in the tongue of the Confined, declared that he was of the People, and for a time they were comforted. But all the world was troubled and turned its eyes from the Wall to famines and earthquakes, hijackings and riots, War in the East and the threat of a blinding flash of destruction rising in a cloud as the Leaders of the East and the Leaders of the West aimed their weapons at the great cities of the world. And, lo, fear and distrust swept the land, and when a shot was fired, blood ran from Camelot and sorrow and lamentation covered all.

And trouble gave way to trouble, and the days and years passed until there arose out of the Golden Country of the West, the Celebrity — he who aspired to a higher calling than stardom. He rode in the back of a bullet-proof Cadillac, a mirror held up before him by the Assistant on the facing seat, the Wife beside him with a hand on his arm and her grand self-assurance trickling down to him. She straightened his tie as the Assistant leaned forward and fixed the hair above his lined forehead.

Until it was just so.

And in the East the Stained Man brought forth a new Word, and the Word was perestroika, and the People saw that it was good, and they embraced the Word and filled the streets with banners and fists and shouts for change. And the call spread across the Eastern lands, and the Stained Man saw that the Word was not enough and so he brought forth another—glasnost—and the Celebrity heard the Word and called out to him, and the Curtain was rent.

And it was, so—

All this came to pass a score and ten years ago, in the time of the Eastern Revolts, when dictators and their henchmen fled but were soon found with their wives and stolen wealth. And in the spirit of Christmas and as a sign of goodwill to the former Leaders and their offspring far and wide, the People quickly tried them and found them guilty of crimes against the People and condemned them as they had for years condemned those of uncertain loyalties, lesser ethnicities, immoral affections, inherited ailments, and liberal intellects.

Which is to say, to Death.

And it was so.

And the Wall was breached and the People raised their arms and faces and voices to the sky, and piece by piece the Wall came down, the People breaking it with hammers, loosing the anger and sorrow and loss that had constrained them for generations, and they surged through like a great wave and swept the dark Past away.  

And for a time this, too, was so.

And though the Past was never far away, the West’s memory faded, and the dark shadow cast by the Wall in the East was forgotten, and there arose a new clamor and cry for another Wall, a great and insurmountable barrier in the South.

And there are in these times, those who covet the southern lands, the borderlands running through cities and towns, ranchlands and cemeteries, wilds and waysides, and who infected the People with fears of invasion, of crime, of a War on their Way of Life. And those in the East spread rumors of peril to the Homeland and its People and conspired to build a new Wall against those in the South: the poor, the tired, the threatened masses struggling northward out of the Americas and seeking peace and asylum and a safe place to raise their children, a land they might call Home.

But the promise of greatness from the East infected some of the People with material desires and distortions of Truth and distrust in the wisdom of the Founders and turned brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor. This Wall and the threat of it — arising through eminent domain and by men and machines driven by profit and out of conviction that compassion is weakness — is but a panacea, providing some with the illusion of safety and security, a physical manifestation of the line between fear and hope, rich and poor, white and brown.

And the days were accomplished that the Past was forgotten,

But, lo, the People rose up.

And it was so.