The Cthulists

     First, a few links:

• The New “Jim Snow” Laws
• Diners Terrorized in St. Petersburg
• ...And In Washington, D.C.
• A Little More Restaurant Mayhem
• Trump Supporters’ Home Attacked
• Where It’s All Heading

     Please read the linked stories. They tell a consistent tale: a tale that depicts a trend. The trend is toward increasing disruption, vandalism, and violence against persons in a growing number of locales – by a growing number of insurgents.

     I have no idea how many times I’ve written this, but it seems to require further reiterations:

Success Breeds Emulation.

     Most of the insurgents are not principally motivated by a political ideology or aim. They might profess such an aim when interrogated under police restraint, but it’s merely a smokescreen for a more important motivation: the simple love of destruction. For it is a well-confirmed fact of human nature that an individual is principally motivated by the immediate satisfactions of his activities...and I’ve written that before an unknown number of times, as well.

     Now for a neologism: the rioters’ conduct is Cthulistically motivated. A passage from that progenitor of horror fiction, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, is on point:

     [M]ankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

     [From “The Call of Cthulhu”]

     Let there be no doubt that a significant fraction of Mankind would thrill to such a gospel. They are Cthulists, whether or not they are familiar with Lovecraft’s mythos. Wanton violence and destruction is their chief delight. Such persons have existed in every place and time, for have we not records of their deeds that reach back as far as human recording extends?

     There is an element of playing at being gods in such conduct, for every wholesome faith maintains that life is “God’s to give and God’s to take away” (Alasdair Ian Stewart ). Justly acquired property, be it said plainly, is an extension of one’s life through the investment of labor. To destroy life and property is the Cthulist’s most joyous exercise, his expression of a “freedom” that raises him to the level of the divine.

     Many Americans are itching to close with the Cthulists and put an end to them – literally. I am one such, despite my years. But many others, probably a majority, are disheartened for the future of our nation...and sick with fear that what the Cthulists have inflicted upon Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Louisville, New York City, and other places will soon be inflicted upon their homes and suburbs. For some who might never imagined that any such thing could happen to them, the fear has already become a reality.

     Of only one thing am I certain: The Cthulists already at work, by demonstrating that you can get away with it, are attracting new allegiants by the day. Their ranks are swelling. They’re being funded and equipped by persons who want to topple the American order. If permitted to enlarge further, they will soon overwhelm any police force that might think to quell them. Only the mobilized field army of the United States will have a chance to put them down.

     Time is not on America’s side. Verbum sat sapienti.