The Last Centurion
Page 48
They didn't show the sobbing men, women and children being released from them by soldiers of the United States Army.
They didn't show the women screaming at us, "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?"
(Actually, they showed the angry mob, they just did a voice-over that cut out what they were angry about. We deconstructed that one, too.)
We deconstructed piece after piece that showed the Army and the Carson administration in the worst possible light. We talked about what the Koran really said, how it could be interpreted and how the "Caliph" had perverted even that perverse document. (Don't like my take? Go read Surahs Eight and Nine. Skip One. It's superceded by Mohammed's own directives in Surah Six.)
We found "moderate" Islamics, real ones that were immigrants and had been good Islamics their whole lives, and got interviews about their anger at what had been done. The one imam from Iraq who was crying and apologizing over and over again was particularly good, I thought.
By the next day, the news media was effectively broken. They were interviewing survivors and even CBS and CNN reporters were getting a bit testy at what had been allowed to happen.
"That this travesty could be permitted in America at even the worst of times says something about the previous administration. And the news media has to share a portion of the blame."
CBS evening news, President of CBS News, Day Five.
By then, units were going into all the "contested" cities and finding similar horror stories. None as bad as the "Caliphate" that had been held up as "enlightened" but very fucking bad in their own way.
Then came "Trust."
That was all me. I'd actually built most of it from footage going back to the very beginning of the Plague. It was, in parts, very dry. It's not anyone's favorite and perhaps I should have quit on a high note. But I wanted my swan-song to be my song.
I talked about trust. I talked about societal trust, when it worked and when it didn't. I talked about assimiliation, the "melting pot" concept vs. "multiculturalism," the "salad" concept. I talked about studies of societal trust. I pulled in shots from The Gangs of New York, talking about how "multicultural" it had once been when Italians and Irish and "American" Americans couldn't talk to each other and didn't trust each other and therefore killed each other in such droves that the Army had, way back then, had to do a "Detroit" on New York City itself. And now one group had great food and the other great beer and it was otherwise hard to tell them apart.
I talked about how Swedes and Norwegians, two cultures as white-bread as you can find, had once battled even here in the U.S. over differences brought to our shores.
"If we sunder ourselves internally, if we accept the false divisions, then we bring with those false divisions all their ills, all their blood of centuries. Where then, can we find trust? If we cannot see the difference between the evil that stands here before us with blood-soaked hands and what we are told is the evil we do in bringing peace and plenty to foreign shores, where then is the trust? If we cannot remember who we are, if we cannot comprehend what it means to be this shining light on the hill, this country of wonder and riches, this . . . America, then we shall surely slip into the long dark night that the enemies of our freedoms so richly desire.
"We are told, always, that there is no black and white. That there are only shades of gray. This is a picture that is held up to us. But it is only a picture and it is false. Each day, each of us makes countless choices, and each of these choices is black and white. If we choose, over and over again, as we have for so long, to choose the black choices because they are easier, to choose 'me' over 'us,' to choose division and strife over assimilation and trust, then we slowly slip into that black night.
"I do not so choose. I am your Centurion. This America Shall Not Fall!"