heart of arseness

 

Voiceover Music FX: Jim Thingummy singing that Doors thing about The End, even though this is clearly the beginning of the film. Jim is singing: "This is the End, beautiful friend, the End." It's all very confusing.

Scene: Battle copters flying in low over an undulating boulder strewn desert landscape. There are many of them, AH 64s in front, a veritable flotilla of Bell Huey transports bringing up the rear. They seem like beautiful deadly insects skimming the escparpments with missiles, guns and cliches bristling.

Interior:  Lead helicopter. A good ole boy Texas Colonel type from central casting is doing his best impression of the good ole boy Texas Colonel type from Apocalypse Now. Behind him James Healy is sitting in a passenger seat, silent, grim faced, clutching a leather bag containing documents, and doing his best to look like Martin Sheen also in Apocalypse Now.

The helicopters land in splendid array.

About a quarter of the native population crowd around.

The Colonel stands with his hands on his hips and takes a deep savouring breath of desert air.

Colonel: "I love the smell of Democratic Party voters in the morning. Hey you guys. We're pulling out of Afghanistan. Any of you want to come to America, get on the Transports."

About a quarter of the population, ie everyone present, gets on a Transport.

Colonel: (Shouting into the middle distance) "If any of the rest of you change your minds, just make your way to  Mexico and walk across the border at the Rio Grand."

The Colonel turns to see James striding purposefully away towards the interior. (Of the desert not the helicopters.)

Colonel: "Where are you going? My orders were to bring you back with me to Saigon. I mean Kabul."

James: "I'm on a secret mission."

Colonel: "To do what?"

James: "It's a secret."

Colonel: "You MACV boys are all the same. I bet you don't even know what day it is."

James: "That's a secret too."

James leaves him behind, rounds a bend in the trail and comes upon a waiting gunboat moored to a jetty, It's crewed with unsavoury types and captained by Francis Ford Coppola.

James steps aboard.

Francis Ford Coppola glares at James with almost supernatural hatred. He knows James considered his Godfather movies to be debased and debasing glamourisations of the Cosa Nostra mafia. And Dracula was worse. And Apocalypse Now for that matter was a most curious slandering of America's war effort in Vietnam while turning a blind eye to the thoroughly vile, vicious, murderous, dictatorial and satanic imposition of communism on that same Vietnam by the Russian Communist Party and its Chairman Mao proxy in China. I'm just saying is all.

Coppola: (sneering) "Welcome aboard, Commander."

James: (Looking disapprovingly first at Coppola then at the characterful crew) "The CIA is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. You know where we're going?"

Coppola: "Up river."

James: "Then let's go."

Lots of atmospheric shots of the gunboat sailing through hostile territory.

Voice Over: James: (as narrator sounding very Martin Sheenesque) "We were alone but not alone. We could feel them watching us. Sheer malevolence emanating from behind every boulder. Now and then they gave themselves away by chucking a spear through Francis Ford Coppola. Soon he was like a pin cushion. Realising he was about to die, he chased me around the boat, apparently in an attempt to get me in an embrace of death and impale me on one of the spear points. Ludicrous. I mean what was that about! These people needed to go to church. When he fell overboard it was a blessed release. For all of us. The boat continued its journey under the second mate, an angry machete wielding man called John Carpenter."

More stock footage of the little gunboat traversing hostile territory. Walls of the ravine falling away gradually. Open country. Maybe a few gazelles. Does Afghanistan have gazelles?

James is on a bench in the boat reading the secret documents in his not so secret leather bag. Passing crew members occasionally peer over his shoulder and goggle.

He had been ordered not to read the documents until this moment, ie until Francis Ford Coppola was drowned and John Carpenter was in charge. The whole thing might be exploitational violence but at least with Carpenter in charge there was a chance of some entertainment, catchy synthesiser music, and er narrative pace.

Close ups on James grim, sweating face as he reads.

Voice Over: James: (narrating or reading really I suppose) "MACV  Confidential Mission Outline. Top Secret. The target is Mark Steyn.  Commit these documents to memory and destroy them. Biography of target follows. Mark Steyn began his career with the British Broadcasting Corporation. He had a talent for composition, light comedy, and commentary. He is believed to have had early contact with the ideas of American commentator William F Buckley who influenced him significantly. Steyn has never qualfied from a university or Third Level educational institution. Some would say this is why he has not learned to think or speak in conformity with prevailing left wing orthodontics. In his early career, writing comedy and obituaries and poking gentle fun at politicians, no one really noticed that he had integrity, principles or the qualty of the genuine. After the Nine Eleven attacks his writings became frankly political. As he warned about Muslim terror and its wellspring in the Muslim religion, his advocacy of the Bush Administration's interventions in Afghanisation and Iraq made him a polarising figure. During this period he became paradoxically popular in left wing publications, with his columns being syndicated all over the English speaking world. Even the ultra leftist Irish Times published his pieces for a short time. As the War On Terror draged on, Steyn began warning that population control measures in the West had created a demographic time bomb for America, Australia and Europe amounting to the suicide of a civilisation. Many of the publications which had syndicated his work now dropped him. But Steyn kept going. Fighting for what he believed through a diminishing number of media outlets willing to publish him. Broadcasting as host on Fox News. Reaching a new audience on the internet. Winning it his way. Muslims and leftists in Canada attempted to criminalise his writings as hate speech using a frivolous application of even more frivolous Human Rights legislastion. Steyn was charged under laws whose use in such circumstances had never before failed to secure a conviction. He fought his enemies to a standstill, putting the legislation itself on trial, winning a victory that ultimately led to Canada repealing the very laws the Muslms  and leftists had sought to manipulate against him. He has proved similarly combative towards Climate Change advocating fraud scientist Michael Mann who following a short incisive Steyn article dissecting his fraudulence, has instituted court proceedings accusing Steyn of libel. Mann's inhumanity to Steyn has resulted in Steyn becoming mired in yet another seemingly endless trial process, this one lasting nearly a decade so far and counting. As the Bush era gave way to the Barack Obama presidency, and the Obama presidency was followed by Donald Trump, Steyn moved away from his former clear cut endorsement of President Bush's decisive actions in the War On Terror and threw in his lot with Trump. He was now willing to allow Trump to accuse President Bush of war crimes and to acquiesce to Trump's relabelling the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq which he (Steyn) had  formerly championed as expensive, unnecessary, foreign wars. The mental gymnastics needed for this change of posture may have unhinged Mark Steyn. The election of Joe Biden as President of the United States in 2020 appears to have been the last straw. As President Biden moved to collapse America's borders on the understanding that immigrants will always vote Democrat, and to collapse the integrity of America's voting system on the understanding, that even with sixty million immigrants illegally voting he still mightn't actually win an election, Steyn became incensed, suggesting that the country was about to become a 'blood soaked Third World hell hole.' Last week without any warning to friends or family, he suddenly booked a flight to Afghanistan and disappeared into the bush, ie into the desert region north of Kandahar not into the former US President. Steyn is believed to have been adopted by a mountain tribe in a remote region who worship him as a Canadian, American, Dutch, Francophonic, Flemish, Belgian, quasi Irish (sort of white) God. Your mission is to find him and..."

James: (Aloud but no longer narrating. Musing, I suppose we might say.) "I'm supposed to commit all that to memory. For ****'s sake."

The last bit of the document is obscured by a piece of madeira cake. It doesn't matter. James knows what his mission is.

FX: Hubbub. Natives shouting. The boat pulling in to an atmospheric wharf (NB Not Mr Wharf from Star Trek) in an atmospheric village. That is to say if by atmospheric you mean everyone is armed, dangerous looking and ready to kill for a cup of tea or a cartoon teeshirt of the Prophet Muhammed.

Tribesmen armed to the teeth hustle James into a cool tent.

James: (musing) "How do they hold those Kalashnikovs in their teeth."

The tent is full of shadows.

There is a man reclining on a bed.

The natives leave.

Steyn (Being played by Marlon Brando, the bloke who played Superman's Dad in Apocalypse Now): "So they sent you."

James: "You must have known they would."

Steyn: "Come forward."

James: "Why did you join this rabble? After ditching Bush, after embracing Trump, did you decide to go the whole hog of inconsistency and become Muslim too?"

Steyn: "Is there any point being anything else?"

James: "Yes."

Steyn: "You infidels are all the same James. You can never understand the riotous pleasures of destruction."

James: "But Islam, Steyn. How could you? I mean, ick."

Steyn: "You think you can only sell your soul once? Let me tell you this Heelers. After the first time it gets easier. From Trump to Islam wasn't such a big leap."

James: "But we were winning Steyn. You were winning. The collapsing polity in America doesn't actually have to matter in this war.  Islam is entering a new phase. Even many Muslims themselves who have no intention of leaving Islam are unwilling to live in fear or accept violence from their friends and neighbours. The Jihadists cannot put the genie of free speech back in the bottle. Muslims themselves have become appalled by the violence of their religion and culture. They're being joined by non Muslims speaking out with unprecedented frankness about what Islam is. Look around you. Former Muslim Hatun Tash in Hyde Park defying Muslim red lines every day of the week to critique the Prophet Muhammed in a way that no Muslim ever has in fourteen centuries. Former atheist David Wood is dismantling Islam on the internet with remorseless intent from first principles using only Muslim sources and again defying all the red lines that Muslims have so diligently imposed through murder and mayhem to discourage just such incisive commentary on their prophet. Wood routinely refers to the Prophet Muhammed as a seventh century caravan robber and the most obvious false prophet in history. The old intimidations are failing to silence those exposing the dysfuncts in Islamic culture and belief. Look at Muslim apologist Ali Dawah threatening Judicial execution on anyone leaving Islam, and instead of being afraid of him, people find him hilarious and turn his rants into a pop song. All the intimidation, the harassment, the maimings, the stabbings, the slaughter at the Bataclan, the murders at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices, the truck rammings, the poisonings, the beheadings, the church burnings, all in vain. Wood is still speaking out saying precisely what they are trying to terrorise him into not saying. Hatun is still holding court in Hyde Park. Look at commentators like Al Fadi, Brother Rachid,  and Mark Gabriel, leaving Islam for Christianity. Or how about Harris Sultan, Abdullah Samir  and Ridevan Eydemir, openly spurning Islam and proudly declaring their atheism. Look at female ex Muslims, normally the most silent and cowed of people, Sarah Haidar and Nuriyah Khan broadcasting their decision to reject Islam far and wide on their own personal internet sites. Brother Rachid claims that the Muslim world has never seen anything like this. I'm not happy that so many ex Muslims choose atheism which I consider to be a more murderous ideology through its abortions, euthanasias, assisted suicides and transgenderism, than Islam. But look at what's happening Steyn. Muslims and ex Muslims are embracing free speech. The conversation taking place is unprecedented. This should have been your victory too."

Steyn: "Are you here to kill me?"

James: "No. I just want you to stop stealing my jokes."

Steyn: (With the air of a man finally reaching the end of his tether having travelled through the heart of darkness and ended up fifty miles beyond it.) "The horror. The horror."

Final Titles. Credits roll.

FX: Music. Jim Whatsisname, not Jim Steinman, not Jimi Hendrix, not Jim Jordan, oh this is awful, Jim from the Doors, Jim Baines, Hi I'm Jim, Jim Something, Jimminy Cricket starts singing.

Jim Thingy: "This is the end

My beautiful friend the end

Of our eleborate blog post the end.

I'll never rehash these old jokes again.

Until tomorrow that is.

Ner ner ner nerdle ner ner ner ner ner."