Category: Vassals Handbook

 

From The Vassals Handbook – Lesson fifteen – first you ignore them

 

A small groups gathering. A patio. A milling of positions.

She shook my hand with her hand, soft and full. Today I met the first family. The first lady seemed always about to go grocery shopping. I looked around for grocery carts, I heard them banging in my head, I half expected to trip into one. The first lady smiled and tried hard to smile and tried to work up to smiling, primary task, necessary habit. Mostly successful. The pressures of a woman, this woman. Wearied and wearying almost; we got along.

The President was another matter. Not that we did not get along, far from it. We moved well in face of one another. You can feel the power gush from, around, in, and through him. The power pulses in, around, and through, and to you, and past and back, and to all those surround. Power is that extra energy in the air you can touch as it works on and about and you see it work on others. It works on people. It worked on us. Who were we talking to, each other? Superficially. Meaningfully. We were talking to power. I mean you can see it and feel it. To miss that was to be talking to the moon.

You never forgot for a moment that the President was there, the supreme individual of the Incorporated Estates of Earth.

I felt for the first lady. She seemed to have a hard time of it, I mean, getting on, even as she got on, famously, as she ought. She soldiered about as if in quick hitting daze of clairvoyance, as if looking for spontaneity everywhere and wondering that it was not to be found, even though almost it was. She stared as if into a mirror at herself and pretended not to, convincingly enough, as if she were the stage itself and nowhere upon it. Continue reading Lesson fifteen: first you ignore them

 

[“Lessons” are temporary posts. These early drafts come down after a few days. Any surviving or revised remnants and expanded passages may be found at The Vassals Handbook page – also subject to revision.]

 

Lesson six – vassals at arms

 

Cannibalism as a saving economic stratagem? I exaggerate, I suppose. I’m the master PR guy, Stan D. Garde. They throw so much stuff at me. I’m responsible for everything all the time – the colonial wars in western Asia and the intricacies of each; the IEE’s waning influence in South America; the leaderless European Union; the many horns of Africa; constant upheaval and unrest in India; natural and unnatural disasters in Southeast Asia; the churning rise of China. Cannibalism? Let’s set that notion aside for awhile, its economic advantages notwithstanding, whatever its popular difficulty or promise.

The economy and the military, this is my concern, how to resurrect the one and how to strengthen the other. Through military strength comes economic might – the IEE and I see no way around that proposition – base reality. The only question – which way the IEE? Should it power up its colonial forces, all the better to occupy and instill profitable fear. Or should the military continue to power up for the big picture, for super global warfare, by expanding its huge fleets of planes, tanks, ships, missiles, and by further militarizing space?

The difficulty of my job is that the rulers are split – between the leaders of the occupying forces on the ground, on the one hand over fist and on the other hand over fist, the generals, lobbyists, lobbyist generals, and strategists beyond. I repeat: the occupying forces throughout Greater Oila wish for more pacifying resources, the better to conquer the Oilan vassals. Meanwhile, higher up brass and financiers press for bigger fleets and space based might.

But what if we figured out a way to wed the economic stimulus needed to revive the bankrupt banks with military power and spending? Why not give all the money to the military to run the world like one giant boot camp, or if that appears too extreme, make the world an endless string of military bases and installations – each vassal den an armed outpost, each inhabitant of earth a foot soldier, an IEE enlistee. Might this not be a solution more practical, more popular, more elegant than cannibalism? Militarize the IEE more fully, militarize earth. Totally. Continue reading Lesson six: vassals at arms – Lesson seven: the demise of the vassals

 

Well here we go, off to the wars! Let’s see, where do we visit today? Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Gaza? Yes! How is the war for the everlasting expansion of the Incorporated Estates of Earth going? you ask? Very well! How do we know? Graveyards! Here we are in one going full blast, the bodies flooding in as if from some channeled hurricane of blood and gore. Now this is the sort of full employment the overlords of the IEE fully appreciate. Gravediggers rejoice! These grave diggers get no rest around here. They barely have time to jot down the names of those going under. Some bodies even come in with no names at all, and some are surely pseudonyms. But who needs names when business is booming? One look and we know the story of many a body: Mr. Shot-in-the-back-of-the-head. Ms. Blown-to-bits-from-the-sky. Child mutilated-by-shrapnel. Infant Crushed-from-on-high. Busy, busy, busy are we in the graveyards of the IEE. Continue reading Lesson three: empire’s graveyard glory

 

I, vassal. I vassal. Vassal I. It may surprise readers that your author is a fellow vassal. Some vassals are more subservient than others, some more privileged. I’ve been asked to overview here not only the duties of vassals – any mere serf could do as much – but to sketch the world entire, as best known today. I’ve been asked by the lords of capital to reveal in one single work the full human condition of our time, of the time that came before, and of the time that will come after. The better to know, the better to rule and be ruled. For the first time in all history, the great epic of Earth is to be written – the tale of the IEE. Continue reading Lesson two: a vassal’s duty is debt repayment

 

[See the revised, extended, and in progress work at The Vassals Handbook page – subject to revision.] 

 

Lesson one – vassalism is capitalism wrought real

 

Out back is where we brutalize the people. Actually, out back is where we used to brutalize the people but times being what they are we brutalize them all around the corporate gardens now. Stan D. Garde is my name. Let the brutality games begin! For their own good. Brutality is what keeps people in line. Too bad we don’t set aside more often a special time and place for good old fashioned smashing. I miss it. The constant sort of torture we indulge in nowadays seems to me an inferior replacement. Well, nevermind. Let us not lament for the past but celebrate the present and future. Let us begin here, in the Vassals Handbook. The Incorporated Estates of Earth (IEE) commissioned me to write it.

Citizens are gone. They are now vassals. It happened in a funny way. All the banks around the world collapsed, broke. So the peoples’ money was used to refund all the banks. But don’t get any ideas. When the people buy the banks, do they not own them? Yes and no, but mostly and decisively no. You see, the people may properly own the banks (having bought them) but they sure as hell do not get to decide what to do with the money or how to do it. For that is not capitalism, and capitalism is what they bought. Clear? Clever? Clout. In capitalism, the people do not own the decisions. They are not the deciders. They are the consumers, the workers, and in a pinch they may be the funders. To review, the people may be the buyers and in theory the owners, but they are never ever upon any circumstances the deciders. In capitalism, the well-connected few are the deciders, the rulers who select candidates for office, who dole out funds for the campaigns, who provide the illusion of choice via sundry discrepancies for vassals to obsess over and pick between. Nothing more is meant to be.

Am I speaking over your heads, dear vassals? Let me see if I can put this in plainer words. The privileged few rule, the masses obey, even when the masses do most of the work, buy most of the stuff, and totally bailout the bankrupt rulers. That, my friends, is capitalism. Some used to call such a system Chinese Democracy before China was fully incorporated into the IEE. Vassalism is a more precise term, in my humble opinion.

Granted, technically, no land has ever practiced pure capitalism, because, unfortunately, pure capitalism is a self-exploding system – inherently wildly unstable. Totally free markets always lead to disaster – collapse of all sorts. Thus, regulation always exists to help curb catastrophe. And so it is, sadly, that contrary to common understanding, pure capitalism is almost as horrific as pure democracy. Demoscrazy, you know. We’ve had enough of that – we’ve seen where it leads – not to vassalage! which we much prefer. We prefer vassals to people. We prefer submission to rule. Capitalism is a nice thought, an ideal. But vassalism rules.

Oh I know you odd, broke, and broken spirits out there may think of vassalism as little more than slavery. We pity you penny-pinched souls who could not be more mistaken, more immoral. After all, slaves had no money and so could not readily repay their debts, let alone those of their superiors. That is the gross deficiency of the economic system of pure slavery. We had to replace it. Vassalism is much more efficient, much safer for rulers everywhere. It puts people in their proper place. All hail vassalism! See you at the wars!