The Omega Man

"O what tangled web we weave,
When at first we practice to deceive."
- Marmion, Sir Walter Scott

In the Middle Ages in Europe, a plague struck that, in the span of three years, killed an estimated 25 million people. To this day, Westerners still say, "Bless you," when someone sneezes, and children still sing "Ring-Around-The-Rosie" to commemorate it. The cultual memory of it has affected the entire civilization for 600 years.

Yet, from the year 1901 until the year 2000, a plague struck every nation on Earth, killing the equivalent of the entire population of the United States with its direct effects, and probably close to half a billion people altogether. This virulent plague is still killing to this day, by the hundreds, if not thousands daily, and nothing is being done to stop it.

WHO has issued no alerts. Pharmaceutical companies are not developing vaccines. No NGOs are running around calling for global conferences and treaties to stop it. And most of us are doing everything we can to maintain the current infection, but spread it even further and make it more virulent than ever. In fact, I'm willing to bet that everyone reading this column have had someone close to them killed by this plague, and than each reader is doing something to continue spreading it.

The plague is called government.

It is by far the deadliest thing known to Man. Over the centuries, some form or another of this plague has killed millions of people, and it does not discriminate between friend and foe.

Every tine you pay taxes or tolerate some new form of outrage or allow illegal wars or support the status quo, you are, in effect, placing your infected, contagious hands all over your children and grandchildren.

Many times, this plague can lie dormant, even appear beneficial to those that come in contact with it. But, more often than not, it becomes a ragin infection that eats the life our its victims, stripping their flesh, roasting them alive, blowing holes in them, gassing them, burying them alive.

One strange side effect of this plague is that individuals think their strain is better than most others, and some even become fanatic supporters, deny ineir own senses tell them is true.

There are many mutations of this plague: the democracy, the republic, the socialist, the fascist, the communist, and often one form will mutate into another, often violently killing many victims in the process. It is so bad, that most people can't imagine living without this organism eating them alive and are willing to die to protect their variant of it.

What seems to be the key to the violent mutations is a very simple factor called 'secrecy.' Once the plague has convinced the host that it needs secrecy, then almost immediately the organism begins to lie. Once it reaches that stage, then it must lie and lie again to continue covering all its previous lies, until someone or something exposes the lies the infection becomes extremely virulent and begins killing wontonly, lashing out at anything that seems to be a threat to its existance.

Here it reaches the most dangerous and deadly stage of its growth cycle. Now it begins to consume everything in its environment and killing even its own host, which it now perceives as a threat. It starts to launch attacks on other tissues, using the very global immune system against itself. It becomes so enraged and gluttonous that believes that it must kill everything to continue to hide its secrets. Finally, it sees its own survival as more important than the hosts which have protected it and nourished it.

Finally, in a great orgasm of death and destruction, the global body manages to kill off the deadly strain, only to cause another to rise up and take its place.

The truly amazing part is that, despite thousands of years of proof that this organism is deadly and inconsistant with free will and self-development, humans have not reached the point where they think they can live without this horror. Instead, there are repeated attempts to modify the plague, to give it more or less power, to channel it, limit it and modify it. Regardless of every attempt to tame the beast, it comtinues to maim, kill and destroy.

There seems to be little hope. As long as the hosts believe they derive some benefit from this horror, they will continue to infect themselves, and to spreak the disease indiscriminately. Those who have attempted to wash their hands and take even minimum precautions against this killer are ostracized and/or slaughtered.

The truly odd part is that there are segments of the host population who are absolutely convinced that some outside power will come down from the heavens, destroy all existing strains of the plague and install a new, benign form that will benefit only the true believers, while all other hosts are tortured in eternal damnation.

Seems like more of the same to me.