MOLOCH RUNS THE WORLD
Moloch never got off his throne, instead he did what a shrewd leader does and learned from his subjects. He learned you can get away with a whole lot if you talk in professional, sterile terms. If somebody told you they were an instructor at The School of the Americas out of the blue, with no prior knowledge, would you guess off the top of your head that they may have done job training for death squads? Probably not. Sounds like part of some kind of foreign exchange program, which it sort of was, albeit an unusually catastrophic one.
Come to think of it, cozying up to Moloch is how that program got to be as deadly as it did. Back in the day some cherished American saints like JFK got all in a lather about the possibility of communists interfering with, or even toppling, our favorite oppressors and sycophants down south, and Moloch descended on the Oval Office in a column of fire. He reeked of burnt hair and melting fat, bronze skin shining from the heat like a dull sun, the sounds of bones heat-cracking, organs popping, and the ear-piercing shrieking of small, young vocal chords blasting out as a single great note; the fanfare of the Lord of Sacrifice. It would be a frightful apparition to those power brokers and saints under most circumstances, but everyone knows Moloch. He had once called himself The Great and Holy, now he called himself solution oriented, all that ethnic garb now associated with primitiveness in the halls and houses of power replaced with a boringly well-trimmed suit. Clever moves, people thought he'd given something up too with this alteration, but he'd always been a globe-trotter, always breezing in and out of here and there. Never tied down. Everyone knows Moloch somewhere deep down, and the movers and shakers are able to recognize him too. Everyone in that office shook his hand, all of them kissed his ring. Those leaders of men had faiths of their own, sure, and they even sincerely held those beliefs from time to time, but Moloch isn't like those distant Gods. All those faiths require too much faith to be strictly upheld in dynamic, frantic times, Moloch doesn't need faith, he just needs payment. And Moloch is no too-clever-for-his-own-good bargainer. The terms are the terms, blood for results. The only caveat being the human animal can be unpredictable, and the consequences following the results may not be the ones you want. Even then, a bad outcome was still a more concrete thing than whatever a prayer might produce.
Sacrifice. Everyone in the room knew the rough shape of his demands. They'd kill plenty of Reds, all they had to do was be willing to let some innocents get tortured. Let the soldiers rape and pillage now and again. Kill some peasants on occasion. Cover up these little clusters of incidents that'd have boring names like “False Positive Scandal” that most people in the states would never hear about, and would gloss over the name if they did without inquiring further. It's a sacrifice, sure, but wouldn't it be a little backwards to call it human sacrifice? It's not like kids would be placed in vessels and cooked. Well, not as an official, routine matter anyway. In fact, let's reconsider that word. Sacrifice, it's loaded with implication. It's not like anyone is picking out innocents and saying “these ones have to die.” Technically, no one in particular has to die. It's just...what to call it? The cost of doing business. It's the price of very important things like Containment and National Security and Securing Democracy and Protecting Our Way of Life. And aren't those things worth paying a high price? So no, it's not even really a sacrifice, it's just a necessary, calculated risk, a sad necessity. In fact, if you make the deal, you're the one sacrificing, because you, with your noble spirit, are going to have deal with the burden of being praised as courageous and making hard decisions, of signing book deals, when you finally let the world know that all the blood really did weigh on you at times. Never enough to stop, but still, it soured some weekends. Moloch didn't have to say all these things, the men in that room said it to themselves and each other for him. They took the deal. Moloch is easy to get along with, he never makes you beg, worship, or pledge your soul. He doesn't need all that. He doesn't want it. He has what he wants. A throne. The world. His worshipers may be be gone, but he dictates the logic of earthly rulers still. Sacrifices must be made, sacrifices of others. Most of those men in that room on that day might claim to be shocked at how high that cost became, surprise at how it seemed like, at times, it cost a handful of civilians to get a single combatant, but that was always a possibility. The deal never included any mention of appropriate ratios, and they hadn't bothered to negotiate. The old bull may not be the god on anyone's lips, but he rules so very many hearts.
It would have been a wonderful thing if the poor bastards fear that the crown of our lowly Sphere had been reclaimed by Death during the localized Ends of the World that was the Black Plague had been right. There's never been a less demanding royalty, or one so free with it's time. It demands nothing from you, and it's always with you at the end. Those fearful souls were right to think there was a conspicuous absence of Grace, but then it's harder to imagine a world cradled by loving arms than not when you're trying to find someone to blame for all the dying so you can kill them. Times like those are high holy days for Moloch. He doesn't have to do anything but show up. The offers are made to him, and he only needs to shrug noncommittally.
There's an often unfortunate side-effect to making something valuable. It makes giving it up seem profound. That's how Moloch convinced parents to hand over their children to furnace and inferno, not by making their lives cheap, but by making them more important than the child itself. Their blood was so precious that by its spilling the union of a divine and his people could be renewed, boons and blessings could be granted, transgressions could be cleared away, and great evils could be dispelled. Existence could be kept,or set, right, the entirety of everything kept in motion for the low, low price of a few lives. It's a clever trick, use value to make the valuable as disposable as the cheap.
This hands-on approach had flaws, however. For one, when desired outcomes are not produced the faithful may descend into even deeper reverence, but they might instead come to resent the other half of the pact. That is a good way to lose subjects to gods either kinder or less subtle. And a king without subjects is simply a madman. The problem is that Moloch cannot produce much on his own. That's his secret shame: he is enduring, but he has little power to shape reality. He is not a deity as popularly conceived. He is one of the great cosmic parasites. His most profound ability? Knowing what a person desires and what intellectual tools to give them so that they may grant themselves extraordinary license to take it in violent, costly ways that are gratifying to him and glorify his silent name. He cannot transform suffering into bountiful crops, he can only keep the sacrifices flowing until nature does the work and then take the credit. It is the suffering on which the parasite feeds, rarefied suffering, suffering that has the air of the sacred to the violator. It is the suffering that keeps him on his throne, that binds the world to his cruel logic. It is the suffering, the destruction of the valuable, that his subjects-in-denial find compelling. Through mental alchemy it transforms petty selfishness into burdensome wisdom.
The other problem is that there can be a certain romance to capital HS Human Sacrifice. The sacrifice understandably believes their end is of great importance, the sacrificers encouraging the belief both to ensure compliance, and to resolve the awkward tensions within themselves. Or even just out of sincere agreement. The offering is to a god, but that offering is elevated too. Even an enemy who is sacrificed may be changed by the process from some anonymous captive into an honorable being who fulfills a great calling despite their defeat. Not always, but it is known to happen. Moloch is, like so many of his peers, jealous. It's one thing to not be the name on people's lips when they make their offering, it's another matter entirely for someone else to share credit. This sort of specific,purpose driven sacrifice may also engender a selflessness in a population, an eagerness to participate. A self-sacrifice is of no use to Moloch. That blood tastes foul. For his grasp to remain tight there must not be too much noble sacrifice. He would become superfluous if everyone gave enough to each other to sustain each other. His nature requires the blood of others to be spilled, his order rests upon acceptance of a minimum of murder. The sacrifices must be, ultimately, selfish. This is what keeps him popular; even when he asks for a costly offering, he makes sure his subjects never feel too much like they're giving something up. It's a transaction, price for a gain, not a loss. The abstract systems of modern governance are wonderful at preventing the average person from forming deep, personal romantic notions about the people working its quotidian mechanisms. It's hard to get all that enamored with a man mining Coltan half the world away , even when it costs him his life. No, his name may no longer be on many lips, and it's more often than not a curse when it is, but to happily serve and be served by those byzantine engines of the world that run on sorrow is to give him praise all the same. And he receives praise enough to drown in it.
He is, in his strange and malevolent way, a man of the people though. He mingles with commoners and aristocrats alike. When the first early pioneer of industry convinced the authorities to allow him to have rural folk threatened, cajoled, and frog-marched into a city to work his machines, he and his “superiors” knew the displacement, depression, and disease would cost lives in exchange for all that wonderful productivity. They made the sacrifice. When others followed suit, the effect was a collective signing-off on the Molochian order as The Way of the Things, as their ancestors had done while building the worlds that came before industry. But all the people who came after made their own little sacrifices too. Everyone who ever saw a child locked in a factory those pioneers laid the foundation for, who knew they were there, who had heard of them, in their profound and vigorously enforced ignorance, describe the Queen as some kind of bird and found that abhorrent condition acceptable enough to co-exist with, even if they found it distasteful, offered a sacrifice. They knowingly, willingly, sacrificed those indentured lives. No matter how loudly they spoke of the greater good, of how those little hands would become the devil's plaything if left idle, they knew blood would spill. They knew and they said with their actions, if not plain words, that they would sacrifice those lives for some outcome. Some made it so that commerce could thrive, or the nation to grow, but Moloch's favorite subjects have always been those who ask for not much to not happen. All those people who felt disgust but choked it down to not risk tumult in their lives offered up a sacrifice too. “Keep spilling the blood so I may not come to harm stopping the spilling, so that I may not have to make my own sacrifice” was their pathetic, measly request. A nothing request that cost the lambs everything. That is the most delightful sacrifice to Moloch. So much reward, such perfect acquiescence to his logic and order. It is like love to him. And more sensual still was the pleasure of knowing oaths to other gods were betrayed for his empty blessing every time these perfect worshipers turned their faces from the misery rather than open their arms and doors to those strangers in the factory barracks, every time they did nothing for the least of their brothers and sisters. And as the world grew, so too did his flock.
Think of the doctor who lets the young woman go into septic shock from a missed miscarriage rather than treat her and risk the uncertain consequences of potentially breaking the law. Think of all the high ideals that have been ascribed to the practice of medicine, and imagine them all thrown out a window. This is a betrayal that pleases Moloch, this is a sacrifice that fills him whole. Think of all the justifications you have heard on behalf of those doctors; articulate the ones that may be stirring in your head . What if they lose their license to practice? A life is worth sacrificing for the sake of an income, or prestige, or whatever reward may be reaped by a combination of both is what that says. That is the cold truth of it. Let others die so my work may continue is the contract made with Moloch. What of the legal trouble? May life be taken so that trouble can be avoided? And to have the ability to help, to be explicitly, voluntarily entrusted with the responsibility to help, and refuse to do so is helping the law take the life of that woman, have no doubt. There is not even the poor excuse of passivity. That is a choice made by professionals fully aware of the possible consequences. But the sacrifice is made. Blood for freedom, or less. Blood for the avoidance of the possibility of the loss of freedom. Delicious capitulation, sweet rejection of those ethics and moralities and faiths and personal beliefs that would say treating her was the right and good thing no matter what the law says. What of the doctor's families? What of her family? There is the sacrifice, her life and their light so your own doorway may not be darkened by any grief but whatever guilt you indulge yourself with. And how many Christians would say that those doctor's families coming first is only logical action when their own holy book chastises them in the Gospel of Matthew for this small thinking “if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How many philosophies have developed and been claimed as popular inspirations say similar things? Is it not conspicuously common for the urgings of heroes, martyrs, and saints to higher service to be on the lips of pontificators and public speakers? Yet, these justifications, these compromises to the point of surrender, come so easily and are nodded along with by so many. Why?
Because that is Moloch's most subtle tool. There is human sacrifice, there is the cost of business and progress, there is acceptable collateral damage, and then there is, at last, compromise with reality. Why walk a narrow path when you can so easily conform to his rule? Why do what you believe you should when you can let trouble pass instead? These justifications come so easily because that is how even the least of us bargain with Moloch. You argue against our own sense of righteousness because if it is acceptable for those doctors, someone with a chosen duty given special trust, to betray that trust and duty and whatever personal beliefs they have to make their lives easier, then you have made it acceptable for simple, humble, little old you to do so too. You lay the groundwork for rationalizing your own betrayals, you consent to Moloch's bloody order, hoping that you will not be among the sacrifices rather than reject it by choosing to truly give up anything. When you choose to let those doctors make the sacrifice, you make it too. You help to light the fires. You help prepare the furnace. You help to bind the feet and hands. Blood for the mere sake of being able to spill blood when it may be convenient without having to feel like you have done so. And then, to add some sort of meaning to the senseless death, it becomes something close to that original, blatant human sacrifice anyway. The woman is made into a martyr, a symbol of a cause. In death she is transformed into something more than what she was, she is a thing to be invoked to grant moral clarity. A human life, taken and made to work as part of some greater purpose, all the while the justifications still flow and the bloody-handed are forgiven, allowed to invoke her too even. For all the abstraction, the process has hardly changed.
No one has perfect moral clarity, no one has perfect courage, or knowledge of how to act. But stack up what you have truly given up without gain against what has been given up by others to provide you with the life you have. Weigh them against each other and ask “would my god, or hero, or inspiration recognize me by my deeds if they were to weigh them to?” I think in most cases the honest answer will be no. But that's alright. There is time to change. There is time as long as you are alive to find ways big and small to spit in Moloch's eye. I am weary of his interventions, and would prefer the shape of things to be guided by our own better natures and the gentle hands of – the opportunity of ends provided by – that less intrusive old king Death. And I would prefer that if there is any god above, they be a Demiurge hard at work with the gradual improvement of fundamental nature of existence so that we may reach some gentle place quite like apokatastasis if we to can manage to improve ourselves, a craftsman god too busy and understanding of our plight to try and judge our limited selves against a code it made with the benefit of divine knowing.
If you believe in any god that is just and capable of wrath, I have a word of advice. Despair. Moloch cannot save his world. It will burn, bright and long, and everything built upon its principles will melt away in agony. Consider your concessions to reality, consider them against your principled rejections of it. Humanity often finds it hard to forgive,but we are capable of granting forgiveness freely.Divines can perhaps forgive anything,anytime,but even small measures of forgiveness are often contingent and conditional. If the scales are not in your favor, and you are not forgiven, you are among the wicked, and without change your woe will be beyond comprehension. Consider the sum total of the suffering of everyone you sacrificed, and know yours will be far greater.
Furthermore, I consider Palestine to need to be freed.