That brings me back! Fool. All rebellions are ordinary and an ultimate bore. They are copied out of the same pattern, one much like another. The driving force is adrenalin addiction and the desire to gain personal power. All rebels are closet aristocrats. That’s why I can convert them so easily.
Why do the Duncans never really hear me when I tell them about this? I have had the argument with this very Duncan. It was one of our earliest confrontations and right here in the crypt.
“The art of government requires that you never give up the initiative to radical elements,” he said.
How pedantic. Radicals crop up in every generation and you must not try to prevent this. That’s what he means by “give up the initiative.” He wants to crush them, suppress them, control them, prevent them. He is living proof that there is little difference between the police mind and the military mind.
I told him, “Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.”
“They are dangerous. They are dangerous!” He thinks that by repeating he creates some kind of truth.
Slowly, step by step, I lead him through my method and he even gives the appearance of listening.
“This is their weakness, Duncan. Radicals always see matters in terms which are too simple—black and white, good and evil, them and us. By addressing complex matters in that way, they rip open a passage for chaos. The art of government as you call it, is the mastery of chaos.”
“No one can deal with every surprise.”
“Surprise? Who’s talking about surprise? Chaos is no surprise. It has predictable characteristics. For one thing, it carries away order and strengthens the forces at the extremes.”
“Isn’t that what radicals are trying to do? Aren’t they trying to shake things up so they can grab control?”
“That’s what they think they’re doing. Actually, they’re creating new extremists, new radicals and they are continuing the old process.”
“What about a radical who sees the complexities and comes at you that way?”
“That’s no radical. That’s a rival for leadership.”
“But what do you do?”
“You co-opt them or kill them. That’s how the struggle for leadership originated, at the grunt level.”
“Yes, but what about messiahs?”
“Like my father?”
The Duncan does not like this question. He knows that in a very special way I am my father. He knows I can speak with my father’s voice and persona, that the memories are precise, never edited and inescapable.
