Witz полностью

Still, despite any fanaticism for accuracy, for accountability, no one really knows how many of them opt to enlist; futz, the Record sure schrifts the wit out of me: numbers have been censused, then censured upon the request of the convert, expunged, slated for wipe, at least any documentation still extant’s been made inaccessible to better than us, classified best to forget it, topsecret of the bottomless drawer — offlimits to all even a rough estimate tamed gentle then leashed to an iron disclaimer as to how many of them are taking their keepers, their executioners, their saviors and trainers up on such a scandalous opportunity (with excellent benefits, good dental & health, twoweeks’ paid vacation’s the hope), such a horrendous occasion on which to become one of them, one with them. Most won’t talk about it, won’t darken their mouths. Unknown, then, not only what sum but also what kind — what why they go and shirk from death, to avail themselves of a falsified salvation; unknown who exactly birthwise, bloodwise, Judas themselves to exult in such debasement (yes, many have suggested, perhaps for their most secret souls it’s a matter of the Gnostic: sanctity as merited through sin, that old spiel), then up and leave their lines linedup to execution, two-by-two to gas and fire, there just outside the fray to untie the knot that was their rope, drop their pants, strip the rest, immediately exchange uniforms — new garb pressed and kept at the ready, personalized since before any of them ever were born — to reveal to all the makeshift of a new demeanor, to take on yet another development, on the wing, on the fly: shifts of wind, crossroadchoices, personalitychange. Then, to become as guards to their own, to their kin, colleagues of the armed menschs who now welcome the converted with gun, open arms — to become the executioners of their own families, whom they’d kill to survive, they have to, responsible for the others they’ve had to remove themselves from, to belong, the communities they’ve had to excommunicate from the lonely midst of their congregation of one, if only to become, mutatis mutandis, ultimately worthy of an incontrovertible shame: the humiliation of averting their own martyrdom, and so betraying belief for the infamy of a deeper, holier doubt. Of course, it’s been said, this is probably only a few of them, an embarrassed handful or so — or so we’re assured by a source no one’s entitled to extirpate or name. Most don’t need to be their own Jeremiah or Ezekiel, don’t need to dream the dreams of an Isaiah, or require the interpretations of a Joseph son of Israel to get the idea: how this is once-in-a-life, and yet though it means death, it’s a wonderful one, this martyrdom, and how you just can’t pass that up — how infrequently an opportunity like this would come around, goes the campsite, campfireside argument between husband and wife, how often they’re asking each other, themselves, did an opportunity like this really arise back when we had the numbers, the majoritycount? As for the kinder, they have their own say in the matter, are mandated their own, personalized, final solutions — having been assigned to an attachment of guidance counselors, a phalanx of baccalaureate advisors — irrespective of parental decision. Would all fundamentalists please report to the fundament? Thank you. Agnostics in agon, atheists placing faith in only themselves — putting egg after orphaned egg into one blackened basket, Miriam’s, reedwreathed, to be sent down that river that flows to a land called Posterity, located far in the west. In the end, it’s better to decry everything under the sun as older even than the foreskin of the unbelievable, born just the day before untenable, up all night crying colic without viability, than to harm even one single hair upon the Godhead; to pluck it as bald as the death of a chicken, and then to argue what came first — the Word become flesh, first scaly, then feathered, then molting in names — whether the yolk or the egg.