Old theme: Choose your wishes wisely.
VERSION ONE
Characters: Comrade Mephistovsky
Contract soldiers
Conscripts
ACT ONE
Scene: RUSSIA—All of it, that is, plus some allied places
Comrade Mephistovsky: Sign this temporary contract to fight in Ukraine, and you will receive…
Contract Soldier 1: Where do we sign? Can we keep what we take from the dead? Will we be home in time to plant the potatoes?
C M: Sign here. And Yes, and Yes. And there will be women to rape and houses to plunder. The Ukrainians will run from our military thunder.
ACT TWO
Scene: Ukraine—eastern
Contract Soldier 1: Where is Comrade Mephistovsky?
Contract Soldier 2: He said he was going back for more supplies, but that was a month ago. I want to go home, but the Wagner Group has guns trained on us if we turn to flee.
Contract Soldier 1: My wife says we have never received a payment on my contract.
Contract Soldier 2: Look, here come some conscripts. Finally! Some help…Where are your weapons? You can’t fight without weapons!
Conscripts: They said we would get them from the dead.
ACT THREE;
Scene: Hell
Contract Soldier 1: I’m hit. Take me to the medics.
Contract Soldier 2: Sorry, Comrade, but like me, you signed up voluntarily. We can’t turn to go back, or we’ll be shot. Blyat!
Contract Soldier 1: Hello! Aunt. Tell my family to get me out. What? No, I can’t bring you something from Ukraine. It’s Hell here.
Contract Soldier 2: Look! It’s Mephistovsky. What’s he doing?
Contract Soldier 1: He’s robbing our own dead.
VERSION TWO
Characters: Adam
Eve
IN ONE ACT
Scene: The West—meaning western culture, most of it, from Europe through the Americas to the western-thinking land called Australia
Adam: There’s really not much one can do to change things. Big Money, Big Press, and Big Government make decisions that affect large portions of the planet. What can the little people do?
Eve: You can stand up like the Chinese who are rebelling over oppressive shutdowns, like the Russians who are rebelling over conscription into a senseless war, or like the Iranians who are rebelling against a brutal theocracy.
Adam: You know how all that will turn out. Xi will send in the military, and the Russians and Iranians will use their secret police and regular police to suppress the rebels. The protesters are as doomed to fail as were the Hungarians in 1956, the Chinese in 1989 in Tiananmen Square, and the Tibetans in 2008. Those in power will not relinquish their power. Their brutality knows no bounds because they do not personally carry out their orders. They remain indifferent to the plight of those they rule.
Eve: I know that most people don’t have the bravery to protest against powerful governments. I also know that once the Press is a controlled agent of a political party, there is little one can do to defend against relentless attacks unless…unless one is Big Money. Big Money can provide itself an immunity. But the little guy is pretty much helpless, especially when Big Money supports Big Government that controls Big Press.
Adam: Yes, I have seen the scenario play out repeatedly over the past decades, getting worse as the Bigs grow bigger. And the irony is that the little guy keeps the Bigs in power by voting for Big Government, listening to Big Press, and supporting the products of Big Money. Modern people are very much caught in the same kind of endless cycle that trapped coal miners in the early twentieth century. The coal companies owned the land, owned the houses on them, owned the company store, and they kept their workers in a cyclic impoverishment. Workers lived in company houses as long as they worked for the company; they had to buy from the company store that simply gave the profits back to the company; and when a mining accident took the life of a miner, his family had to provide another worker or move out. Miners and their families found escaping the cycle nearly impossible. That seems to be the story of today’s population: Work for Big Money; buy Big Money’s products; pay Big Money’s bills; stay in relative impoverishment through Big Government’s taxes and innumerable regulations; and take in all the propaganda from Big Press that argues things could never be better.
It just dawned on me that most Americans, Europeans, and Canadians who pay attention to the news, probably think the propaganda behind the Russian media’s support for Putin’s war is obvious, but for some reason cannot see the propaganda to which the Bigs subject them. The exertion of control over the little guy is a relentless process that wears down those who protest. The little guy’s own obeisance to the Bigs occurs in the context of no reciprocation.
Eve: As in Big Government’s control over education?
Adam: Not just Big Gov’s control, but Big Union’s control. Look at the manipulation of young minds by a select few with an indoctrination agenda. I can’t imagine how we’ll get past the last few years of teaching people what to think rather than how to think.
Eve: But look at what the two of us are doing? We’re simply repeating the obvious. Who cannot see how the Bigs control the masses? The question still becomes one about personal action: What are you going to do about it, Adam?
Adam: You’re right. Morning diner talk at best. Your questions are rhetorical. We’re not different from the retirees meeting in the local coffee shop, the barber shop, or the diner making the same complaints daily while taking no measurable action. Those who discover the entrapment by the Bigs usually do so without recourse. They dwell in the company houses, buy at the company store, and renew the cycle of feckless futility.
Eve: I guess we are, that is, many of us are, modern versions of Faust. We’ve sold our soul for the promises of Big Mephistopheles. Big M has bought our individual integrity, or rather, has allowed us to purchase our integrity at his profit. I think of those Russians who were told they could earn some money if they signed a contract to fight in Putin’s “special operation” in Ukraine. Then, finding themselves in a Hell they hadn’t envisioned when they signed, the soldiers discover that the promise was empty.
Adam: I like the analogy. If we look around, we see the rotten fruit of our choice to sign. I think of the Mephistophelean educators who have lured hundreds of thousands into academic pursuits that will lead to a life of servitude or impoverishment, or to a life in “the company village.” And tied to a socialist-leaning government that holds up the carrot of loan forgiveness, the young give away their future freedoms so that Big Party can stay in control. They see the loan forgiveness in the context of their present, and not in the context of a bill that will come due in increased taxes. Egged on by a complicit Press comprised of reporters who also have college loans to pay, the young see themselves in an eternal present and believe Mephistopheles will never show up to collect his due. Trust me. We’ve both seen this promise before, back when we lived in The Garden. Damned Snake Mephisto!
Eve: I remember reading William A. Henry III’s In Defense of Elitism. In it he argues that a long-standing battle between striving for excellence and striving for equity was being won by forces of the latter for the purpose of population control. In equity, only those who already have get more. The Bigs stay big. He also writes about Margaret Mead’s speculation that the United States was entering a new Dark Ages of medieval mysticism and mumbo-jumbo, of belief based on self-interest, mob politics, and fear rather than research and open-minded inquiry.” (3)* Like those Russians who will be shot by other Russians if they try to flee, we people in the West will be endlessly harassed by the minions of the Bigs if we attempt to reverse the trend.
Adam: Mead was right. We’re living in that Hell now. Way back in The Garden, we signed a contract with Mephisto for a life of ease, thinking that it was an eternal contract. And now we find the contract is coming to an end. We’ve given up much to gain little.
*New York. Anchor Books. 1994.
VERSION ONE
Characters: Comrade Mephistovsky
Contract soldiers
Conscripts
ACT ONE
Scene: RUSSIA—All of it, that is, plus some allied places
Comrade Mephistovsky: Sign this temporary contract to fight in Ukraine, and you will receive…
Contract Soldier 1: Where do we sign? Can we keep what we take from the dead? Will we be home in time to plant the potatoes?
C M: Sign here. And Yes, and Yes. And there will be women to rape and houses to plunder. The Ukrainians will run from our military thunder.
ACT TWO
Scene: Ukraine—eastern
Contract Soldier 1: Where is Comrade Mephistovsky?
Contract Soldier 2: He said he was going back for more supplies, but that was a month ago. I want to go home, but the Wagner Group has guns trained on us if we turn to flee.
Contract Soldier 1: My wife says we have never received a payment on my contract.
Contract Soldier 2: Look, here come some conscripts. Finally! Some help…Where are your weapons? You can’t fight without weapons!
Conscripts: They said we would get them from the dead.
ACT THREE;
Scene: Hell
Contract Soldier 1: I’m hit. Take me to the medics.
Contract Soldier 2: Sorry, Comrade, but like me, you signed up voluntarily. We can’t turn to go back, or we’ll be shot. Blyat!
Contract Soldier 1: Hello! Aunt. Tell my family to get me out. What? No, I can’t bring you something from Ukraine. It’s Hell here.
Contract Soldier 2: Look! It’s Mephistovsky. What’s he doing?
Contract Soldier 1: He’s robbing our own dead.
VERSION TWO
Characters: Adam
Eve
IN ONE ACT
Scene: The West—meaning western culture, most of it, from Europe through the Americas to the western-thinking land called Australia
Adam: There’s really not much one can do to change things. Big Money, Big Press, and Big Government make decisions that affect large portions of the planet. What can the little people do?
Eve: You can stand up like the Chinese who are rebelling over oppressive shutdowns, like the Russians who are rebelling over conscription into a senseless war, or like the Iranians who are rebelling against a brutal theocracy.
Adam: You know how all that will turn out. Xi will send in the military, and the Russians and Iranians will use their secret police and regular police to suppress the rebels. The protesters are as doomed to fail as were the Hungarians in 1956, the Chinese in 1989 in Tiananmen Square, and the Tibetans in 2008. Those in power will not relinquish their power. Their brutality knows no bounds because they do not personally carry out their orders. They remain indifferent to the plight of those they rule.
Eve: I know that most people don’t have the bravery to protest against powerful governments. I also know that once the Press is a controlled agent of a political party, there is little one can do to defend against relentless attacks unless…unless one is Big Money. Big Money can provide itself an immunity. But the little guy is pretty much helpless, especially when Big Money supports Big Government that controls Big Press.
Adam: Yes, I have seen the scenario play out repeatedly over the past decades, getting worse as the Bigs grow bigger. And the irony is that the little guy keeps the Bigs in power by voting for Big Government, listening to Big Press, and supporting the products of Big Money. Modern people are very much caught in the same kind of endless cycle that trapped coal miners in the early twentieth century. The coal companies owned the land, owned the houses on them, owned the company store, and they kept their workers in a cyclic impoverishment. Workers lived in company houses as long as they worked for the company; they had to buy from the company store that simply gave the profits back to the company; and when a mining accident took the life of a miner, his family had to provide another worker or move out. Miners and their families found escaping the cycle nearly impossible. That seems to be the story of today’s population: Work for Big Money; buy Big Money’s products; pay Big Money’s bills; stay in relative impoverishment through Big Government’s taxes and innumerable regulations; and take in all the propaganda from Big Press that argues things could never be better.
It just dawned on me that most Americans, Europeans, and Canadians who pay attention to the news, probably think the propaganda behind the Russian media’s support for Putin’s war is obvious, but for some reason cannot see the propaganda to which the Bigs subject them. The exertion of control over the little guy is a relentless process that wears down those who protest. The little guy’s own obeisance to the Bigs occurs in the context of no reciprocation.
Eve: As in Big Government’s control over education?
Adam: Not just Big Gov’s control, but Big Union’s control. Look at the manipulation of young minds by a select few with an indoctrination agenda. I can’t imagine how we’ll get past the last few years of teaching people what to think rather than how to think.
Eve: But look at what the two of us are doing? We’re simply repeating the obvious. Who cannot see how the Bigs control the masses? The question still becomes one about personal action: What are you going to do about it, Adam?
Adam: You’re right. Morning diner talk at best. Your questions are rhetorical. We’re not different from the retirees meeting in the local coffee shop, the barber shop, or the diner making the same complaints daily while taking no measurable action. Those who discover the entrapment by the Bigs usually do so without recourse. They dwell in the company houses, buy at the company store, and renew the cycle of feckless futility.
Eve: I guess we are, that is, many of us are, modern versions of Faust. We’ve sold our soul for the promises of Big Mephistopheles. Big M has bought our individual integrity, or rather, has allowed us to purchase our integrity at his profit. I think of those Russians who were told they could earn some money if they signed a contract to fight in Putin’s “special operation” in Ukraine. Then, finding themselves in a Hell they hadn’t envisioned when they signed, the soldiers discover that the promise was empty.
Adam: I like the analogy. If we look around, we see the rotten fruit of our choice to sign. I think of the Mephistophelean educators who have lured hundreds of thousands into academic pursuits that will lead to a life of servitude or impoverishment, or to a life in “the company village.” And tied to a socialist-leaning government that holds up the carrot of loan forgiveness, the young give away their future freedoms so that Big Party can stay in control. They see the loan forgiveness in the context of their present, and not in the context of a bill that will come due in increased taxes. Egged on by a complicit Press comprised of reporters who also have college loans to pay, the young see themselves in an eternal present and believe Mephistopheles will never show up to collect his due. Trust me. We’ve both seen this promise before, back when we lived in The Garden. Damned Snake Mephisto!
Eve: I remember reading William A. Henry III’s In Defense of Elitism. In it he argues that a long-standing battle between striving for excellence and striving for equity was being won by forces of the latter for the purpose of population control. In equity, only those who already have get more. The Bigs stay big. He also writes about Margaret Mead’s speculation that the United States was entering a new Dark Ages of medieval mysticism and mumbo-jumbo, of belief based on self-interest, mob politics, and fear rather than research and open-minded inquiry.” (3)* Like those Russians who will be shot by other Russians if they try to flee, we people in the West will be endlessly harassed by the minions of the Bigs if we attempt to reverse the trend.
Adam: Mead was right. We’re living in that Hell now. Way back in The Garden, we signed a contract with Mephisto for a life of ease, thinking that it was an eternal contract. And now we find the contract is coming to an end. We’ve given up much to gain little.
*New York. Anchor Books. 1994.
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