the real crisis (guest blog by h. pruitt landsman)
Hello, friends! Rob here. Although I'm not actually here today! Today I thought it would be fun to turn the blog over to a colleague, my good friend H. Pruitt Landsman. Always outspoken, sometimes controversial, and never wrong, HPL (as his fans call him) is a popular media personality whose signature brand of provocative, hard-hitting entertainment journalism has attracted a sizeable and devoted YouTube following in his home village, which is an isolated agrarian society nestled in the foothills of a huge volcano that they worship as a god. (Mr. Landsman insisted that this next part be included in his introduction) Check your feelings at the door, snowflakes- you're entering the Fact-O-Sphere(TM)!
Enough is enough.
The self-appointed “experts” have had their fun. We tried it their way. We shut down. We sheltered in place. We sacrificed our personal liberties. And for what? To “save lives?” How can anyone claim that the drastic preventative measures we've taken against the Great Pestilence are saving lives when, to date, the Great Pestilence has claimed fewer lives in our village than heart disease or ox-cart mishaps? Looks like the eggheads got this one wrong, folks. No surprise here.
Meanwhile, the real crisis has been unfolding not in the huts of our herbalists, but in our untended fields. Every day we stay at home is a day of harvest wasted in service of overabundant caution. We need to get this village back to work. The lamestream media will accuse a pragmatist like myself of “putting economics before people.” Well, last I checked, economies are people, too. And our economy is on the ropes. If we fail to safeguard the prosperity of our village, then who can say what the human cost will be? We cannot continue to cower in our homes. We need to get back to the fields and open this village back up. No baby steps, no half-measures- the time for caution is behind us. We have to do everything we can to ensure that we bounce back stronger than before. This is why it is absolutely imperative that we heed our Chieftan's urgings and uphold our village's age-old tradition of casting virginal human sacrifices into the Great Volcano in order to bring about a bountiful harvest.
I know, I know, traditional values aren't really “politically correct” these days. I even hear tell that some of the young people in our village are looking to abolish the practice of ritualistic human sacrifice altogether. Okay, millennials. Entitled much? Just try telling that to all the virgins who were already sacrificed. Try looking them in the eye and explaining why your generation is too good to be dragged up the slope of the Great Volcano under the light of a waxing moon and hurled over its terrifying precipice, whence you will plummet towards a fiery death, hands bound to ankles, keening in rapturous agony as your very essence sublimates and becomes one with the molten blood of our immutable stone God.
Can't do it, can you? That's why none of you have the guts to debate me.
And sure, human sacrifice can be uncomfortable if you're one of the humans being sacrificed, but look at it this way: for the majority of the population, the risk of being incinerated alive in order to provide sustenance for a wrathful deity is actually pretty low. Unless you happen to be a young maiden, flaxen of hair, and born between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, the odds that our ancient scrying rituals will ordain you as one of our blessed sacrifices are practically zero. Our Chieftan is wise and knows a great many things, and he is right that the only way to quell the wroth of our vengeful magma lord and get our economy going again is to use those esoteric rituals to select an even number of virgins and hurl them into the yawning chasm at the summit of the Great Volcano. In uncertain times like these, we don't need to hear from a bunch of nerds who think they know what's best for you and your family just because they've spent their entire lives studying the specific phenomenon we're currently encountering. We need broad-shouldered, steely-eyed leaders like our Chieftan- leaders who aren't afraid to say what we're all thinking and do what is necessary to appease the Great Volcano.
Because volcano-sacrifice works. Period. Doubters will point out that the village to the east immolated a handful of their virgins in the gasping maw of the earth, and now we are hearing whispers of a “second wave” of the Great Pestilence sweeping over their lands. Well, of course they had a second wave. They're the ones that brought about the Pestilence in the first place! I know, I know- I can practically hear the PC police coming to kick down my door. Those braying buffoons keep insisting that the story about how the Great Pestilence was born when an Eastlander feasted on unclean meat is “a misconception,” or “nakedly xenophobic.” Don't listen to those snowflakes. I know it's true because I saw a meme of it.
Facts: 1, feelings: 0.
It's not like we have a better option. We've all heard the fairy tales about the isles to the north: “they don't engage in any sort of ritualized bloodletting or living cremation, and yet they are able to provide for their people as they retreat from their fields and quiet their thoroughfares for weeks on end! Surely the notion that our only options for getting through this crisis are 'starve in our homes' and 'appoint a small portion of the populace to die horribly for the sake of economic stability' must be a false dichotomy!” Well, first of all: ooh, wow, “false dichotomy.” Nice ten-cent phrase you got there- I bet it's worth about as much as your liberal arts degree. Second, that kind of thing could never work in our village. The barbarians in the north live by the reprehensible taboo of one-many-all, wherein a portion of all that is gathered in the forests and plucked from the streams is kept in a centralized greatlodge and may be accessed by any villager in times of need. It's crazy. They can just visit their herbalists for treatment any time they feel sick, without first bartering away several years' worth of grain to a parasitic intermediary! Truly, they are a backwards and savage people.
Not like us. In this village, we believe in giving people a hand up, not a hand-out. We know the value of hard work. We know it is a good and noble thing to toil in service of the patriarchs of our village's seven oldest and greatest families. It is by the wisdom and direction of the Elder Heptumvirate that we may awaken at the first strands of dawn and dig ruts in the fields with our bare hands until the sun retreats over the shoulder of the Great Volcano. We all know that it would be folly for a common villager to indulge in the bounties availed to the Elders in the Hall of Plenty. If you had toiled hard enough to count yourself among the men welcomed into that blessed Hall- as did the current Heptumvirate, and their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers before them- then certainly you wouldn't want a bunch of freeloaders snatching food off of your cartoonishly oversized banquet table in order to create some sort of “safety net” for the people of the village whose menial drudgeries- drudgeries that were created by the Heptumvirate, I might add- don't provide them with the means to endure a single late-spring cold snap. The Elders already sent everyone in the village a relief package consisting of three crow's eggs and a sheaf of wheat. What more could you possibly want?
Our society was built upon three pillars: hard work, family values, and satiating the immensurable bloodlust of our fathomless God-mountain. This is how our village works, and this is how it has worked for untold generations. We can't just change stuff in order to make people's lives better. That is why it is imperative that we take whatever means necessary to get our people back out in the fields and open our economy back up. If that means chucking a few virgins into the unquenchable fire at the heart of the earth, then so be it. If I were a pure and nubile young woman of this village, I would happily cast myself into the smoldering jaws of the Great Volcano in order to put more food on the banquet table in the Hall of Plenty. As we all know, the more food we endeavor to lay upon that great table, the more will be left over for the rest of us once the Heptumvirate have eaten their nightly fill. So let's roll up our sleeves and get to work. For the good of our society- nay, for the good of all the peoples of the world, who look upon our great and prosperous village for guidance- we must uphold our sacred tradition of casting virgins into the Great Volcano. Let's get this harvest back on track!
