It turned out the Earth really was flat.
All of his data, which he knew to trust unconditionally and whose accuracy was beyond reproach, had been tweaked and re-tweaked. He had corrected for a decimal place here, a pixel there, and—Voila! We were so wrong all these years. About so many things. There was a new wind a-blowin'. Perhaps Earth exploration needed a new manifest destiny.
To the edge!
He thought about those conquerors who had gotten too close. Had their expansionist ambitions sent them over into the abyss?
He invoked Revelation 7:1:
“I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back its four winds.”
He extrapolated by invoking Euclid:
Three points make a plane; four corners make Earth flat!
Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel were his protection from the four winds—Boreas from the North; Zephyrus, the West; Notus, the South; and Eurus, the East.
He knew winds, however favorable, abruptly turn. Fair winds can foul as capriciously as ill winds can lose their stench. Things can change. So could people.
He invoked Dylan:
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the winds blow."
He worshipped the daily breaking news and saw the winds of change: monarchies changed to democracies, then to aristocracies, then to plutocracies, then to autocracies.
And from theocracy…
…to idiocracy.
He invoked the philosopher, Sumus Cocoonus, of Sango Jingo:
"Sometimes a democracy just gets what it deserves, and that’d be funny if it weren’t about our democracy."
Is it really about truth and justice and the American way? he wondered. Really, Superman? What would Nietzsche say? Was Übermensch born under a red sun? What would Jor-El say?
He considered the kings who had risen and fallen; societies that had experimented wildly; all of those great-idea revolutions. And the many suffering persecution for justice's sake. Did any get their kingdom of Heaven?
He invoked Townsend:
“Meet the new boss; same as the old boss!”
He knew history.
There were some who made that history in 1776, and all in one day. Others abroad reconsidered what they suffered under; what they had; and what they allowed to either mellow or sour, via revolt or complacency, respectively. Some change and get along; some don't.
Many can never.
And it doesn’t matter if those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it; those who do, repeat it, anyway.
His epiphany, all tidy and wrapped up in a neat, square Earth, was that a democracy gets what it wants before it just gets what it deserves. And the body politic, the madding crowd, simply can shove anyone who subscribes to the Globe Theory to the side until they just fall off the edge.
"Such righteousness, on our good, flat Earth," he shouted triumphantly, "is in the Bible! It's Divine Right! It’s divine, right?”
I always assumed this was some sort of DEI thing.... 🤷♂️
I think some of this was codified in the other five Commandments that Moses dropped and broke on the mountain. I wish someone had saved those pieces and reconstructed them. I’m sure XI-XV would come in handy for this discussion. 🤔