Once upon a time ……. In Europe

Once upon a time there was a fairy kingdom that lived inside a place called Brussels and was surrounded on all four sides by a land called Europe containing the Outer Realms. Brussels is aligned with another kingdom called Strasbourg. Both are inhabited by disembodied heads that speak from the walls of bars, and with yet another closed kingdom called Berlin, the abode of Brunnhilde and her Only Party. These Kingdoms are in eternal political syzygy and speak not with the people of the surrounding lands, of whom they know nothing. The following is a chronicle of what could befell them, and why.

After years of peace, the Kingdoms were taken greatly aback by the rise of the BREXIT Monster, their surprise being proof that they know nothing of the Outer Realms. They know nothing for good reasons, of which there are two. The first is that they pass their lives with each other and among each other and talking to each other and writing about each other and reading about each other behind the high walls of their Kingdoms. In organs of their own Insider community they endlessly write stories of the form ‘A soothsayer in Brussels replies to what some other sayer of sooth in Strasbourg said about yet another’s attack on someone else’.

They all dwell in monasteries called the EU Commission and the EU Council, where they are indoctrinated that they are the wisest of men, and inerrant. They have no idea that they are so hated in the strange lands without their walls, which on their maps are drawn as fog with notations such as ‘Here dwelleth dragons’. They do not know that there are people who agreed not with them. Were they not right about all things?

The other reason for their puzzlement is a powerful spell called ’Political Correctness’. This strong magic prevents the outlanders from saying anything that the Three Kingdoms do not want to hear. Anyone who engages incantations are branded slurs, which are truthful thoughts about sacred tribes, or who say inappropriate things about a certain little country whose only importance is being that it produces vast wealth for the Kingdoms, is now thrown into durance vile. Thus, the Three Kingdoms never hear anything they don’t like, and so believe that almost everyone without the walls loves them. They have scarce an idea what furies are roiling and boiling and stirring under the surface of the Outer Realms.

Now, until the BREXIT Monster appeared, the Three Kingdoms were ruled by a pseudo-democracy of one Bicephalous Party with two names. The Only Party consists of blackguards and quislings and pickpockets bought and paid for by the plutocratic oligarchy of large corporations, and the very rich. These tell the two halves of the One Party what to do. Every four years there is played a great tournament in which candidates of the Two Names of the One Party engaged in the most savage combat imaginable.  This is to distract the people outside the walls in the Outer Realms. Afterwards, nothing changes and all goes on as before though the division of the spoils may shift a little.

And in their ignorance and pride, the Three Kingdoms now engender a monster called BREXIT, and it has bitten them.

The Only Party always controls the villains because it controls the choice of pretenders to the throne. A pretender gains the Presidency by paying homage to the Only Party, and the rich who provide that money controls, as vassals, those who accept it. The pretenders are as straw and melons sold in a market.

Furthermore, the scribes and oracles of the Kingdoms say aloud only those things that are meet for the surrounding serfs to hear.  The persistent spell of Political Correctness amounts to a societal mute button and prevents the Holy Orders within the Three Kingdoms from noticing what stirs without.

Until the BREXIT Monster came raging, slouching toward Bethlehem, with which the Kingdoms confuse themselves.

And there is fright, and desperation, and rending of teeth, and gnashing of hair, for many are the rice bowls threatened.

The darkest of horrors is that the serfs might come to choose the manner of their government. For long years, the Bicephalous Party had presided over that most desirable form of democracy in which the people have no power. This laudable state they have maintained by never talking about anything of substance, such as unending wars in remote lands beyond the edges of the maps, or the importation of slaves from curious and unwholesome countries, or the manufacturers of all things by foreign dwarves, or the satiate life of the Insiders within the kingdoms.

A great broil now ensues. The people of the little country see for the first time a chance to manage their destinies and rise up for the BREXIT Monster.  Inside Brussels, the Wise and Good – for do they not so denominate themselves? – are greatly astonished. ‘What manner of wight can this be?’ they ask in wonder. They say that the BREXIT Monster is beguiling fools, the cracked, and those who represented the worst in Europe. And the scribes and oracles are sore afraid, for most of the outlying populace appear to belong to these tribes.

One of the Two Names of the Only Party have sent forth their dreadful creature, Brunnhilde, to fight in single combat with the BREXIT Monster. Her very visage turns men to stone, it is said. She is held to be of one blood with Boadica, Jeanne d’Arc, and Lucretia Borgia.

The Three Kingdoms are at one with her, as she has corrupted them to her ways, being mendacious, and ugly, as well as suffering coughing fits and dizzy spells. Surely, say the scribes and oracles, any monster must fly screaming from her mere presence.

Yet it seems that BREXIT is no common monster. Every time it is beset by the scribes and oracles of Brussels, it grows stronger, and a sulfurous smoke breathes from its mouth. With drawn swords the BREXIT Monster and the crumbling ruin yclept Brunnhilde circle each other.

And beyond the parapets and crenellations of the three Kingdoms the sky grows darker. Inside Brussels and in Strasbourg, the disembodied heads rail and rage, but with every blast, the helots joint the BREXIT Monster in larger numbers, for they hate the Insiders. In Berlin, the half-educated narcissists say ever more stupid things, but these have not their usual effect.

In their pride, the Three Kingdoms had engendered Nemesis, and they watch in terror behind the ramparts as the sky grows darker and strange shapes twist in the looming clouds as the BREXIT Monster strides ever nearer, breathing fire.