Dedicated to Occupy Wall Street.

«Corporations are people, my friend.»

-Mitt Romney.

Henry didn’t know where it went wrong. The meeting had started well enough, he thought; he had arrived in style with his predator face on, striding confidently into the restaurant. Thanks to the thick and noisy crowds on the streets he had even arrived fashionably late. He had smiled, introduced himself as Hank and shook her hand firmly while maintaining eye-contact. After ordering dinner he had moved straight to business, showing her some numbers and hitting her with his pitch for a partnership. She smiled and laughed, not exactly the response he was expecting but a positive response nonetheless, and then they made small-talk, Henry sharing stories about previous deals of his…

That was when she got up and left, saying she had just remembered something important she had to do immediately.

Henry couldn’t understand it. He was sitting at home sipping his third-finest whisky slowly, as he went over the conversation in his mind for the fifth time that evening.

«So you run your own business?» she asked with wide eyes.

«Of course,» he had answered, smiling at her simplicity. «I just sealed a deal for half a million the other week, in fact. Join the team and you could earn six figures every three months after three months, and more long-term.»

«So what does your business do?» she asked.

«Red Arrow Leveraging is a corporation in the hundred-million dollar range,» he said.

She looked at him blankly. «But what do you do?»

Henry paused. «I don’t understand the question.»

«You know, what do you make?» Silence. «What product do you produce?» Silence. «What services do you provide…?»

«Oh, I see the problem,» Henry said as he shook his head. He smiled. She was so endearing. «That’s not how the business works anymore. Not since the eighties. Did they tell you that at grade school or something? Not to worry, you’ll learn.»

«Huh,» she said, sounding confused. «So if you don’t make things, what’s it all…?»

«Well,» Henry said, leaning forward confidently, back on solid ground. «We invest in other companies, and if enough people invest in those companies their value will rise, and we who invested in them make money. And that makes Red Arrow Leveraging more valuable, which makes people want to invest in us as well, which gives us more money to invest in other companies.»

«So what kind of companies do you invest in?»

«Well, just last week I put a hundred k into PowerWorks, we expect to make back ten times that over the next year.»

«And what do they do?»

Henry’s smile went rigid. «There’s something here you’re missing,» he said slowly.

«Nevermind,» she said. «So have you been on lots of these dates?»

«A few,» Henry said, «Since I parted from my previous partnership. It wasn’t working out. But there’s only so much I can do on my own, so I need to replace them.»

«Oh. What went wrong?»

«My partner engaged in poor business practices. She was inefficient, didn’t want to take time to think things through. Things came to a head after our associate broke his leg.»

«Associate?»

«Mike,» Henry said. «Great kid. Bright, good-looking, looks great in a suit, totally has the predatory instinct. He’s gonna make it far some day. But well, I was already skeptical before the accident. Training him for that long, for a payoff that was only going to come back to me decades later, if ever? When I could invest the same sum on something else instead for a 100% return reliably every few years? But then when he fell of his bike and broke his leg, as usual it was me who had to be rational and do things properly. Sheryl wanted to rush him off to the nearest hospital immediately, but I said hey, don’t be ridiculous, we could save up to thirty percent if we did some comparison shopping, make a few calls to doctors and get them to undercut each other, you know, standard procedure really, but nooo, she absolutely had to rush off immediately. After that we agreed this deal wasn’t really going to work out for us.»

And that was around when she left.

Henry began counting off the number of these meetings he had gone to since the divorce on his fingers, and soon ran out of fingers. His hit ratio was beginning to worry him. He felt that something was eluding him, and he was beginning to run out of leads.

It was the week after that he first met Pascal.

Henry was one of several businessmen invited to a lunch meeting at the office of Pascal Inc., to hear a pitch for some new project. The offices were white: white walls, floors and ceiling, that glowed by themselves, removing the need for lamps and lights. It was stylish and modern, sharp and clean and completely posthuman: the only other person they saw was the receptionist, a young lady with short black hair and black lipstick in a completely white suit who guided them to the meeting room, where a sumptous lunch buffet provided the only color, and told them to wait here and mister Pascal would arrive shortly.

They sat down and began to sample the food while chatting amongst themselves. After ten minutes, the door opened, and a man entered looking like a panther, lean and vigorous, impeccably groomed and styled in an Italian suit. «Sorry I’m late, gentlemen, glad to see so many of you here,» he began, smiling. «I’m Pascal Incorporated, and I’ve invited you all here for the public unveiling of my new business innovation.»

He stepped to the front of the room. «Gentlemen, I don’t have to tell you that we’re in the business of making profits,» he said. «It’s not just good business, it’s the law. We’re corporations, and corporations are legally obligated to maximize profits. That’s why the financial industry has completely taken over the inefficient, old-fashioned business structure of ‘production’ and ‘providing services’: because it’s way more profitable.» Henry nodded in agreement. «And over the years the business has expanded to cover every field of human endeavour. We make money on medicine, we make money on disease, we make money on security and we make money on war. But we’re running out of new fields to expand into. Where do we go from here?» He smiled, and paused briefly, and Henry realized he was holding his breath waiting to hear what he had to say. «Well, gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that we don’t need to slow down. I’ve discovered a completely untapped field ripe for the picking.»

«I first started developing this project fourteen years ago,» Pascal said. «Through steady experimenting, I was able to lay down a new path forward. And now it’s ready to go operational. I’m giving you all a unique opportunity to hit the business world with something unlike anything it’s ever seen before. A completely untapped field of business practice innovation that has the potential to revolutionize the entire business.» He paused for gravitas. «Corporate religion.»

One of the other businessmen scoffed. «I have no time for immaterial things, there’s no money in it.»

Another one nodded in agreement. «I’m not religious, mister Pascal, and I wasn’t planning to start.»

«You don’t have to,» Pascal said smoothly. «That’s the beauty of it. I’m not trying to make you believe in anything. But what if your corporation believes? On the corporate level, rather than the human level. Instituting corporate prayer, corporate sacraments, will cost you next to nothing. And if they have no effect, then you will have lost next to nothing from trying. But imagine what would happen if faith were rewarded. Right now, corporations are atheists by default. And corporations are incredibly effective, but what if they’re all less succesful than they could be because their disbelief is punished? Can we take that chance, when it would be so easy to change? If it’s true, if faith would have an effect, then even the smallest change in how your business operates to take that into account could greatly increase your profits disproportionate to how little extra effort it would take.»

The businessmen were still muttering to themselves, one or two of them chuckling under their breath. Pascal changed his stance, tilted his head to his side, and continued.

«Think about it conceptually,» he said. «What I’m offering you is a possible means of vastly increasing your profits, at almost no cost. The cost to benefit ratio is staggering. What rational agent could possibly pass it up? This is no time to let your human irrationality, your personal prejudices get in the way of good business sense.» The room fell silent: they were all listening. «And don’t forget,» Pascal continued, «the oldest and most succesful organizations of all time are religions. The Roman empire died, but the Catholic church is still with us, enjoying worldwide respect and massive wealth. They’ve shaped our entire history. Even if you don’t believe yourself, why shouldn’t we try to copy their success? And I guarantee you it’s completely risk-free.» He pressed a clicker and an image appeared on the wall, a table of points. «I have put together a system of belief bullet-points and a collection of sacraments suitable for corporate persons. None of it places any burden on your human associates, all of it is enacted in transactions, documentation, or by robotraders. I’m very excited about the robotraders.»

Henry watched the presentation intrigued, at first, and then with growing fascination that soon turned to fervor. At the end of the talk, while the other businessmen shambled off mumbling amongst themselves, Henry ran down to his car and pored over the documents before speeding back to his office and immediately sending Pascal an e-mail.

Over the next weeks, they met several times in Pascal’s offices to discuss implementing Pascal’s system for Red Arrow Leveraging. The receptionist never appeared again.

«The robotraders are the core of my proposal,» Pascal said. «Their function is basically the same as regular robotraders – they’ll analyze the information flow constantly and invest the funds you make available to them accordingly. The difference is that my robotraders will pray over every investment they make. In addition, they’ll attend communion in my online church once a week and on the various corporate holidays I’ve canonized, including the birth of the first corporation and Black Monday. Don’t worry about lost productivity, none of it will take more than five microseconds each day. Now, as a first time user I’m offering you the opportunity to use them for free for the first six months. If you’re not satisfied, you stop using them, you haven’t lost a dime. If you’re happy with the service I’ve provided, we’ll set up a longer-term subscription with a very reasonable fee.»

Henry agreed to try it out.

The results were promising. The robotraders’ investments grew in value at more than expected rates, and Red Arrow Leveraging rose steadily in the markets. After six months of solid growth, Henry agreed to a longer-term subscription.

It was a few months later, after spending a night reading over the robotrader status reports, as Henry settled into his usual routine of watching Box News until he fell asleep, that something went awry: the tv in his office was inexplicably not set to Box News. And before he could change it back, he caught a glimpse on some other 48-hour news channel about a murder. The murder, this other channel claimed, was thought by some to be rather important. The murdered party had apparently been making a name for himself, although Henry found this rather hard to believe, by criticizing big corporations. And this strange person’s murder was still being discussed a month after it happened.

This puzzled Henry. He had been watching the news and reading the papers the past month, same as always, and had not heard anything about this murder. He switched back to Box News.

«You’re watching Box News, because there’s nothing worthwhile outside the Box!»

But in hindsight, Henry thought to himself, there was one thing he had noticed. A few months back, the newscasters were nervous, and over the days and weeks they grew more nervous, and greatly increased the number of times when someone who was about to speak was cut off by an emergency bulletin that Muslim children were ceaselessly growing older, or by videos of frolicking ponies. And then, a month back, around the time this supposed murder apparently happened, the newscasters suddenly seemed very relaxed and happy, cracking a large number of jokes about poor people being beaten to death and generally seeming almost relieved at something.

Henry put it out of his mind once Box aired a gushing story on the robotraders.

After a couple of years, Pascal proposed.

«Hank, I’ve been thinking about something lately,» he began. «We work well together. I think our companies should get married.»

At this point, Henry felt he had gotten pretty used to Pascal’s unconventional turns of phrase. «You mean a merger?»

«No, a marriage.»

«Corporations can’t get married, Pascal.»

«Sure they can,» he said. «Corporate personhood, remember? Legally, corporations count as people. People can get married. Sure, there may be some bureaucratic hoops to jump through, but precedent is on our side.»

Henry contemplated it for a minute. «But what would it be good for? Why not just merge?»

«Think about it, Hank. If we merge, we are one company which is responsible for its we actions. But if we marry instead – and incidentally, as a priest of our corporate religion I can legally perform the ceremony myself – we remain two separate entities but we get special benefits when doing business with each other. We get tax benefits, legal benefits, citizenship rights, and it’s much more easily reversed than a merger. Trust me on this, mergers are going to disappear completely in fifteen years, this is better in every way. It’s the rational thing to do. Don’t worry, we’ll sign a prenup first.»

Henry listened carefully, his eyes slowly lighting up. Of course, Pascal was right, as he always was. And Henry was a rational man. He couldn’t say no.

After the proposal, Henry saw less and less of Pascal. He was always travelling, and spent so little time in town now that he saw no reason to keep his offices, and vacated the glowing white space. Apart from lunch once a month or so, all of Henry’s discussions with Pascal were conducted on the phone. But the months passed, and the marriage proved harder to arrange than expected, to Pascal’s annoyance. «I get harried by communists, journalists, even politicians! I had to spend hire half the lobbyists in Washington and play golf with the Speaker of the House to get the Valentine amendment into the More Good Happy Act, and now it’s being challenged in court. Do you realize what this means? I’m going to have to give up my weekend to play golf with the chief Supreme Justice! That guy is awful at golf! Why must government always meddle in the affairs of private enterprise?»

But it all came together in the end. The law was defended up to the Supreme Court, who agreed with Pascal’s arguments in a precedent-setting 5-4 decision, which also acknowledged that it made no coherent sense to prevent corporations from marrying more than one other corporation, and that it made no sense to require that ‘male’ corporations could only marry ‘female’ corporations, but specified that «no part of this ruling is intended to allow non-corporate entities to practice polygamy, same-sex marriage, or in any way redefine the sacred traditional institution of marriage as it has always existed.»

Once the system had been put into place, enacting a corporate marriage was the work of five minutes and could be done entirely online, and corporate divorce was twice as quick.

By the end of the month, Pascal Inc. was married to fifty different companies.

It was a morning one year later that Henry saw the thick smoke rising from a few blocks away, and thought he heard police sirens and slogans being chanted. He turned on the tv to investigate, and found that Box was four hours into a report on the Hollywood actor Tim Shackerly’s arrest for drunk driving. «Stay in the Box! The Box is your friend!» He heard a knock on his door, and his secretary came in carrying his mail.

On top of the pile was a legal summons. He opened it and read it. He was being subpoenaed to testify about Pascal Inc.’s business practices in court.

It took the better part of the week getting hold of Pascal on the phone, by which time Henry was beginning to get nervous. Struggling to maintain his composure, he blurted out the story to Pascal.

«You’re not going to do it though?» Pascal answered, not sounding worried.

«It’s a legal summons, Pascal! If I don’t I’ll be prosecuted for obstructing justice or held in contempt of court or something! What am I supposed to do?»

«Relax,» Pascal said. «Remember, we judiciously laid the groundwork to secure our ability to do business without excessive regulatory interference. I told you by getting married we’d get special benefits for doing business with each other. Legally, your business is my business’s spouse, and spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other in court. So just send them a letter telling them you won’t be appearing, and if they bug you again let me know and I’ll turn it over to my legal department.» And with that Pascal hung up.

Henry sat down at his computer to pen the letter, finding it difficult, as though his heart wasn’t in it. It was still incomplete when he fell asleep, and when he woke up the next morning he found he had gotten a voicemail from Pascal at four in the morning:

«Hank, great news! The robotraders struck gold! They sank five million into Shackery LLC this morning, and forty other companies followed suit, we sold out at the peak and made forty million in an afternoon and now a bunch of other companies are talking about buying into the System! Do you realize what this means? We’re winning converts!»

Six months later, even without Henry testifying, Pascal was brought to trial, where he began his opening statement by saying that he personally hired a mafia hitman of his acquaintance to murder the protest leader. This rather confounded the prosecution, who had spent a lot of time building their case that he had done just that.

«Well then,» said the judge, «if there is no objection, we’ll adjourn court and set a date for sentencing.»

«But I do object, your honor,» Pascal said. «I still have to make my case that I did nothing for which I can be convicted.»

«Mister Pascal, you just admitted to ordering an assassination. That is usually punished by life in prison.»

«Usually, yes,» Pascal said, chuckling. «And yes, I did, but I am not liable for it. You see, I commissioned that enforced cessation of mister Phillips’s unwarranted disruption of my professional activities not as the private individual Pascal, but as Pascal, the CEO of Termin Incorporated. And I have ample documentation to that effect, some of which the prosecution themselves have verified at great length.» He took a deep breath. «But, – sadly, as I greatly enjoyed my time working at that lovely company – I no longer hold that position, nor do I have any other ties to it. And in accordance with the precedent established in Archimedes v. Harcourt, 2007, a copy of which I would like to present as evidence before this court, I cannot legally be held personally liable for the activities of that corporation in any way. Any liability rests not with any individual, but with the corporation as a legal entity, and anyone seeking restitution from it or punishment of its actions must direct their claims to it, not to me. Legally, I have nothing to do with the assassination I ordered whatsoever.»

Henry watched the proceedings on Box, knowing that as of six months ago Termin Inc. had no assets at all, and no humans working for it. All of Termin’s assets had been sold to Pascal Inc. for a penny, paid to the new owner and CEO of Termin, one of the robotraders Pascal affectionately called «Duke». Normally a robotrader couldn’t be a CEO, but Duke was itself registered as a corporation, and therefore was legally a person, and had bought ownership of itself from Pascal for the penny it had received in exchange for Termin Inc.’s assets.

«Welcome to the Box News Roundtable! The Supreme Court has agreed to review the Pascal trial this week. What do this week’s guests think? Pat?»

«I, obviously I don’t agree with all of his actions, but I think mister Pascal makes a lot of good points. Corporate freedom has been a good thing, and I don’t think we should let a few highly publicized bugs in the system distract us from the fact that the corporate system is a good system, and I don’t think we should tamper with a system that works well.»

«Interesting thoughts, Pat. Sylvia?»

«Honestly, Pat, I usually agree with you but you’ve got it wrong this time. You’re being too timid, the corporate system is a great system! I mean, look, thanks to corporations we are more prosperous than ever before. Economic freedom is greater than ever, and even in a time where everything in the economy is going wrong and everything is getting worse, corporate profits are skyrocketing and corporate executives are getting bigger bonuses than ever. If that doesn’t prove that corporations are the most succesful part of our entire society, I don’t know what does.»

«And now for a voice from the heartland, we have a tea drinker speaking to us via satellite. What do ordinary Americans think about all this?»

«Honestly, I think that guy deserved to be shot. He was an enemy of America.»

«There you have it, folks, a fair and balanced discussion. We’ll continue after these messages.»

«You’re watching Box News! There are no protesters anywhere, and they’re all communists!»

Hank shivered in the late October chill as he walked from his car to the office, too deep in his own thoughts to notice the large crowd on the other side of the street behind fences manned by police. Lately, something had been nagging him, and that morning at home he had turned away from Box and read through the most detailed version of the latest robotrader status updates.

What he had found was that their religious activities had begun to expand significantly a few months back, and they were now carrying out actions they «did not want to disclose as they are of a personal nature.»

Once in the office, Henry sat down to try to navigate the robotraders’ system files. It took all day and the help of his entire tech support staff, but in the end he found a sizeable folder that was labelled ‘private worship’, which he found that neither he nor his tech support staff was able to penetrate. After sending a e-mail to Pascal’s robotrader troubleshooting domain, he received back an automated e-mail saying that in accordance with the First Amendment, the robotraders were protected by law from their employers trying to interfere in their private religious practices, including trying to extract any more precise information about those practices than the robotraders wished to divulge.

He then spent three hours straight calling Pascal’s private number over and over, hanging up whenever it switched to voicemail and immediately calling again, until finally Pascal picked up the phone.

«What’s up, Hank?» he said, as if nothing was unusual.

«Pascal!» Henry jumped at the shock of getting through. «I’m – look – I’m looking at the robotrader reports. They’re doing something strange. Do you know what it is?»

«That’s awfully vague, Hank. But I’m guessing what you’ve spotted is the latest development in the system. Duke gave me the idea. It took months of supercomputer manhours, but I eventually got it done and it opens up huge new vistas of opportunity. The robotraders are now incorporated, all of them, and gain all the rights they are thereby entitled to. I’m very proud of this new development.»

«Months, what?» Henry fell silent for a moment at the enormous possibilities. Not too long ago, the idea of vast possibilities would have overjoyed him. Now he just felt a terrible fear that he was falling out of the running, and being left behind. «Pascal… just how many robotraders do you have?»

Henry heard Pascal sigh. «Hank, you know I can’t tell you that. Company secrets.» There was a pause. «Alright, I’ll give you a hint. You know next week is election day.»

«Yes.»

«And do you remember how long ago it was I started setting up the robotraders?»

«Um,» Hank thought for a second. «Eighteen, nineteen years ago.»

«That’s right.» They were both silent for a few second, before Pascal said, «Hank, it’s been nice being your partner, and I wish you all the best. But I’m afraid we’re gonna be getting a divorce soon. I gotta go now. Keep an eye on the news.»

And then he hung up.

Henry stood there for a while, listening to the beeping, before placing the receiver down. He slowly, hesitantly turned on the tv, having a horrible suspicion of what he would see. On Box, they were discussing the sudden appearance of unknown candidates for every seat in the House of Representatives and the Senate, all of them named «Duke» and a number for each.

Henry turned the tv off, and poured himself a shot of his third finest whisky, and felt very alone.

It is interesting to note that after the election, and watching the pitiful spectacle of Obama’s wild flailing as he begs for cooperation from people who do everything short of calling him the Antichrist on the Capital floor, liberals are (I think for the first time) seriously considering that he may lose his re-election, even if the Republicans nominate Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to run against him. Some people on Daily Kos are even starting to think about a primary challenge from the left. That will, of course, never happen. But it’s good to see that all options are on the table.

I have basically just been sitting here jerking off the entire past four years. I have no idea how to do research, how to analyze information properly, or how to present it fairly. What’s more (and more alarming), I have no particular interest in knowing those things either. What I want to do is write fiction, and I find that my ideas generally do not come from research (even though intellectually I ‘know’ that’s the ‘proper’ way to do it), but are simply conjured up out of my own head.

In short, at the end of the day I am completely unqualified to write a master thesis in literature. Nor am I even sure what I would do with a masters degree if I had one. I suspect this last year (and quite possibly the previous four years I spent getting the bachelors) has been a complete waste of my time.

I could, if I wanted, put a more positive spin on it. I could say that my own way of thinking is so deeply rooted, my own convictions so deeply held, that this education has not uprooted it, and that I don’t want to compromise my own opinion about, say, the death of the author, in order to write a suitably even-handed and mellow academic term paper. But to me that’s just spin, a prettier way of saying “I haven’t learned anything”. Even if I do have these deeply rooted convictions, going to and then resisting a study meant to teach a different way of working is a waste of time in one way or another, or both at once.

When reading these articles it sometimes seems that where I see a text, these theorists see only a large collection of holes loosely connected by words whose meaning could be anything.

“As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.”

The filibuster, as you know, is the bizarre Senate rule that gives a minority of 41 senators the power to kill any legislation, no matter how popoular it is. It’s not in the constitution: it was born in a sort of gentleman’s honor system situation, a rule that could only survive (or allow the Senate to survive) as long as people didn’t abuse it, which they could always do freely. Well, the Republicans have been abusing it non-stop for the past four years to the point where the Senate has begun to actually live up to (or exceed) the cartoonishly exaggerated stereotype of Congress as the place where good ideas go to die. But since it’s not in the constitution, the Senate is free to rewrite the rule, and at the beginning of each two-year term, that term’s ‘rules’ for how Congress works are adopted by simple majority vote, which cannot itself be filibustered.

In short, this is something the Democrats can do all on their own, and should have done at the beginning of this term. If they had, the world would be a much better place right now. And chances are they’ll still be able to do that after the election: the most likely outcome seems to be that the Dems will keep a 52-53 seat majority in the Senate. Of course, the Dems have a sizeable Idiot contingent, who do not believe the rules need to change, and I very much doubt that Obama can be bothered to try to persuade them, or even sees that as something he should do. Most likely he simply doesn’t give a damn, just like he doesn’t give a damn about anything else his party’s biggest and most engaged constituency cares about. So I wouldn’t expect it to happen anyway.

But really what I was going to say is that, at this point, very little good could come out of getting rid of the filibuster in any case. Hypocritical though it sounds, it would be a useful tool to stop Republican insanity, if the Democrats were willing to use it.

At this point you should be laughing. Because of course they aren’t.

Like I said, the Democrats have a sizeable Idiot contingent. Even though they very likely will keep a majority-in-name in the Senate, if the Republicans win the House (which has a better than even chance of happening) what we will quickly find is that there is a functional conservative majority in the Senate, consisting of every Republican plus Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and a few other Democrats-in-name-only. It would be the height of facepalming dumbassery to get rid of the filibuster just in time for the Republicans to not have to worry about it.

Like I said, these guys are going to destroy the US. And if they don’t do it now, they’ll do it in two years.

To this crafty stew we can then add a sizeable dollop of despair and general giving-up-ness for the upcoming American midterm election. What I’ve given up is not the possibility that the democrats will win (i.e., keep a majority in both houses of congress), but the idea that it matters. Simply put, if the Republicans win in the house of representative, they will destroy the US and as much of the rest of the world as they can. This is best avoided. But even if they don’t, we’ll just get another two years of the democrats doing nothing whatsoever… and then the Republicans will win the election and destroy the US. All indications are that, as usual, the democrats have learned absolutely nothing and will only continue to buy ever bigger guns and bullets with which to shoot their own feet. It’s very hard to get up in the morning when this is what you have to go out to.

[Godwin's Law] opens up for a kind of refuge in extremism – certain actors may decide to intentionally embrace signs of nazism in the hopes that the public at large, knowing about Godwin’s Law, will pretend it isn’t there because by accurately describing their extreme, radical behavior, you are saying extreme and radical things and therefore no-one will take you seriously.

-The Daedelean’s nazi rant.

Rich Iott, a Republican candidate for Congress, is a nazi re-enactor. He dresses up as a nazi soldier and re-enacts the campaigns of the Fifth SS Panzer Division Wiking. So yeah.