History shows that evil rarely marches under banners we immediately recognize. Too often, it comes draped in righteousness, purity, and fear. This piece is a lament for how easily we have been—and still can be—drawn into the machinery of cruelty.
My Friend, You Were There
My friend, When the Holy Catholic Church, seeking to preserve the Faith in all its radiant purity, instituted the Inquisition, you were there— not as a bystander, but as a willing voice.
You denounced the old widow, who lived alone with her cat. You whispered against the Jewish family— familiar, yet forever marked as other— and gave your assent to their undoing.
You crowded into the square to watch the trials. You sang hymns as the flames crowned their bodies with smoke. You wept tears of joy that the world was made purer that day.
My friend, When the ships came heavy with human cargo, and the auction blocks stained the soil, you were there.
You placed your bids. You weighed their flesh. You wrote the laws that chained their children.
You sang hymns on Sunday, and broke their backs on Monday. You called it providence. You called it order.
My friend, When the traders came with flags and rifles, when the rivers flowed with rubber and blood, you were there.
You signed the charters. You counted the profits. You sold the shackles and the scales.
You called it commerce. You called it destiny.
My friend, When the banners of the Reich unfurled, and the drums of destiny beat their hollow call, you were there.
You shouted with the crowds as glass shattered from shopfronts. You signed the letters, you cheered the laws, you raised your hand high in salute.
You bought the house, the shop, the art your neighbors were forced to leave behind.
You praised the strong hand that swept away the weak. You rejoiced as neighbors vanished, grateful that your streets were made clean.
My friend, When Stalin summoned the will of the people to root out the enemy within, you were there.
You reported the whispered doubts of your cousin, your friend, your brother.
You paraded with red flags while the trucks rumbled into the night. You filled the quotas. You seized the land. You counted the spoils as others disappeared.
You sang of the bright tomorrow as you cast your eyes down and stepped over the absent.
My friend, When Mao lifted the Little Red Book, and the children cried out against their fathers, you were there.
You led the chants. You scrawled denunciations across the walls. You struck the old professor who dared to hesitate. You cheered as the temples fell, and the old poems burned, convinced you were building a paradise on the bones of the past.
My friend, When Pol Pot promised that the fields would bloom with new life, you were there.
You marched the teachers into the paddies. You pointed the rifle. You praised the year zero that would erase the memory of all that came before.
You smiled as the world was reborn in silence.
My friend, When the generals rose in the name of order, when the prisons filled and the stadiums overflowed, you were there.
You nodded at the names. You counted the profits. You watched the blindfolded taken at night.
You called it security. You called it salvation.
My friend, You have always been there.
Only too late did you realize. Only too late did you doubt— but not much.
You fell silent, lest you betray your doubt. You looked away, lest you see.
You told yourself it would be different this time. You told yourself you had learned. But the signs are familiar. The words are familiar. The silence is familiar.
The Disquieting Muses (1916-18) by Giorgio de Chirico (97.16 cm × 66 cm, oil on canvas)
Preface
This poem, Elegy for the Automatons, was inspired by George Packer’s article The Hollow Men, which appeared in the May 2025 issue of The Atlantic. Packer’s article examines the political and moral collapse of certain American officials—Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who, once defenders of democratic principles, surrendered themselves to the inverted realities demanded by Donald Trump’s authority and his increasingly Orwellian authoritarian state.
Echoing the pivotal scene in Orwell’s 1984 where a Party orator is handed a note and instantly redirects his vitriol toward a different enemy “mid-sentence, without a pause,” Packer documents how key Republican figures performed their own breathtaking reversal on Ukraine policy, and describes how these officials pivoted instantly from celebrating Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s aggression to denouncing Ukraine as the enemy—all in service to Trump’s shifting personal allegiances and contempt for democratic values.
Packer also invokes Henri Bergson’s insight that the mechanical within the human evokes both laughter and horror. Yet what he describes transcends mechanical reflex: it is the slow hollowing-out of conscience itself. Once-thoughtful men become fluent automatons, mouthing words disconnected from belief, loyalty, or memory.
This poem seeks to render in elegiac form the sorrowful descent of a free polity into ritualized untruth, and the transformation of human beings into instruments of submission.
“We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” — T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
Elegy for the Automatons
In the year when the hollowing began, and Orwell’s warning stirred too late, it came not by fire nor iron decree, but smiling, in the face of one man. He bore no heavy crown, no burning sword; only the gift of inversion: truth was a lie, loyalty a whim, freedom the mask of power. A man for whom cruelty was a virtue, and truth a broken toy at his feet; a man who measured loyalty by abasement, and called the strong weak and the weak strong.
Under his gaze, the names of enemies blurred, history curled back on itself like smoke; words, having lost their anchor, floated as banners torn from any mast. And a people once proud of remembering forgot that they had ever known another day.
From this hour of unmooring emerged the hollowing of men.
Johnson, first among the fallen, fumbled for strength among hollow phrases, mouth heavy with the weight of borrowed words. Behind his thickened glass, a flicker died— and he mistook its ashes for light.
Graham, quick to find the favor of the wind, circled the ruin with the laughter of forgetting, shedding oaths like old garments, spinning from vow to vow as a moth to a dying flame, faithless to all but the empty crown of belonging.
Rubio, once proud in the defense of liberty, sank into the yellow chair of forgetting, listening to the slow departure of his own voice. Once he cried for the dignity of nations; now he stitched the banners of surrender with empty hands.
Thus were men unmade, not by terror, nor by war, but by the patient grinding of truth into noise, by the slow machinery of convenience and fear.
And we, who watched, sang no hymns for these men, built no statues to mark their days. They passed like shadows over a broken dial, automatons grinding down the hour, till even the dust forgot their tread.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, February 28, 2025 — slipping deeper into the hollowing of the soul.
Recently, I published an essay titled The Certainty of Wealth Redistribution Amid Tariff Chaos, in which I argued that the true function of the current administration’s tariff policies was not economic revival, but the deliberate and predictable transfer of wealth from working households to the uppermost tier of financial elites.
Events of the past several days—culminating in imposition of a market-crashing tariff decree swiftly reversed for maximum opportunistic gain—have confirmed my worst fears. That some now praise this spectacle as “brilliant” only adds insult to economic injury.
In response, I offer the following satirical memo from a fictional Wharton Annex ethics professor—one Professor Basil P. Whisker, Chair of Ethical Opportunism at the Weasel School of Business. His observations regarding the situation and the logic he embodies—even though he is fictional—are uncomfortably real.
Professor Basil P. Whisker
On Ethics, Market Manipulation, and the Power of Praise
Buy the Dip, Praise the Dipper: A Wealth Transfer Playbook
By Professor Basil P. Whisker, PhD, MBA, CFA (Parole Honoré Distinction) Chair of Ethical Opportunism, Weasel School of Business, Wharton Annex Formerly of the Federal Correctional Institute for White Collar Refinement “Our Honor Code is Flexible. Our Returns Are Not.”
Some in Congress have raised the unfashionable concern that the recent tariff saga looks suspiciously like market manipulation.
To which I reply: Of course it is. But for whom?
Not the little people—they lack both the reflexes and the capital reserves. No, it is for the elite few trained in the disciplines of anticipation, flexibility, and pliable morality.
At the Weasel School of Business, we teach that ethics must be nonlinear and dynamic—responsive to the moment, like high-frequency trading algorithms or a presidential memory when questioned under oath. The recent 90-day tariff “pause” (following a dramatic market collapse) teaches students everywhere that sometimes the most profitable thing to do is to:
Create a crisis
Seize the resulting dip
Declare victory through reversal
Congratulate the disruptor for his “brilliance”
Move on before the subpoenas arrive
The Art of the Non-Deal
When a policy announcement wipes trillions from the markets, only to be reversed days later with a triumphant “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” post, we must acknowledge we are witnessing not governance but performance art.
Like all great art, it asks difficult questions:
Is it market manipulation if you announce the manipulation in real time?
Can one declare “Liberation Day” and then liberate oneself from that declaration?
If financial whiplash creates billionaire gratitude, is it still whiplash—or merely strategic spine realignment?
Billionaires praising such tactics is not sycophancy—it is advanced portfolio management by other means.
As we say in Weasel Finance 101: “Praise is just another form of leverage.”
Looking Ahead: A Curriculum of Chaos
We are entering a new phase of global commerce—what I call the Era of the Glorious Lurch. In this new age, tariffs are not policies but market mood regulators, deployed tactically to evoke loss, recovery, and eventual Stockholm syndrome-like gratitude.
My revised syllabus for the coming semester will include:
Advanced Self-Dealing (OPS-526)
Narrative Arbitrage: Writing History Before It Happens (OPS-618)
Strategic Sycophancy and Influence Leasing (co-listed with Communications)
Tariff Whiplash: Creating Wealth Through Vertigo (OPS-750)
When Textbooks Fail: The Art of the No-Deal Deal (Senior Seminar)
Applications are open. Scholarships available for those with prior SEC entanglements or experience declaring “everything’s beautiful” while markets burn.
A Word on Timing
Critics who suggest that one should wait until an actual deal is struck before declaring brilliance simply do not understand modern finance.
In today’s economy, praise is a futures contract—you are betting on the perception of success, not success itself.
When a policy costs the average American household thousands in higher prices and market losses, only to be partially reversed with no actual concessions gained, the correct reaction is not analysis but applause. After all, it takes real courage to back down without admitting it.
A Final Toast
To the president, I raise a glass of vintage tax shelter with notes of plausible deniability.
To the billionaires celebrating the “brilliant execution” of a retreat, I offer a velvet-lined echo chamber.
And to my students, past and future, I remind you: If you cannot time the market, at least time your praise.
Because in today’s economy, there is no such thing as too soon, too blatant, or too obviously beneficial to the 0.01%.
So next time markets plunge on policy chaos, do not ask “who benefits?” Instead ask, “am I positioned to be among those who do?”
Thank you. And as always— buy low, tweet high, and declare victory before the facts catch up.
Sometimes, a little historical memory delivered with a healthy dose of satire is exactly what the moment calls for. I recently stumbled upon this memorandum—allegedly issued by Herr Obersekretär Otto von Pulpo, our resident officious German octopus—crafted as a sharp response to The Economist’s editorial, “Is Elon Musk remaking government or breaking it?” Unsatisfied with the notion that “some transgressions” might be acceptable if they bring about efficiency, I was inspired to share this fictional but incisive critique. Enjoy Otto’s take on why the path of destruction is never a shortcut to genuine reform, and join the conversation on how we should remember history in light of today’s political challenges.
Memorandum No. 843.3a-b(krill) From the Desk of Herr Obersekretär Otto von Pulpo Former Archivist, Department of Tentacular Oversight (Ret.), Abyssal Branch Current Observer of Surface-Level Folly, Emeritus
To the editorial board of The Economist, cc: The Directorate for Dangerous Euphemisms, Baltic Division
RE: Concerning Your Recent Enthusiasm for “Some Transgressions” in the Service of Government Efficiency
Esteemed humans,
It is with a firm grip and furrowed brow (of the metaphorical kind—our brows are subdermal) that I write to express my alarm, tinged as it is with a deep familiarity, at your recent editorial on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Your noble publication—usually known for reasoned analysis and fondness for balanced budgets—has recently dabbled in the genre of historical amnesia.
You write, approvingly if not enthusiastically, that “some transgressions along the way might be worth it” in your editorial “Is Elon Musk remaking government or breaking it?” Permit me, as a creature of long memory and cold water, to remind you: some transgressions are never worth it. History is not made by heroic shortcuts. It is unraveled by them.
When I was a much younger cephalopod, gliding the brackish waters near Wilhelmshaven, I recall hearing the surface-world’s chatter about another figure who spoke boldly of waste and stagnation, who promised national renewal, who performed gestures that were first dismissed as eccentric, and who flirted with “creative destruction” until the destruction ceased to be metaphorical. He too was seen by many as a misunderstood innovator. Until it was too late.
Herr Musk, I understand, now punctuates state occasions with gestures uncannily similar to the Roman salute, and praises parties in your former occupation zone with a fondness that suggests more than economic theory. If these are the traits of a reformer, then perhaps I should consider joining the AfD myself—though I suspect I would not pass their purity tests, being both foreign and soft-bodied.
But it is not Herr Musk who most disturbs me. It is your newsmagazine, with your steady tone and Oxford commas, that murmurs, “Efficiency requires boldness,” and wonders aloud whether the destruction is merely a precursor to some unseen creation. You ask: “Who now remembers the Grace Commission?” And I reply: who now remembers the Enabling Act of 1933, passed under the same logic—that extraordinary conditions justify extralegal actions?
Beware the language of renovation when it requires dismantling the foundation. Beware the hagiography of disruptors who come not to build, but to erase. DOGE does not make government more efficient. It makes obedience more efficient.
If I may say so without rudeness, your editorial reads as if it were penned in a warm bath, insulated from the chill that such reasoning brings to those of us with memory. Down here, in the benthic gloom, we remember what it means when legislative bodies and courts are bypassed, when “wrongthink” is rooted out, when civil servants are mocked as obstacles to destiny.
Do not confuse boldness with wisdom. Do not mistake collapse for reform.
With respectful concern and eight meticulously inked signatures,
Otto von Pulpo Obersekretär a.D. Archivist, Rememberer, Cephalopod
P.S. Historical Note from the Abyss:
When tectonic plates shift, they do not ask for parliamentary approval. They simply move—and tsunamis follow. I have observed this firsthand from 4,000 meters below. The surfacelings always call it unprecedented, as if the sea forgets. We do not forget.
Herr von Pulpo’s earlier memoranda (Nos. 842.1–843.1) were dispatched in response to similar enthusiasms for charismatic technocrats in the late Weimar period. These were, at the time, unread by those who most needed to read them.
About the Author Otto von Pulpo is a retired archivist, amateur historian, and former Vice-Chair of the Commission for Bivalve Misclassification. He resides in a gently collapsing wreck off the Heligoland shelf and writes occasionally on democracy, plankton, and the perils of charismatic overreach.
By Gentoo T. Adelie, Chief Diplomatic Penguin of Heard Island
Macaroni Penguin of Heard Island responding in disbelief to the news of the Trumpian Tariffs of 2025.An Audio Recitation of “An Ice Cold Response” by Gentoo T. Adelie
It was a clear morning on Heard Island. A gentle drift of cloud played among the slopes of Big Ben, and the Southern Ocean moved against the gravel shores with its slow, eternal breath. Among patches of moss and lichen, our colonies bustled with seasonal purpose—territories reestablished, mates greeted, feathers fluffed against the autumn wind. The eastern rockhoppers had returned to their grassland burrows, the macaronis muttered among the coastal tussock, and the gentoos stood sentinel. Then word arrived—borne by a wandering albatross returning from northern skies.
The Trump administration had imposed tariffs upon us.
Tariffs. Upon penguins.
I summoned the colonies. The emperors listened in regal silence, their gold-ringed heads unmoved. The kings shuffled to attention along the icy moraine. The skuas perched nearby, and even the black-faced sheathbill—normally distracted by refuse—cocked a pale head toward the speaker’s mound.
Our indignation was tempered by confusion.
We are not exporters. We are not manufacturers. Ours is not a civilization of spreadsheets, but of rhythm and return. We recognize no currency but krill, no metric but the molt. We nest in the gullies and commune with the icy winds that polish our shores.
It is true that humans have declared sovereignty over us. Flags have been planted, letters exchanged, and acts of parliament signed in Canberra. Heard and McDonald Islands, they assert, are administered by the Australian Antarctic Division, whose bureaucrats maintain that our affairs fall under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory—though no court has ever convened upon our shores.
But let it be understood: though we permit their presence, we do not cede authority.
The king penguin does not bow to Hobart. The Heard Island shag files no petitions. And the sheathbill, should it ever stand before the High Court, will surely eat the brief.
So it was with bewilderment that we received news of the 10% tariff levied by the United States upon our territory. An island with no people, no ports, and no exports—accused of an imbalance in trade. A claim founded on mislabeled shipping data: specifically, six containers of semiconductor components manufactured in Taiwan but erroneously coded as “HRD”—Heard Island’s port code, rarely used but technically valid—instead of “HKG” for Hong Kong by an exhausted logistics clerk working the graveyard shift in Singapore.
Naturally, the memes began to circulate—relayed to us by kelp gulls who’ve developed a taste for human refuse and, consequently, smartphones washed ashore from passing vessels. These gulls, perched near research stations to pilfer Wi-Fi signals (and the occasional protein bar), have become our unwitting ambassadors to digital culture. Among their findings: images of penguins queuing at customs, passports in wing. Shags rebuffed at security checkpoints. A sheathbill with a placard reading “TAXATION WITHOUT MIGRATION.”
The images are amusing. Yet beneath the laughter lies a chill deeper than our glaciers.
The absurdity is not that tariffs have been imposed, but that the structures of power are so far removed from reality as to invent us as participants in their theatre. Our colony is not a market. Our rookery is not a trading floor. If humans mistake our ecological presence for economic threat, then it is their world, not ours, that is disordered.
Even the ecosystem watched with bemusement. The mosses clung silently to volcanic stone. The seals slumped across the glacial flats, unmoved. Life persisted as it always has.
We shall not respond in kind. We shall not embargo the sea. We have no ports to close, no envoys to recall. We shall simply continue—diving into the surf, tending our chicks, enduring the westerlies that lash our coast.
The mosses remember. The sheathbill remembers. The ice remembers, too.
Confidential Diplomatic Cable
From: Office of the Subantarctic Avian Council (Provisional), Heard Island and McDonald Islands Domain: commonwealth.penguin.gov.hm To: Bureau of Global Trade Anomalies, U.S. Department of Commerce Date: April 8, 2025 Priority: Routine (given prevailing currents)
RE: ERRONEOUS APPLICATION OF TRADE TARIFFS TO UNRECOGNIZED BIOLOGICAL POLITY
To Whom It May Confound,
We write with a combination of courteous gravity and ice-bound disbelief upon learning that the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands—comprising an uninhabited archipelago, 80% of which is glacier, and 100% of which is devoid of Walmart, Walgreens, or Whole Foods—has been subjected to a 10% tariff by your esteemed administration.
We presume this action arises from the alleged export of “machinery and electrical goods” originating from our domain. As no such items have been observed here since the disintegration of a scientific balloon payload in 1989, and as neither the king penguins nor the black-faced sheathbills have mastered voltage regulation, we suggest an administrative review.
Indeed, it now appears the source of this confusion lies in a series of clerical misassignments within international shipping records. Several bills of lading reportedly list the shipper’s address as “Vienna, Heard Island and McDonald Islands”—a charming bit of geopolitical fiction that, while expanding our sense of empire, sadly bears no relation to geographic or penguin reality.{1}
For clarity:
Our economy is non-monetized and chiefly fish-based.
Our primary industries include standing, molting, and collective thermoregulation.
Our manufacturing sector is limited to guano, occasionally artistic in form but unfit for commercial use.
The .hm domain, while charming, is not associated with logistical throughput. It is managed by a sooty albatross with a rusted antenna.
No residents, citizens, or consumers exist here in the human sense.
We therefore formally request the rescission of said tariff and the reclassification of Heard Island and McDonald Islands from “Emerging Trade Threat” to “Uninhabited Geopolitical Curiosity.” Alternatively, we are willing to accept foreign aid in the form of high-calorie fish paste, new tagging rings, or a fully functioning weather station.
For future reference, all customs declarations should be addressed to: Gentoo T. Adelie, Chief Diplomatic Penguin C/O The Hollow Behind the Third Basalt Outcrop Atlas Cove, Heard Island UTM Coordinates Available Upon Request (or clear skies)
We await your reply, though not urgently.
Warmest regards from the coldest coast, Subantarctic Avian Council (Provisional)
P.S. Seal No. 1: Be it known we do not seal mail with actual seals. The three elephant seals consulted regarding this matter expressed their disinterest through prolonged snoring, while the fur seals drafted a dissenting opinion consisting entirely of territorial barks. Their contribution to international diplomacy remains, much like this tariff situation, largely symbolic.
