Jesus Was Not a Spartacus / The Wisdom of Crowds
The Leader was crossing the line. That is perfectly clear in hindsight, but things change in such incremental ways. Leader was always convinced that logistics were crucial. He had no doubt that our break was coming. We had attracted some attention, not of God, but some unnamed political player of great influence.
Leader informed us, the Council of Disciples in Holy Actualized Self, that our work in the recent protests had been well received. He said our discipline was the envy of the right. Our militaristic show of ominous force shamed organizers of the tax protests, the pro-life movement looked impotent compared to us, and the NRA hadn’t the balls we possessed and presented.
We were popularly known as the Barabbasian Council. In many ways we were no different from any protestant faith, as practiced in the wide-open-West’s glass and steel cathedrals. Our defining characteristic was a drastic reinterpretation of the events surrounding the pardoning of Barabbas, the “criminal.” Leader maintained that the pardoning of Barabbas was a metaphysical choice, granted to the masses by a mischievous Pilot. Barabbas was Jesus.
As we all know, Abba means father in Aramaic. Jesus uses the word in Mark. Jesus refers to God as father, and Bar Abbas can be translated to mean “son of the father.” Leader found that the people of Judea essentially nicknamed Jesus after this unique rhetorical flourish. And as such, when Pilot offers the crowds the option of freeing Jesus or Barabbus, you might think much of the crowd was unaware of whom this Jesus fellow was, because they knew him as the Bar-Abbas. This is not a new theory, but Leader believed that Pilot and the crowd were engaged in a complex meta-debate about what a populace should rightly demand of their revolutionaries. “Pilot tells the crowds, you cannot have a strong and sensitive man like this one here: You must choose between the feminine or masculine. The lover or the fighter.
“You can have either your Jesus cuddling lambs, Pilot informed the crowd, or your Barabbas, agitating insurrection. The crowd chose the strongman. We chose the strong man. Men will always choose the strongman.”
We often watched Fight Club as a way of illustrating the binary nature of our Christ. Leader loved Fight Club; but he said the ending was retarded: the weak imposing their weakness on the strong. That, and he totally should have died. Come on, shooting out your cheek? Leader gave a live commentary throughout the movie, for benefit the flock, “See, Tyler’s being very Barabbas here, with this monologue. Tyler is voracious in all things, see how he ravages Helena Bonham Carter: How Mary Magdalene must have felt in the hot desert nights, Oh My! We must be Barabbas in all things, particularly in bed, for the sake of our own Marys.” He was quite passionate about it. He enjoyed our annual Foxy-boxing competitions very much, and would have like to institute a formal club in the basement, but feared it would bring negative attention, and possible investigations.
We believe that when Pilot executed Jesus, he permanently killed the spiritual, weak Jesus. But the strong, revolutionary man survived in the consciousness of the masses. The tongues of fire, we believed, were available to all men if they only sought it out; but spiritual enlightenment was crucified with the body of Jesus. The castrated dogma that emerged in the early days of the church was very much a result of Roman interference. The colonizers, the empires, have vested interest in promoting, among the colonized, the false ideal of weakness as strength. We, the followers of Barabbas were sworn to agitate, to shock and to advance the strong over the weak.
We drilled regularly, learned the principles and formations of Roman Phalanxes, which Leader assured us would be the most efficient defense, and offense, against riot police, when the time came. When the town meetings started, and we saw conservative groups waving signs, and tossing eggs we decided it was time to showcase our strength. We watched X, particularly paying attention to the scene where Denzel commands his followers with brief commands and hand movements. Leader mimed the gestures as he watched; practicing his jaw flex. We coordinated our branches in six states. We showed up in numbers. The conservative protest groups were confused, and grew quiet as we approached, two abreast in a passable lock-step outside the town hall. When we were close enough for them to see our cross-cross-flag lapel pins they relaxed significantly. We stood in silence, trying to be as ominous as possible, for two hours. Then we executed a left-hut, and marched back from whence we came.
Leader was ecstatic, and his enthusiasm was contagious. He informed us that it would be the perfect night to initiate the children of the flock, with the holy light of righteous victory shining from his eyes. The Initiation of the Children of the Flock, a sacrament with details known only to the Leader, had been promised for some time. He said it was a trial, a test of worth of spirit, and the completion of which would identify the holy potential of the youth. Those who emerged rosey-cheeked and giggling were blessed. Those emerging teary-eyed and mouth-breathing were not yet ready to accept Barabbas in their lives. A little concerned about the details of the sacrament, a group of us fathers snuck secretive peeps through the windows and doors of the room. Leader was in a loin-cloth and covered from head to toe in caked mud. He reclined in a banana hammock and had the children lined up in front of a flat screen television. He periodically sprayed them with a small, coiled hose and directed them to pay attention to the movie: a montage of montages and scenes from war movies like Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Platoon, Brave Heart and Full Metal Jacket and the victory sequences of popular reality-TV shows. It went on for six hours; we were relieved and ashamed at our lack of faith in leader – it had been much like our own baptisms.
That week we watched Network. Leader said we’d have to hone our broadcasting skills. He had a bit of a high pitched voice, and when he was excited he tended to squeak. He anointed Bill, who possessed a booming voice, the Actualized Neck and Mouth of the Barabbas in Christ. Bill was dispatched to New York, and instructed to wait outside the Today Show for further instructions.
Finally, Leader was prepared to reveal the identity of our sympathetic political leader, our patron as we were calling him. First we watched the first half of Network again, followed by the end of Spartacus. Then Leader paused the movie, cleared his throat and turned to address us.
“We see the power of bombast, a characteristic of Barabbas, which derives its power from the exponentially increasing velocity of the words and the energy by which they are delivered. Our patron is a master of bombast. Much of what he says is of doubtful accuracy, but the righteousness of the speaker is such that accuracy is subjugated to the fervor: the fervor of violent transcendence manifest in the utterances of a man. And we know that transcendence without violence is like margarine to butter. Our apostle, Bill of the Neck and Mouth, etc., has done an admirable job, and has recently made a number of appearances on cable television. He has made only halting references to us, to our mission. He has been John the Baptist, clearing a route through the wilds for the son of Abba to follow.
“Tomorrow I will leave for New York. The time has come to take our movement to the masses, to affect the change. Tyler Dern style, Network style, I will appear on the cable program hosted by our patron, Garry McBain’s America Effect. For the occasion, I temporarily lift the ban on Cable Television. The basement here will be available on Tuesday, and I invite the flock to gather and see the dawning of the Barabbaian future.”
The days before Tuesday were fraught with speculation. We received word that Leader had visited Ground Zero; while there he was abused by a cop, who was attempting to maintain a perimeter around the construction zone there. Leader was successful in his resistance, and had obtained a scorched rock as memento.
We debated watching a baseball game before the airing of the America Effect, but decided that the lifting of the Television Ban was effective only for the five minutes Leader would be on. It had been a long time since I’d watched baseball and was disappointed, but agreed that it was not an issue worthy of Barabbaian revolt.
The America Effect opened with a screaming montage of tanks, the floor of the NYSE, a close up of the President’s hand on the bible, Eagles swooping down and pinching hares in their talons, all under a waving, translucent American flag. Garry McBain opened the show with a sermon about the threat of trans-gendered, militant, homosexual drug-dealing, illegal immigrants using state issued driver’s licenses to ram into old-folk’s homes and farmer’s markets while forcibly violating young boys. The flock watched this passively, as we had no opinion on such matters, and we could see no angle by which revolt was the obvious remedy, on the contrary the immigrants in question seemed to be waging a fairly actualized campaign.
After a brief commercial, the coiffed host promised, we would be introduced to an “emerging warrior in the Siege on Self-Interest.” This was Leader, and we hooted and hollered.
After a five-minute break, during which we learned of the increasing value of gold and the limited availability of a crystal decanter shaped like the head of Richard Nixon eating a Snickers bar, McBain again introduced Leader as “the leader of an exciting new force in the Siege on Self-Interest, a respected leader of a church that promotes the insurrectionist Jesus. Doctor, how’s the fight?” We didn’t know Leader was a doctor.
“Good evening, Garry. Thank you for the opportunity to appear on your show.” Leader stifled a squeak, before continuing. “Tonight, you are very lucky, because you will see the truth, that Barabbas is the Christ, that Barabbas is the force, that He survives and Jesus died! All one but none!”
Leader was laboring to keep is voice under control, and he gave no pause for Glen to interject. “The time has come to say: I’m not going to take it anymore, by any means necessary! From the Mountaintops a tree falls and no one hears it! In the long arc of history the blessed beasts and children caged at last! Dulce et decorum est! A hard rain united shall overcome! You have the right to remain silent, which will be held against you! It is the greatest taste of time, it is the worst filling of time! Cast the money-changers out of the banks! I ME ME MINE! Power to the clampdown by the toe! NO – JESUS WAS NOT A SPARTACUS!”
I wondered why he added the A.
He reiterated that Jesus was not a Spartacus, and the camera panned out, revealing a pale, confused Garry McBain, looking not at Leader, but at the camera, helpless.
It happened very quickly, and it was unclear where the gun came from, but as Leader inserted it into his own mouth he kept talking. “Ewe et ee at a weary ang im im eye wife!” he seemed to say. Then the back of his head jumped away from his body.
The signal cut away and the television showed only static. Slowly we stood, stretched and ambled home, discussing how commanding Leader had been. In the parking lot, I spoke with Dave Anders about the show.
“He was right, wasn’t he,” Dave said, “About the end of Fight Club. The guy totally should have died. The wrong consciousness transcended.”
I agreed.
Posts
