Author: Heroic Mulatto

O, what a marvel it appeared to me,
⁠When I beheld three faces on his head!
⁠The one in front, and that vermilion was;
Two were the others, that were joined with this
⁠Above the middle part of either shoulder,
⁠And they were joined together at the crest;
And the right-hand one seemed ‘twixt white and yellow;
⁠The left was such to look upon as those
⁠Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.
Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,
⁠Such as befitting were so great a bird;
⁠Sails of the sea I never saw so large.
No feathers had they, but as of a bat
⁠Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
⁠So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.
Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.
⁠With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins
⁠Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.
At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching
⁠A sinner, in the manner of a brake,
⁠So that he three of them tormented thus.
To him in front the biting was as naught
⁠Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine
⁠Utterly stripped of all the skin remained. ⁠

— The Divine Comedy, Canto 34, lines 37-60 (Alighieri, trans. Longfellow, 1867)

Today, in an op-ed penned for CNN, Jeffery Sachs reminded all and sundry that he is an vile, unrepentant prick. As the avatar of the demoness Abyzou made manifest in flesh, Sachs used his op-ed as an opportunity to weave the textual fabric of self-righteousness to clothe the emaciated and decrepit form of his morality. Having donned the cloak of sanctimony, Sachs proceeded to list the ways in which he would use armed violence to redistribute the wealth of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin, and Gates to satisfy his own prerogatives.

Sachs, in all his munificence, states that he would first give these robber barons of the Silicone Age the opportunity to “voluntarily” donate 1% (and who among us could argue with a mere one percent?) of their net worth per annum, but admits that “when they don’t, governments should put on a 1% net worth levy to fund the basic health and education needs of the world’s poorest people.” Not content to employ the legal monopoly of violence held by government to strong-arm Elon Musk into giving up his rocketships, (and by “strong-arm” I mean “asphyxiate for not paying taxes” all Eric Garner-style) Sachs concluded his jeremiad with the dire prediction that the Neanderthal-browed, proletarian mob, having been whipped into frenzy by the populist murmurings of Donald Trump, will storm the campuses of SpaceX and Blue Origin looking for blood:

The mega-rich expect the adulation of the masses and often get it. Yet the forbearance of society for the antics of the mega-rich will soon wear thin. Too many people are suffering, too many lower-skilled workers are losing their jobs and earnings, too much wealth is being frivolously squandered, and too much power over our lives is being asserted by big tech and other corporate giants.

Donald Trump channeled the rising unhappiness into his electoral victory, but his trade wars and tax cuts for the rich only widen the divide. Real answers depend on redirecting the mega-wealth towards those in urgent need.

Nevertheless, like a mafioso “convincing” a shop owner to contribute to his protection racket, Sachs offers us a way out, “[f]or those who don’t do so voluntarily, governments should put a levy on mega-wealth.” Let us be mindful, however, that when we pay indulgences to the Church of Sachs, what constitutes “mega-wealth” would be, of course, determined by its high priest: Jeffery David Sachs, the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia’s School of Public Health. Oh, what burden must rest upon his wrinkled brow! How fortunate are we to be living in an age where we can hear, from his honeyed lips, the pronouncements of our philosopher-king, Sachs! Indeed, have no fear! For once we have achieved Sachsian utopia, he assures us that “there will be enough time and wealth to reach for the stars.”

In the ancient mythology of Mediterranean and Mesopotamian cultures, envy was thought to manifest as harm to the person envied through the “evil eye.” Indeed, the Latin word for envy, “invidia” originates from the verb “invideo“(i.e., in+video); literally meaning “to look into/against”, but having the connotations of “being envious of,” being prejudiced against,” or “wishing harm upon.” To combat the baneful influence of the invidious evil eye, people in these cultures wore protective amulets. (And many still do!) One of the most common and powerful amulets against the evil eye was known in Latin as a fascinus.

While our cultural mores may have fallen so far that we may scratch our heads over the import of a flying phallus creature, our ancestors knew that this is a perfect example of sympathetic magic, that is ‘like produces, or wards off, like’. And what better way to combat giant pricks like Jeffery Sachs than with a giant prick?

Having read this article, you may, perchance, wish to purchase a fascinus. If so, you may start here. And if you have less propriety than I do, you may wish to use this as your shipping address.

And, if you found this article fascinating, there’s a reason for that.