Okay, Jerry. I’ll let you have that one. Allowing Dread Lord Nyarlathotep — God of a Thousand Forms, Stalker Among the Stars — a shot at President of the United States wasn’t the best idea we’ve ever had as a country. It kinda boggles the mind when you think about it. Sure, at the time, not a single soul could offer up the faintest inkling of proof that Nyarlathotep would grow into His newfound, solemn role as a pillar of democracy, but hey, there was still a chance He might suddenly, conveniently contradict the very core of His corrupted being for a group of humans He can’t relate to, much less empathize with in any way, shape, or inconceivable form.
But what’s done is done. The Old God Consortium finally cobbled together a proper banishment sigil, undertook unhallowed rites of tradition, and somehow squeaked out an exorcism of Nyarlathotep from His Oval Office’s Blood Throne. Today we welcome the age of Hastur, the Yellow King.
So, yeah, sure — we could mount a campaign to root out the remaining Shadow Cultists from the Capitol while there’s still time. We could hold all His known enablers, summoners, and parasitic opportunists accountable for their reign of brutal, craven defilement. But Jerry, hasn’t this nation suffered enough? Isn’t it best to leave the past in the past, and keep our eyes steadily fixated on that mirage we call “the future?”
It’s been four years since Nyarlathotep vomited putrid acid blood on the Chief Justice at Inauguration Day… and I’m racking my ruined, psychically scarred brain here, but for the hollow-life of me, I can’t think of a single good thing the Elder God did for this nation. Not one! I mean, even Nixon established the EPA. And then there were all those actively sinister campaigns of woe, the soul purges, the hell-anuses that materialized over dissenters’ homes — look, we could prattle on all day about the nightmare world He ushered in for us. But it’s a fever dream society that won’t repair itself just because He’s chained to His lair-plane playing golf and muttering incantations into the ether against His enemies. Let’s just let bygones be bygones, and start learning to live in the world He and His followers conjured for us.
It’s not like you can ever truly destroy Him, anyway. I heard He’s even considering starting up Nyarla-News Network to ensure a steady feed of nihilistic psychic gruel to the masses, so He’s definitely earner His moniker, “The Floating Horror.”
But, for the time being, it seems like the Hastur’s devotees have figured out a way to cage the Dark One to its pan-dimensional Fortress of Bile nestled within south Florida, and we should let sleeping Outer Gods lie. Mar-a-Lago… the very name makes me shudder. Have you ever seen the images from that place, Jerry? No sane mind could ever have constructed such an obscene, gaudy Hell edifice.
Anyway, Jerry, all I’m saying here is that, after four years under the puss-ridden “thumb” of Nyarlathotep, I somehow still find myself pretty optimistic about that eternal false dawn on the horizon. Hindsight is 20/20, and we can’t change the past, so what’s the point in dwelling on it? What is there to gain by pursuing any notion of justice in a post-Nyarlathotep fog-world? We all make mistakes, and if we started trying to hold everyone accountable for their cultic actions, why, then you’d have to bring people like me to justice, too. C’mon, Jerry. Sure, I enabled the Outer God’s rise to infernal power in my own ways, but I’m sorry as all can be about that. It’s nothing that hugging it out can’t fix. If we only still had our human arms. And our hearts. I miss those, too.