The End of Empire

Lounging in my Jacuzzi last night, balancing a glass of 1975 Champagne Pol Roger Cuvée in one hand and entertaining my killi with the other, I contemplated the growing concern in Beloved Leader’s durbar that the great days of the Jesustan Empire might be drawing to a close.

Its true: they’re irreparably fucked.

For the past several weeks, the elders of Jesustan have been expressing alarm over the alarming unwillingness of their young to go forth and fight for their nation. In April, the numbers of those willing to sign up to kill for Motherland and Beloved Leader was 42% behind what is needed to stock the Red-Blue-and-White horde. One desperate military recruiter was recently taped telling a particularly demented brat just how he could hide a marijuana habit and fabricate a high-school degree so he might join up and thus avoid a prison rap.

Now, people have offered all kinds of facile explanations for this unwillingness of Jesustani youth to kill. Some claim the young have become soft. Bakwas! The youth of all lands are idle and feckless, which is why twelve-of-the-best, administered with a cane, whip or Prozac is a part of all cultures, from eastest-East to westest-West. What, then, is the problem? Is it, I wondered, the easy access to Pol Roger Cuvée, or other pleasure-giving substances more preferred by the young? Or the magnetic draw of playing with one’s killi, either by oneself or in company? None of these, though, are exclusively Jesustani pastimes. I was, I must confess, mystified.

Eureka!!!! Leaping from my bath, I rushed to my laptop, for light had dawned: it was the damned Jacuzzi. Carnality and champagne are but consequences of a far more profound seduction.

To understand this great insight, we must turn to the history of our erstwhile masters, the ferocious and feared Angrez. From their study of history, the Angrez had come to understood the perils of the bath. Consider the decline and fall of the Romans, who considered hygiene so important that they subsidized the construction of magnificent public baths where men and women washed together. Even the poorest Roman, the Angrez historian Edward Gibbon tells us, “could purchase, with a small copper coin, the daily enjoyment of a scene which might excite the envy of the Kings of Asia”. No prizes for guessing what happened next. The Romans arose and felt, after which they declined and fell.

From the fall of the ancient Romans, the early Christians, the forefathers of the Angrez, learned their lessons well. St. Benedict, Praise Be Upon Him, well understood that the caresses of warm water and fragrant soap would give rise to fevered, impure thoughts. “To those who are well”, he decreed, “and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted”. St. Agnes, who was martyred in fourth century Rome, took the injunction to heart; she never bathed, even once – which does suggest that her punishment for refusing to refute her Christian faith – i.e. being raped all night in a brothel before she was executed – would have involved some degree of discomfort for her tormentors as well. History is witness to the fact that the Angrez took the teachings of these early martyrs (St. Agnes that is, not the poor would-be rapists) to heart. In medieval Angrez cities, in addition to not bathing, the residents took a further step forward, and adopted the practice of throwing the contents of their chamber pots out on the streets: as in private, thus they would be in public.

And the Angrez were rewarded for their virtue, for they came to rule the world. How did this come about? Lust for loot, our intellectuals tell us. More bakwas!!! Nothing as base as lucre drives warrior races. The success of the White Master was a system of upbringing which drove his offspring into an unremitting frenzy which could be sated only with the spoils of conquest. First, White Master made his young eat a diet of raw beef and boiled cabbage, which induced in them a constant state of constipation, which in turn bred ceaseless ire and wrath. Then, White Master sent his offspring to English public schools, where they were turned into raving homosexuals. Then, they were told of tales of lithe, oiled bodies of natives whose buttocks were like peaches, and who ate strange spices which turned their killis into raging pythons.

Finally, there was the coup de grace: the cold shower in the unheated bathroom.

Imagine it, the constant horror of a life shaped by a ceaseless cycle of constipation, sexual torment – and then, cold showers. Now, the Angrez themselves allowed themselves to be seduced by the pleasures of the lands they conquered, and lapsed into the state of senile decadence that we witness now. The forefathers of the Jesustanis, however, saw the signs of this decline and fled the shores of White Master’s kingdom, determined to hold out against the degradation induced by warm water. Bathing was correctly understood as a hazard to both the physical and spiritual health of a true warrior race. In this land there was no tolerance for the perversions and debaucheries that were starting to invade Old Europe. Until 1820, not one of the homes in the fine town of Quincy, Massachusetts, had a bath. In 1845, the City of Boston forbade bathing by those not possessed of medical authorization. Some unfortunates did, of course, have to bath for reasons of health. Elizabeth Drinker, the wife of a well-respected Philadelphia Quaker, recorded of her course of treatment in 1799: “I bore it better than I expected, not having been wet all over at once for 28 years past”.

As late as the end of the Second World War, few homes in Jesustan had anything other than rudimentary showers and outside of the great metropolis, even these were rare. Bathing every day would have been unheard of. How things have changed. According to a recent survey, 42% of new and remodeled bathrooms in Jeusustan have bathtubs specifically designed for indolence, like the Jacuzzi or the Whirlpool. The Jesustanis spend more on their bathrooms than the ancient Romans. A basic bathtub with a bubble-jet cannot be had for less than $ 1,000; most new owners buy more elaborate models, which retail for more than $ 8,500. Is it mere coincidence that the first residential whirlpool bath was introduced by Jacuzzi in 1968 – the very period when Jesustan was to receive its first major military whipping, in Vietnam; when rebellion against the established order of things became rife; when the Jesustanis turned from being a great warrior race into aimless hedonists?

For the Jesustanis, I fear, it is too late: once seduced into the ways of the labyrinth of error, history tells us, few peoples ever discover a way out. I must confess, though, that I have emerged from this introspection with a new respect for the leaders of Hindustan. Is it any wonder that forbearers, obsessed with washing as they were, failed to build great empires? Some in Hindustan, a pox be upon these ignorant animals, have complained bitterly of the failure of municipal authorities to provide adequate water for bathing in this bitter season of heat and affliction. It is, I now realize, by design that our lords have so acted. All the young men of Hindustan have are two minutes to wash their bodies with a few mugs of tepid water drawn from a small plastic bucket – and another one to play with their penises while pretending to be soaping themselves, the real reason why adolescents in privacy-starved countries such as ours take baths.

It will not last for long: soon, the dam will burst and they will go forth and conquer. Our time of greatness is coming – slowly, perhaps, but I can say with confidence, surely. A little more deprivation is all we need.