The Second Coming

or that book or theory like Dr. Freud’s (which I thought might hold the Great Secret of Life, as if there were such a thing). My equally belated discovery is the total failure, recklessness, and assholedness of people in general and in particular just those people I had looked to. This includes you. Maybe you most of all—for it was you, it seemed to me—if you recall, I had good detection devices, excellent radar for knowing who knew what—it was you of all the pleasant prosperous gregarious denizens of our dear old Southland (to say nothing of the even more fucked-up remainder of the U.S.A.) who seemed to be on to something.
    My father seemed to know what was what and ended up distributing his brain cells over the attic—after trying to take me with him.
    Perhaps he was right. I aim to find out. I have found out how to find out.
    You seemed to know what was what and you end up how? Marking time with the V.A. and watching M*A*S*H. Toward what end? So you can retire on your pension and watch the soaps all day?
    Quite properly, you refused to give me any answers. Perhaps you didn’t have any. It doesn’t matter now. But I have a question and a way of asking it which requires an answer. A non-answer is not possible. But this does not concern you.
    So much for you. My quarrel with the others can be summed up as a growing disgust with two classes of people. These two classes between them exhaust the class of people in general. That is to say, there are only two classes of people, the believers and the unbelievers. The only difficulty is deciding which is the more feckless.
    My belated discovery of the bankruptcy of both classes has made it possible for me to take action. Better late than never.
    Take Christians. I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though they, the Christians of the South, the U.S.A., the Western world have killed off more people in recent centuries than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise that truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around. Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million Southern Baptists? (Of course you have. You’re from Alabama.) No doubt the same might be said of Irish Catholics and Miami Jews. The main virtue of Episcopalians is their gift for reticence. Seldom can an Episcopalian (or an Anglican) be taken for a Christian. Perhaps that is what I like about them. A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it? And if the good news is true; why are its public proclaimers such assholes and the proclamation itself such a weary used-up thing?
    If the good news is true, the God of the good news must be a very devious fellow indeed, fond of playing tricks.
    But perhaps two can play at that game.
    As unacceptable as believers are, unbelievers are even worse, not because of the unacceptability of unbelief but because of the nature of the unbelievers themselves who in the profession and practice of their unbelief are even greater assholes than the Christians.
    The present-day unbeliever is a greater asshole than the present-day Christian because of the fatuity, blandness, incoherence, fakery, and fatheadedness of his unbelief. He is in fact an insane person. If God does in fact exist, the present-day unbeliever will no doubt be forgiven because of his manifest madness.
    The present-day Christian is either half-assed, nominal, lukewarm, hypocritical, sinful, or, if fervent, generally offensive and fanatical. But he is not crazy.
    The present-day unbeliever is crazy as well as being an asshole—which is why I say he is a bigger asshole than the Christian because a crazy asshole is worse than a sane asshole.
    The present-day unbeliever is crazy because he finds himself born into a world of endless wonders, having no notion how he got here, a world in which he eats, sleeps, shits, fucks, works, grows old, gets sick, and dies, and is quite content to have it so. Not once in his entire life does it cross his mind to say to himself that his situation is preposterous, that an explanation is due him and to demand such an explanation and to refuse to play out another act of the farce until an explanation is forthcoming. No, he