All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
- Lawrence of Arabia
What are the frogs, if not a cultural movement with political implications? Ten years ago, they were nothing more than some guys, the same as everyone else. The frogs coalesced as a reaction to multiple hostile attempts by progressive fanatics to assimilate the small personal joys which the frogs found interesting. The fanatics hated the proto-frogs, hated themselves and probably hated the things which they were assimilating. They did not disguise this hate. To use a slightly anachronistic example, a number of people involved in the production of Disney’s new Star Wars openly revealed their loathing for men. In time, these clumsy attacks pushed the frogs, who had been same sort of liberals as everyone else, out of the acceptable liberal world into another place entirely.
They formed their own pseudo-culture on the internet—pseudo because digital interaction cannot fill the full spectrum of culture. Before long, they began to acquire new ideas, alien to the comfortable, tolerant liberal mindset which they had formerly inhabited. Bronze Age Pervert appeared, as if conjured, to instill the frogs with his relentless vital energy. The gigachad image crystallized as a symbolic escape from the false totality of the respectable political establishment. In America, the Republicans of old, the conservatives, would formerly cower and disown their own friends every time a Democrat accused them of racism, misogyny or some other such liberal sin. Gigachad represents rejection of this servile attitude. Gigachad embodies disdain for the old order, utter confidence, complete rejection of the former ideals and self-assured strength.1
Frog culture consisted mostly of memes, pithy retorts and other such elements as thrived in the internet permaculture. Bronze Age Pervert wrote a book which sold well. He used to enjoy himself mocking “big name” Republicans with how little their books earned compared to his. More recently, frog culture has shown signs of a literary bloom.
Let us draw our attention to a short story with the title of Nemesis, by Paulos. There’s a disease of the modern world wherein people say we ought to support or not support something depending on the author’s political views. All very silly. I enjoyed Nemesis for its vital energy and narrative power and that is all fiction ought to require.
The narrative centers around a young woman’s recollection to a her therapist of a recurring dream. She is some breed of fashion model. She has attended the Met Gala in her waking life and the experience continues to haunt her subconscious, where it ends on another note. The narrative is drenched with traditional symbolism and signs peculiar to frog culture.
To begin with, the protagonist arrives at the Gala, and finds herself woefully out of place.
“There are crowds of famous people already, but there’s no chit-chat. I’m rushed to the carpet and glide up the stairs. I hardly notice the flashbulbs. At the top, a journalist, a camera in my face: ‘Are you ready this year? Are you scared?’ I give a smile. ‘Yes, I hope so,’ and I enter the Great Hall. I am wearing an olive dress, a headpiece of flowers, and I have this horrible realization that I’ve missed the theme. Everywhere I turn, the clothes are these silk-poufed masses, sleeves dripping with lace and pearls and everyone looks at me from behind peacock fans with pinched faces.”
Note the contrast between our heroine and the assembled grandees. Her clothing represents growth and life. Olive calls back to classical or even mythic Greece. The peacock imagery indirectly references the hundred-eyed giant Argus, whom the goddess Hera tasked with preventing Zeus from sleeping with the mortal woman Io. Symbolically, we can already see that the crowd at the gala seeks to prevent the woman’s consummation.
“Someone gives me champagne and I go to greet people. Everything has this floaty feeling, like a massive dose of Celexa. Megan Fox and several other women are wearing these tall recurving horns, breasts exposed, Beardsley-esque. It’s very elegant, very decadent, and I feel small and simple in my green dress.”
The text denounces this gathering of our modern nobility as fake and gay—an artificial experience as might be produced by a drug. The recurving horns are those of the devil, of Satan. Megan Fox has mentioned (in real life, not in the story,) that she and her boyfriend drink each others’ blood for ritual purposes. This is (in real life) evidently not a big deal. Beardsley was a degenerate contemporary of Oscar Wilde. Sometimes, he inked simple illustrations of bare-breasted women, so the description is of more than an ordinary low-cut dress. Here, Paulos evokes Bronze Age Egypt and Crete, not, I think, to denounce them as degenerate but because the Bronze Age looms heavy upon the horizon of the story.
In this dream, the heroine does not enjoy the evening. Initially, she simply feels out of place but matters grow worse. She endures a series of indignities, boredoms and humiliations as she is exposed to the rotten flower of progressive culture. These are the sort of misfortunes one experience in one’s own real life but the final outrage takes a sinister, perhaps supernatural, note.
“Then there’s music, a dirge, an eternal chorus of cynical ‘Hallelujahs.’ Do you know the ‘hellos’ from Smells Like Teen Spirit? So hopeless? The music is like that. Some people start to dance and I’m pulled in, a circle of men in dresses and I’m to play the part of the man, dipping and twirling each of them. I stumble, I do not know the steps. I am stepping on their gowns. One of them presses himself against me and whispers into my ear with fluted voice that if I mis-step again I’ll be devoured. I laugh as if it was a joke but I am very cold. His mouth smiles but his eyes are flat and black.”
Is it not true that those who fail to honor the false pieties of our age are devoured?
The woman takes a deep breath and continues. “Finally, we go to sit down for dinner. The tables are arranged in front of the Temple of Dendur, and I’m sitting with every one of my exes. The main course is lab-grown meat, and they’re just devouring these chunks of flesh and smiling at each other with bloody teeth, saying how it’s carbon-neutral, and cruelty free, and consent-based. They want me to eat too, and they’re making weird jokes about how I should get used to it, that soon it’s just people meat or crickets, those are my only two options and I want to escape but it’s like I’m glued to my chair. They tell me I need to get with the program, and point out Elliot Page, who is quietly eating his crickets. ‘See, Elliot got with the program and it’s great? Right Elliot?’ And Elliot gives a little thumbs up and has little black bug eyes too.”
The Temple of Dendur is an Egyptian temple transplanted to New York. Again, Paulos juxtaposes the dying modern age with the dead past. The ghoulish exes are not content to feast upon the dead. They must also coerce the woman-model into partaking. They call their feast holy but their teeth are stained with blood.
At this point, the story changes. As in Egypt long ago, a plague of frogs falls upon the gala. A triumphant burst of Bronze Age energy, of purity, purpose and fierce joy, overwhelms the bugmen horde. Freed from the world of falsehood, the woman finds and purpose and here too she rejoices. In the greater context of the narration, it’s clear that our heroine recounts this dream to her therapist not as a nightmare but as a (perhaps unconscious) yearning. This is a revelation, not of understanding, but of enlightenment, much like the Prophet Job, who demanded to know why he had suffered such grievous woe but, when he saw his Lord, said “I have seen God and I am satisfied.” The woman-model does not mentally apprehend the meaning of her dream but she spiritually accepts it.
The therapist remains unenlightened.
Her therapist adjusts her glasses and gives a reassuring look. “Okay there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ve got the notes, let’s continue this next time. In the meantime, I’m going to refer you to Dr. Coleman again to see if we can up your dosages.”
The woman’s voice quavers. “But why?”
The therapist is matter-of fact: “You’ve clearly been through something very significant, I think until we can work through exactly what’s going on it would be good give you some tools to manage your anxiety, and maybe help you sleep.”
Nemesis, like all art, seeks to interpret the world. Like the dream, art is not so much a logical argument as it is a spiritual spear-thrust—judged not by the strength of its syllogisms but by the force of its striking.
And Nemesis gleams with a keen edge.
I had to resist typing STRENGTH in all caps.
Honored by this review, thank you kindly.
Very enjoyable review of a beautiful story