An unthinkably massive creature, scarred by the continual attacks of a small contingent of whalers, said "enough." With righteous fury and the morality of the blameless, he shook off his abusers, destroying those who would destroy him, and had destroyed countless of his brethren, for financial gain.
This simple idea has haunted American literature for more than 150 years.
I’d argue that it also haunts the oligarchy. This idea is why the inauguration of Donald Trump was held indoors on a seasonable winter’s day. It’s why a single murder on the streets of New York brought the entire force of the police state and a compromised justice system to bear on a twenty-six-year-old software engineer. This idea is why the Washington Post is dead and why the richest man in the world wears his toddler son as human shield when he is out in public.
As I reflect on Moby Dick and what we’re facing in this moment, I find myself wondering:
When will it be one harpoon too many?
How many hunts will we withstand?
What will it take for the quiet behemoth that is all good and decent Americans to stir from its long slumber, rise up, and shake off the harpooners and the captains they serve?
These captains, cowards who mostly hide in their berths or behind their X accounts while others do their dirty work, emerged on deck yesterday. They strutted around, thinking themselves safe, thinking the game won.
These are men who drive their ships upon our backs in order to extract those most precious of commodities: our labor, our decency, and our freedoms. And they think the harpoon has struck a fatal blow into the behemoth’s great heart.
They’re wrong. We are powerful beyond their capacity to imagine. Once stirred, we can move with such collective speed that they won’t have time to leap overboard.
But we must stir. We must wake up. We must set aside divisions, most of them manufactured, many of them of little relative importance, and rise up.
For we are the Leviathan.
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