The Threat From Within

 He orchestrates a conclave of his most senior and powerful generals and admirals, knowing that power, or at least the kind of power he seeks, flows from the muzzle of a gun.

There have been some intimations that the military leadership may not be entirely loyal to the man, but to another idea of leadership and power.

He touches on the threat of encroachment from without, from invasion across borders, but that is not where he focuses his attention.

It is the threat from within which concerns him most. The nation has been infested, is rife with disloyal, self serving, money hungry hordes who are not true, clean, real countrymen. They threaten to bring down the country from within.

He explains there are some places where his support is very strong and these places will be rewarded, but where his support has been sparse, he will invade and he will use the armed forces to pacify these areas of resistance, disloyalty and perfidy.

He exhorts his generals to focus on aiming their weapons at the threat inside, in cities which are festering with this unwholesome, repugnant element.

He has cowed, coerced and reshaped the judiciary, which is now not a counter measure to his power, but an ally in his consolidation of power.

On the street, people are arrested for their appearance, or because of overheard conversations, and troops storm into workplaces, public spaces and even homes and are hauled away and often families cannot even ascertain where they have been sent.

Longstanding processes are dismissed as weak and needless impediments to the vital work which demands immediate action for the safety of the nation.

He speaks of returning the nation to the dominance and rightful exalted status among nations and all humanity it deserves and once enjoyed.

Public officials are dismissed because they are perceived as antagonistic or disloyal to him personally, and to oppose him is to oppose the nation, the brotherhood of those who share the will toward greatness.

Words like "unprecedented" and "not normal" are used so often they are no longer even noticed.

He is, the press and media explain, something so different and new we have only old words to describe a new phenomenon.

But, they are wrong. He is not something new. 

He is something returned from the past, playing, openly and unabashed, by an old playbook, published and sold widely, a copy in every home. It has simply been unread and forgotten, but it is not new. 

It is a zombie, returned from the past which is no longer the past, but simply an echo coming back around.