End The

This is a threat.

This is a warning to English that I have hostile intent towards a member of its community. I aim to do it harm. Real, violent harm. 

The word "the" is my enemy and it shall be torn asunder. Flayed. Eviscerated. Its letters peeled apart and tossed back into the dictionary. 

Like all perpetrators of revolution, holy war, or terrorism, I am convinced that my cause is good and just. 

I am under the impression that I represent an aggrieved population which will be sympathetic to my cause once they understand it.

I am saving the world. A world.

I was raised for war.

In my household it took the form of "spiritual warfare" of an evangelical flavor, but it was unequivocally, unquestionably, and eternally: war. 

As such, much of my adolescence was spent in the desert meditating on how I could best harm The Enemy. 

Now, "The Enemy" was poorly defined, but as a teen I didn't fully grasp the implications of this vaguery. 

"If I must die, let me die in a blaze of glory. Let me strike a blow to them from which they will never recover."

To fill one's mind with hope for a better future, this was weakness, this was denying that the world is cruel, that life is suffering.

I would bide my time until I too could be red in tooth and claw. 

Fuck that shit. 

I'm out. Nope. 

Wow. That was... a lot. 

But such training doesn't really go away, not completely.

Wounds may heal but scars still shape the mind as well as the body.

So, what do I do with this vestigial antagonism? 

Can it be bent toward some good end, or is it something that stays inside and dies with me?

I am smaller than "The".

If the word "The" suddenly vanished from this earth, the aftermath would be much more disruptive than if I were to disappear. 

I need to direct my lingering hostilities towards an enemy, but choosing any flesh-and-blood person seems, well, icky.

Yes, I could choose some tyrant or oligarch who has much more power than I, but I would want to hold back.

I feel as though I am secretly in cahoots with all my fellow humans. Even if they are awful, how can I be sure I am not?

I am the equal of every beggar just as I am the equal of every god king.  A conviction I have tried to shake but cannot.

I will not kill the word "The".

Not in the way such symbols die.

It will not be forgotten, but it will be changed.

I don't expect to erase "The" from brains any more than I would want to pull books from libraries because they document atrocities.

I want to add an asterisk to the*.

So that when it is heard, writ, or said, there is a niggling reminder that it is bounded.

I want to stop us from casually assuming universal supremacy is a meaningful concept. 

Mad you say? Mad!?

Of course I'm bonkers whackadoo.

The presumption of sanity is an honor bestowed by a cultural in-group to those who strengthen the existing complex of symbols.

I am doing a big taboo, taking on language directly. it's rude. It's war. 

Calculus was a fever dream in the mind of a young alchemist before it became physics.

Drinking mercury and feeding leeches was to them what probiotics and a morning jog might seem to us.