Ordo ab Chao

by Integral Archer

Chapter IV: Supero Omnia

In the beginning of November, the value of gold hit at an all-time low. Investments in the Equestrian economy responded appropriately—that is to say, almost all of it disappeared—and unemployment rate shot up to a record of twenty percent, while homeless rate was also at a record high of ten percent.

Nearly every corporation that still remained, albeit by a thread, changed its business model every week, latching onto one that was popular at the time by the most vocal writers of the middle-class. Each week, they would see their figures slipping further; and, each week, they would frantically grasp onto the slightest whim, deluding themselves into believing that it would work—similar to an insect who incessantly smashes itself into a glass window and after each insane iteration still manages to convince itself that the next attempt will be successful. No matter how much entrepreneurship or spirit that they lost, no matter how “friendly” they showed their business model to be, no matter how much money they announced that they were losing, they could never exonerate themselves in the eyes of those who blamed them for the poverty that had stricken Equestria.

The stock market continued to crash as reliable corporations, that had been around for decades, were slowly closing their doors. The business leaders that were not fired—the ones who had the drive and the initiative to run the company—were quickly abandoning their posts, leaving their dying companies to their incompetent subordinates, who only ran them quicker into the ground.

Despite the daily announcement of a multinational corporation going out of business, with each announcement more shocking than the rest, none of them could have shocked the nation more than then the news that the United Party leader, Disce Cordis, had chosen Princess Luna as his running mate.

The editorialists were relentless. Every waking moment, whenever he walked down the street from his house to the debate hall, Disce was inundated with incredibly obnoxious and uncomfortably personal questions:

“Are you aware that Princess Luna is a Royalist?”

“Does Princess Celestia approve of your choice?”

“Do you consider yourself a traitor to the United Party?”

“Are you doing this simply to get the undecided Royalist votes?”

“Members of both parties claim that the princess is your ‘special somepony.’ How do you respond to this?”

The questions chilled him more than the cold November air.

One by one, the Unionists back in the debate hall approached Disce to entreat him to answer a few of the editorialists’ questions; and, by the end of the day, they had convinced him—or rather, had subdued him—into agreeing. Clever were his colleagues, and they had learned that resistance to incessant exhortations was not one of Disce’s strong suits.

During his voluntary interrogation, where not a second passed without an unpleasant bright light from one of the reporter’s cameras blinded him, he stood proudly by Princess Luna and ignored any questions hurled by the impatient reporters who could not wait their turn to ask him.

Princess Luna watched him say everything, but not a single word he said processed in her mind. In each series of sounds he made, instead of language, she heard pure moral integrity, as he defended his decision against a torrent of accusatory questions. There was nothing in the sounds or gestures that he made which indicated he showed regret for his decision. Through the short, dismissive phrases he spoke in response to the prying words of the reporters, the message of each blared loud and clear to anypony who cared to listen: this is my decision; it is the right one, and I’m sure of it.

“Thou know what thou are going to say, yes?” Disce said to her, minutes before her first debate.

“Yes,” Princess Luna responded, “but, truth be told, I’ve never been partial to arguments: Even when they’re formal, polite, and controlled, they still remind me too much of strife, of violence, and discordance. I’ll rebuff tiny things when I need to, but I’m not too keen on the whole sport aspect of it. I don’t practice in front of a mirror, unlike my sister, nor do I have any urge to, so she does all the speaking—and then I, whether I like it or not, get tied to it. One of the things that has helped me keep a hold of my sanity is that—as much as I hate to admit it—I’ve acquired a sort of taste, if you can call it that, watching her argue: even if one doesn’t agree with what she says, one still has to admire her charismatic eloquence, how good it sounds when she puts forth her ideas.”

Disce rumpled his cheeks, stuck out his tongue in the same manner as if he had just sucked on a lemon, and made a strangled gagging noise from the bottom of his throat.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, with just a hint of an air of affront.

“I can’t stand that,” he said. “If something can’t stand on its own substance, if the only way it can be digested is to be heaped in sugar, lest one figures out that it’s unbelievably sour, then I don’t care for it. Call my restrictive tastes dogmatic, if it pleases thee.”

“Alright,” said Princess Luna, “do thou have any advice toward me that suits thy refined palate?”

“Nothing thou don’t already know. Whenever thou are encountered with a fallacy, no matter how small, don’t argue against it; just keep talking as if it had never come up. I’ve learned the hard way that the more one argues with an irrational pony, the more one tries to show them how wrong they are—by attempting to use reason to convince and irrational being, one has already conceded the argument. This is the perfect opportunity to say to Equestria what thou said to me: thou have an opponent, a forum, and an audience. Conditions could hardly be more appropriate.”

For her running mate, Princess Celestia had chosen a portly, middle-aged, brown earth-pony named Colonel Buckner: a professor at the Republican Military College in Canterlot who had went into politics and who had won the delegation in his riding for the past three general elections in a row. He had a long, curly mustache, which he kept fastidiously; and though he was not in the royal family, his speech, his sharp clothes, and his gestures paralleled the elegance of them and had earned him their admiration and friendship. Even as he stood there, by himself, waiting for Princess Luna to join him at the other podium, he showed absolutely no signs of agitation. He stood there, calmly and collectedly, as if he was entirely comfortable being in the spotlight and in complete silence.

Colonel Buckner’s serenity did not put Princess Luna at ease, but she still walked out onto the stage where the debate was to take place with her head held high and with that confident stride of hers. As she spoke, the hearts of the ponies watching swelled and their eyes twinkled; the twinkling, more likely than not, came from the reflection of light upon the gems of her tiara, which rebounded the brilliant rays of the lighting across the audience, seeming to fill the onlookers with the hope and the faith which every member of the royal family had inspired in them.

The more she spoke, the more assured she became as she saw her onlookers gradually sit further and further on the edge of their seats, and even Colonel Buckner leaned back in admiration with a smile on his face, giving due respect to what she was saying.

But if she had looked behind her offstage, her concentration may have been broken; for, backstage, there was only Disce staring at the ground with his paw over his eyes, shaking his head and groaning miserably.

She left the stage to a thunderous applause, and she immediately went up to Disce and looked up at him.

“Well?” she asked. “Not too bad, if I do say so myself.”

Disce raised an eyebrow at her quizzically. “Not bad?” he said.

“I spoke with conviction, with passion, and they must have seen it, the audience, for they responded with jubilation.”

“If ‘passion’ is being used synonymously with ‘volume,’ then I must concur.”

“‘Volume?’”

“Thou were certainly loud,” he said, sarcastically sticking one of his talons into his left ear. “The volume disguised the fact, even to thyself, that thou were saying nothing. It fooled the ponies watching it—understandable, as many of them are simple-minded—but I’m surprised that thou managed to fool thyself.”

Princess Luna jumped back with her mouth opened, startled at the first dissenter. “What are thou talking about?”

“At every word thou said, I was embarrassed to be associated with thee. Thou were using the same fallacious arguments that Colonel Buckner used, albeit at a much louder tone.”

“Are thou sure about that?” Princess Luna replied, leaning to one side and casting a skeptical eye at Disce. “Surely, that comment wasn’t another one of those smug and esoteric remarks that thou like to make, in an effort to feel superior to everypony else?”

Disce cocked his head to one side. “Really? Have thou fooled thyself on that accord, too? Think about what thou said, and then apply it to what thou know to be right. Forget the cheers that thou heard; forget the fact that the colonel, in essence, conceded the argument. Look down upon what thou said, as a disinterested bystander: Were thy premises valid? And, above all, were they sound?”

Princess Luna broke eye contact with Disce, and her eyes darted to the left, at the wall behind him, then to the right, anxious as she was at this imposing presence judging her previous actions. Her lips mouthed silent words as she recounted her arguments. “Yes . . . yes, they were,” she finally said, her voice tentative. “They were all valid.”

“But were they sound?”

Princess Luna’s heart skipped a beat when she realized that she had fallen into Disce’s semantical trap. “I . . . I think that he . . . I mean I . . . I think that I—”

“Thou said that a growing city means a healthy country. Thou pointed to the inflation rate, which you said was healthy, in Canterlot, and then implied that this means that the economy in Equestria was strong. Thou are right when thou say that thou have a valid construction—it’s perfectly valid. Obviously, if thou are correct, thy conclusion logically follows; but I need not tell thee that they’re self-evidently false and, thus, not sound. It’s the fallacy of composition.”

“Thou are oversimplifying,” said Princess Luna, her voice noticeably lower in volume now and with a marked fluctuation in pitch. “I was saying—”

“When thou were criticized on that note, thou said that any disagreements to thine own policies would lead to a complete national bankruptcy—a false dichotomy.”

“Thou see where the country is headed, so I don’t think—”

“And, worst of all, thou said that the ‘Hooves-off, hooves-clean’ policy should be adhered to since it has always has been; and, instead of presenting proof for its integrity, you insisted that the colonel disprove it first—fallacies of both placing the onus probandi onto the negative and argumentum ad antiquitatem.”

She flinched and jumped back in shock. “But thou support that policy, more so than anypony else!”

Disce shrugged, crossed his forward extremities, and assumed his smug smirk of condescension. “So?” he said. “If thou can’t properly derive thy conclusions, then it’s just as if thou had not said it at all. If you say something thou have been told to say and thou don’t understand its meaning, its essence—then, if thou say it anyway, the sounds that thy vocal chords make are the intellectual equivalent of a mockingbird imitating the sound of a record player.”

As if to prove him right, Princess Luna made an unintelligible gurgle of disbelief, trying to form a thought—something that might protect her against the horror of what she had just done. But, because of the collisions of neurons in her brain firing and falling in contradiction, going in one direction and then the other, constantly accelerating and changing their path, trying to find something, anything, that would make her irrational actions, which she had been so convinced in moments prior, make even a shred of sense, the thought that she meant to put into words was mangled to the point where only nonsense could be sputtered.

She faltered, and she shrunk back from Disce, who was still looking at her with the disapproving stare of a disappointed mentor.

“I . . . I can’t explain it,” was all she managed to say, at length.

“Thou know what happened? Like an adolescent school-foal, thy mind has been oppressed. A foal, when she sees something her teacher says to be blatantly false, has one of two options: she can either stand on her own certitude, challenge the notion openly, refusing to let herself get caught up in her indoctrinator’s lies, or she can sit back down in her little plastic seat, saying nothing more. Thou, like virtually everypony, have chosen the second option.”

Princess Luna slapped the bottom of her hoof against her face, knocking her tiara ajar, and she rumpled the skin on her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to. When I was talking to thee before, I had told myself that I would say what I always wanted to say. It was the time and the place to do so. But, in front of those prying eyes . . . I guess they turned my willful consciousness into one of automatization. It must have been some mystical force; that’s the only explanation. Believe me that I would never do that on purpose.”

“Well, of course thou didn’t. Thou know very well that the honest thing for the filly to do, the moral thing, would be for her to stand on all four legs without a single tremor in them, and, without a nervous flutter of her eyelids or an anxious stammering of her voice, simply and plainly say: ‘No—you’re wrong, utterly and fully.’

“But, she doesn’t, of course. There are too many variables for her to consider: What would her classmates say? If her teacher fails her because, on a test, she answered the truth instead of the lies that she had been taught, what would her parents say? If she doesn’t pass the class, will she be able to get into a university deemed ‘credible’ by an arbitrary accreditation board—the Republican Military College, for instance, which, as a test of admission, requires its students’ teachers to say the meaningless phrase: ‘She got an ninety-five percent grade average,’ as if that even means anything—so that she can regurgitate even more lies there, the same lies, the lies that somehow gain more credibility because her old elementary school teacher has now grown an exotic hairstyle, speaks with a thick accent, and calls himself a ‘professor’? If she doesn’t pass Colonel Buckner’s course on ‘Modern Diplomacy and Negotiations,’ will she be stripped of the rank that was pushed onto her, that rank which her parents were dying for her to obtain at the cost of anything—her life and her ambition, for example? How would she ever manage to exist in this world without that piece of paper which bears her indoctrinator’s stamp of approval?

“The one thing that her overlords fear the most, the one thing that they try to exterminate in her as long as she’s under their ward, is her ability to say: ‘No, I refuse to play your game. I reject your faulty premises and the conclusions that are erroneously derived from them. My reason, my judgment, is the supreme guiding factor in my life, and I won’t let you squander that. I won’t let you kill me.’

“I’m not saying anything thou don’t already know. Thou know what thou said was wrong the second thou opened thy mouth. Even when I saw thee coming over to me, I saw in thine eyes the unmistakeable mark of guilt. Thou are strong, Luna, but even the strongest of us aren’t immune to that pernicious virus called ‘societal expectations.’”

Princess Luna sighed. “Well,” she said, “if only we could all be so enlightened as thee. If only we could all break the invisible veil over our eyes, that barrier which we lesser ponies cannot see or feel, but which thou see in all its ugliness. It must be frustrating for thee to be forced to spend thy life yelling upon deaf ears proofs for the existence of that obstruction, feeling like thy words are wasted; because, to you, the existence of that veil, like an axiom, needs no proof and is self-evident.”

Disce gave a hearty laugh, and Princess Luna was taken aback when she heard that it was nothing but an expression of ridicule. “Thou think that I’m some supreme, divine being?” he said. “Thou think I’m some sort of enlightened visionary, who will guide the world into the utopia of tomorrow? Thou think I always act in the way I speak, and that I’ve reached my full potential? Please, don’t make me laugh! I’ve sat in the back of the United Party Debate Hall for the better part of my life. I’ve watched the indoctrinators of the entire spectrum: the young college graduate student advocating a cause he doesn’t believe or understand in, justified to him by some irrational, mystical force that tells him that it’s plausible; the mendacious bureaucrat, who puts on a smile so that his victims don’t realize that he’s just waiting for their approval to choke the life out of them; the seasoned intellectual, whether from the RMC or the University of Canterlot, who calls himself either ‘Captain,’ ‘Colonel,’ ‘Doctor,’ or ‘Professor.’ I’m guiltier than thee; for I, unlike thee, have no excuse. Thou at least can claim that thou were brought up from birth to carry thyself as thy did just now, that thou would’ve achieved perfection if that behavior wasn’t so ingrained in thee; I, however, have no such claim.

“These creatures I saw, and who I’ve named just now for thee, have, in each one of their minds, a flashy piece of machinery built around their theories, and each one is equally convicted in its design. But they’re deathly afraid to take it apart, to examine its gears, to check their premises, because they’re worried that the blueprints are faulty. And who can blame them? Wouldn’t thou be terrified if thou took apart the machine, upon which thy life and reputation have stood for thine entire life, and found out that it was held together with flimsy wire and tape?

“So, instead of fixing this machine, they install it into the impressionable minds of their children, who, in their turn, give it to their children—until society is finally precariously balancing on this inefficient and barely functional amalgam of metal and levers, slowly rusting over the centuries as it succumbs to the merciless test of reality. Part of them knows that this course of action will doom them all; but, because they made everypony else operate in the same way, they take comfort in the fact that they have company—at least they won’t feel alone when they die.

“So, why did I sit in the United Party Debate Hall for all these years? I tell myself that it’s because I thought I could make a difference, but the thought I didn’t care to admit to myself was that I had been conditioned to accept them, to live with them. The phrase ‘What would I do without them?’ has, like everypony else, been branded onto my brain when I was very young, when I was still discovering the world, leaving an irreparable scar.

“But here’s where we—thou and me—differ from them, Luna: We, unlike them, know that it’s wrong. Even though they’ve installed the vicious machine in our minds, we stare at it skeptically, and it only turns on if we’re pushed into it by an oppressive, angry mob. But, when their backs are turned, we take it apart piece by piece until, before they realize it, we’ve dismantled it and, in its stead, constructed the ultimate weapon against them: conviction in our knowledge. And even the grizzled soldier Colonel Buckner will tremble in his boots when he sees thee coming with it.

“I’m not a visionary. I’m simply, like thee, a drowning soul, crying out for help in this world that is smothering him. Eventually, I hope to break the surface of the murky water, to breathe the world anew. And, in thee, I’ve found a fellow victim, someone with whom I can hold onto any lingering scraps of the solid wood of truth. Will thou help me find some?”

Princess Luna rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. “Easier said than done,” she replied.

“Oh, absolutely. There’s no argument on that accord.”

Princess Luna leaned to one side and tapped her forehoof against the ground. Casting a pleasantly satisfied glance at Disce, which was not without its ironic skepticism and incredulity, she said: “Well, Mr. Non-Visionary—anything else thou want to say to thy partner in asphyxiation? Any wise remedies thou care to impart unto lesser beings, such as myself?”

Disce chuckled. “Just keep this in thy mind at all times, and be aware when thou act contrary to what thou know to be right. That’s what I’ve been doing—and so far, so good.”

Princess Luna furrowed her brow, and she said: “What, that’s it? I must say that I’m slightly disappointed.”

“It’s the smarter approach,” he replied. And, gesturing toward the stage and to the audience that had not yet completely cleared the auditorium, he added: “It’s not too late to go rectify the mistake. Thy captors are still there; go martyr thyself.”

Princess Luna looked plaintively looked over her shoulder to the shuffling crowd. Then, turning back, she shook her head. Still feeling Disce’s judgmental stare on her, she shivered and attempted to shift the conversation to a more positive note. “Aside from that,” she said, “I carried myself well?”

Disce raised an eyebrow. “So, thou mean to ask me: ‘Aside from everything bad I did, did I do well?’”

“Well, I mean, I won—didn’t I?”

“Who cares?” he scoffed. “If thou won, thou did not win on merit. And, if that’s the case, what’s the point of winning at all?”

“Well then, in that case, Mr. Cordis, I truly am the victor. If what you say is true, and I had used the same arguments as my opponent, then I was, as I’m sure thou will agree, more consistent and more popular than he was. When integrity is gone, consistency and popularity are the next best thing, are they not? Thou saw how the crowd reacted; I’d say that’s a victory.”

Disce opened his mouth to say something, but the words failed on the tip of his tongue.

“It’s more important than ever that we persevere,” she said. “But, like thou said, it’s pointless to martyr thyself, and it would be martyrdom if we were to not take what little victories we can get, even if they’re ill-founded. I apologize for my poor rhetorical skills, and I promise to refine them for future debates. But I’m not the only one who needs to edify the necessary skills and endurance for the future: I hope thou are ready to withstand what’s going to come next and will be able to persevere in the face of moral bankruptcy.”

“What do thou mean?

Then came the Royalist political attack campaigns, via street posters and radio broadcasts. Disce knew that they were going to be mean-spirited, but he had not anticipated that they were going to be unavoidable.

At first, he had laughed at how alarmist of a tone they assumed, how the narrator of each ad spoke as if the victory of the United Party would cause Equestria to explode.

“Oh, this is my favorite one!” he yelled, as he cranked up the notch on the radio. “Ha! What does it matter if I’m a biped?”

“Doesn’t this bother thee?” asked Princess Luna.

“What? No, of course not! I love them! The statistics are so inaccurate, and my quotes are taken so out of context, that I think they help my campaign by showing Equestria how ridiculous the Royalists are.” And then, glancing at Princess Luna out of the corner of his eye, he added: “No offense.”

“Are thou sure about that? I think that thou might be giving too much credit to the general public.”

The princess proved to be right. When Disce stepped out of his house that day to go for a walk in the park, he came across a foul-smelling pony who regurgitated the ads with such conviction in his face. With a powerful flick of his tail, Disce shoved him aside easily, scoffing at him as an anomaly, that there was no possible way that the voters were that ignorant.

But, as the days went on, and similar events became more frequent, he started to worry.

He had to endure it for three months. Three months of debates, three months of speeches, three months of distributing pins, kissing foals—to the chagrin of their parents—and rebuffing attack campaigns. Disce feared that three months would be insufficient to shake the stigma from his party following President Cadenza’s impeachment, and his failure to do so would compromise his public image further, as he had chosen one of Cadenza’s nieces as his running mate.

He had tried to assure the public that he and Luna completely repudiated any connection with the former president, and that Princess Luna had disowned her from the family the second she was pronounced guilty.

“It was a lie!” snapped Princess Luna when she came into his office directly after she saw what he had said to the citizens of Equestria. “Thou know very well that I love my aunt with all my heart, and that it kills me that they won’t permit me to visit her in prison.”

“I’m profoundly sorry,” replied Disce. “I feel even that’s inadequate. I feel that there are no words that will be able to express how I feel, nor make thee view me in a lighter way. But thou said that the more popular candidate wins, yes? My comment seemed to increase my popularity and decrease thy sister’s.”

“But it was a lie, a deliberate doctoring of the truth to further thine own short-term goals. Have thou been so inundated with insults, have thou spent so much time in the realm of the deceitful, immersing thyself in their game and rules, that it has come to the point where thou now believe that that’s how one pony ought to deal with another?”

Disce threw his head into his forward extremities. “This was the only one; I swear it on my life and all that is good. Regardless of whether we win or not, I swear that that will be the only lie that I will have ever told.”

Disce looked at her, his face truly expressing nothing but remorse and sorrow. He saw Princess Luna’s eyes begin to twinkle.

“My beloved friend,” he continued, “will it ever be possible for you to forgive me?”

At this, Princess Luna stormed out of the room, turning quickly so that he would not be able to see her tears.

After an agonizing three days, the third day being, coincidentally, election day, she returned to him while he was in his office with his long face on his even longer desk. He looked up at her, and it was clear to her from his look that all he felt was exhaustion.

“I forgive you,” she said, her voice firm and resolved. “But I am nothing if not a mare of justice. If you ever betray me in such a way again, my retribution will be swift and excruciatingly painful.” She walked forward and leaned so close to Disce’s face that his eyeballs—which had always seemed to protrude from their sockets—for the first time in his life, sunk backwards into his sullen skull. “Painful,” she repeated.

“Agreed,” he said, backing his chair up uneasily; but, while doing so, he could not help but make a smile. And when he could not hide it anymore, he leapt up from behind his desk and threw his forward extremities around her. He was genuinely surprised when she returned the gesture.

After six hours, when finally, all the votes were counted, the United Party had won more seats than any other party, beating the Royalists by a mere two seats in Congress.

It was inexplicable; it was unthinkable that the skinny draconequus, Disce Cordis, had bandaged the mortal wound on the abdomen of the United Party, pulled it up from the dust, and made it charge head-on with the charismatic juggernaut of the Royal Party—and the charge had somehow halted the juggernaut’s inexorable progress.

And on November the nineteenth, 182 BC, Disce Cordis was sworn in as the thirty-second president of the United Republic of Equestria.