The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend
I am a great man. The greatest who ever lived.
For every 10 people, there are 11 opinions. Protestants disagree with Catholics; Muslims and Jews choose existential exclusivity; communists condemn capitalists; Hatfields and McCoys feud to the death.
But everything has changed with me. I'm the galvanizing spark smelting them all together, purifying a unified destiny, extracting a truth they could all embrace--and with a smile.
It wasn't easy. It takes a powerful epiphany to sidestep so many irreconcilable philosophies, so many generations of intuitive cross-hatred, and so many divisions of faith, ethos, and socioeconomic strata.
I provided just that.
Just imagine, infidels dancing check-to-cheek with accusers; sinners' refusal to sin again; apostates evangelizing with apologists; the righteous obsequious to and fawning over the forgiven. If that doesn't stake my claim to greatness, convince me otherwise! Please!
To unify the immiscible, you must instill in them a mandate that supersedes all differences. I led by example--not by all the words that have been written, to no avail. My actions spoke volumes--heard, read, and understood in a thousand languages, a hundred religions, and by billions of independent thinkers who turned their attentions to me and away from their own self-serving aspirations and devotions.
I am great because I made all that happen. How, you might ask?
I committed a crime so heinous, ungodly, revolting, disturbing, shocking, and ugly, that it not only got the attention of everyone, everywhere, all at once, but commandered it. Human instinct distanced everyone from what I did--and from the type of person who could do it. What they arrived at, separating themselves from me--what they encountered--was a spirituality so far from where they thought they were that they all arrived at the same place.
A place without me.
My crime was so instinctively heretical to everyone, everywhere, that I provided, finally, common ground. As horrible as it was unprecedented, no human on Earth had even considered such a crime. But I did.
And did it. Everyone's getting along, but not with me. Thank me: the world's a beautiful place now.
Now I'm in the Cruel-and-Unusual Punishment wing of Death Row, the first to make legislating such a thing, Constitutionally, necessary. They're not only going to kill me, but they're going to make me suffer, too. To set an example. So it never happens again.
Oh, but trust me, it will.
For I didn't finalize the horrible and heinous. Not at all. Mine isn't the last word. I just raised and lowered the bar at the same time--for the others who will follow. That's just beautiful! You're welcome.