I’m not entirely sure how I ended up here.
I could tell you it was being mugged. I could give you a list of books I’ve read, what videos I watched growing up. None of it really caused a dramatic shift, looking back.
I wasn’t lectured into anything, no one dissolved my priors in debate. No seed of reactionary rebellion sprouted into clashing with malcontents around me. It felt more like a frail iron shell, embrittled and rusted by the rain, slowly start to chip and lose form.
I’ve always played nice. You can’t find my opinion by looking. As I grew older, interacting with friends or family I disagreed with, even strangers, felt like bilocating. I’d see my own mouth moving, my hands motioning, my teeth flashing a disgusting sheepish smile as I really sat coiled at my own feet.
Snakes really aren’t that hard to spot once you know what you’re looking for. A man could find one practically anywhere if he tried. Some might find them a bit creepy or frightening, so it’s no wonder they’ve stuck to the cracks and gutters of the mind.
An ophidiophobe would prefer to live in ignorance. They know there are snakes out there, but they never seem to interact with them, so how many could there really be? They never look down. Even if they did, they’d swear that splotch of green and brown was always there, lying motionless at the feet of their brother, lover, friend.
It’s an incredibly useful blind spot. Ambush hunting is easier than tracking, that much is certain. It also makes it indescribably hard to take an inventory.
I definitely spot them much more often now, especially in recent years. Not edgy burnouts or parrots on their newest grift. Genuine ideologues. The social strain their belief might cause has become all too much to bear, it’s easier to lie in wait.
They’re quite convincing too. You might not even notice until you hear the flicker of a forked tongue just beside your ear. There are way more that sit on the fence, that aren’t entrenched in opposition, that just need to hear it a certain way, and they’ll gladly clamber over the garden wall.
I’m not the only one conscious of this. There exists an air of nervousness percolating out of the pores of public servants and intelligentsia. The sudden unnerving feeling that one should have paid more attention in their one-off herpetology elective. Their desperate eyes dart about, boot to boot, searching for something they know is slithering about somewhere.
I’ve never met a man who could move a heel faster than a snake could bite.