President Nyarlathotep Is Simply Engaging in Classic “Mad Outer God” Negotiating Tactics

Calm down. I don’t necessarily see what all the fuss is about. In all honesty, I also read the Dread Lord Nyarlathotep’s post this morning and was surprised by it, same as you. We all know he’s the Crawling Chaos, and that title implies a certain degree of unpredictability. But even for him, his vow to “gorge on the carcass of humanity itself” unless his latest (albeit nebulous) demands are met is pretty intense. I can’t remember the last time that an elected US official said something so unconscionable and nightmarish.

Didn’t Nixon say something similar? No? Hmm.

Anyway. I’m not endorsing what the Dread Lord uttered in a series of cacophonous, guttural snarls and clicking noises at the press pool yesterday. I don’t think “wholesale existential negation” is a particularly effective geopolitical strategy under even the most normal circumstances.

But—and just hear me out here—the American voters did resummon Nyarlathotep because enough of us remain enthralled by his unfettered madness, wanton cruelty, and nonsensical brinkmanship. This is classic Negotiating 101 courtesy of the Faceless God himself! Sure, he may have kicked it up a notch from “sheer madness” to “abject depravity,” but that’s for the pundits to debate.

That said, yes, it seems like the promise to “fill every womb with salt and every testicle with spiders” is sort of backfiring. People don’t respond well to that type of unprompted threat, and his immovable, hulking form appears to have finally met an immovable object. It’s a little ironic that the “immovable object” in this metaphor is reality itself, but I’ll take the poetic flourishes where I can these days. You can never have too much light in these dark times.

But if the Dread Lord has shown us anything after a generation of horrors, it’s that he is one wriggly bastard. Literally hard to pin down, in all truthfulness. Lately, it’s looked like his flesh—if that’s what you can call it—is struggling to hang onto his physical form. In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if he never refers to this “wholesale existential negation” promise again. Hell, he may even pretend he never said it. It’s not like his cultists have believed weirder things that came out of his pustular orifices.

Will Nyarlathotep’s latest escalation gambit work? It doesn’t look good, to be honest. The stock market is cratering, diplomatic lines have been severed, and the Artemis II astronauts won’t return our calls. Try to find the silver lining here, though. If I’m wrong and we are all thrown into the cosmic thresher tonight, you can have the first, “I told you so.” If I’m right, then we live to endure another day—for whatever that’s worth here in Nyarlathotep’s world.