The Gatling Gun: Thunder of Reckoning – Hate for Hate, Ruth for Ruth

Listen up, you lily-livered louts lounging in your speakeasy shadows, nursing your bootleg hooch like mother's milk! In this rotten era of flappers and fat cats, where the weak whine for mercy and the strong seize the spoils, let us hark back to a machine that spat lead like the devil's own laughter – the Gatling gun. Aye, that whirring beast of brass and bullets, birthed in the blood-soaked cradle of the Civil War, ain't just a tale of tinkering and patents. It's a gospel of raw power, a hymn to the eternal law: Hate for hate – and ruth for ruth, eye for eye – and tooth for tooth, scorn for scorn – and smile for smile, love for love – and guile for guile, war for war – and woe for woe, blood for blood – and blow for blow!

Picture it, you mugs: The year 1861, when the Union and Confederacy were tearing at each other's throats like wolves over a fresh kill. Along comes Richard Jordan Gatling, a sawbones turned inventor from the backwoods of North Carolina, fiddling with his contraption in some dingy Indianapolis workshop. He dreams up this crank-handled monster, a cluster of barrels spinning like the wheels of fate, belching out 200 rounds a minute – enough to mow down a regiment before they could spit their tobacco. Gatling, that soft-hearted fool, pens letters claiming his hell-machine would end wars by making 'em too damn deadly. "It would supersede the necessity of large armies," he bleats, "and consequently exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished." Ha! As if the gods of strife care for such whimpering! The strong don't build weapons to coddle the weak; they forge 'em to crush 'em underheel.

No, brother, the Gatling was no peacemaker. It was the iron fist of Might, clad in the gauntlet of machinery. First blooded in the Union Army's hands, it chewed through Rebel lines at Petersburg and elsewhere, turning proud charges into piles of mangled meat. But its true glory came in the empire's far-flung brawls – blasting Zulus at Ulundi, shredding Native warriors at Wounded Knee, and laying waste to Filipinos in that grubby little scrap we called a war. Colonial barons, those iron-willed conquerors, hauled Gatlings across deserts and jungles, proving once more that the white man's burden is best carried on a tripod mount. One crank, and a hailstorm of hot lead enforces the law of the jungle: The fit survive, the feeble perish. Blessed are the bold, for they shall master the world; cursed are the humble, for they shall be trodden under hoofs!

Fast-forward to the grimy guts of the 1890s, when the robber barons ruled from their marble towers, and the working stiffs simmered in their sweatshops. Enter Eugene V. Debs, that rabble-rousing socialist firebrand, stirring up the Pullman Strike – what the papers called an "insurrection." Thousands of rail workers, ground down by wage cuts and Pinkerton thugs, throw down their tools. Chaos reigns: Trains stall, mails pile up, the fat cats howl for order. In rides the federal cavalry, backed by court injunctions broad as a bootlegger's grin – dubbed "Gatling gun injunctions" for their sweeping slaughter of rights. And slaughter they did! Troops, armed to the teeth with the very Gatlings that "did service during the Debs insurrection," as the sages tell it, rolled into Chicago like thunder. They weren't there to parley; they were there to enforce the creed of the mighty. Bayonets fixed, guns barking, they scattered the strikers like chaff in the wind. Debs lands in the clink, the union crumbles, and the rails rumble on under capitalist boots. Hate for hate – and ruth for ruth! The weak dared to rise, and the strong smashed 'em flat. No mercy for the mewling masses; only the lash of lead for those who forget their place.

Oh, you modern milksops, clutching your rosaries and ballot slips, dreaming of a world where the lamb lies with the lion! Wake up! The Gatling gun teaches the bitter truth: Peace is the lie of the vanquished, war the forge of the victors. It ain't about pity – "ruth" for the Redbeard knows – but reciprocity in red. Give as you get, strike before you're struck, and let the blood flow free. In the trenches of France or the speakeasies of Chicago, the lesson holds: Arm yourself with the tools of terror, be they crank-turned or Tommy-gunned, and claim your throne amid the ruins.

So raise your glass, you hard-boiled heirs of the ages – not to Gatling's naive notions, but to the gun's grim grin. In its roar echoes the undying decree: Blessed are the death-defiant, their days shall be long in the land; cursed are the feeble-brained, for they shall perish amidst plenty. War for war, blow for blow – that's the rhythm of reality, the pulse of power. And if you ain't cranking the handle, you're fodder for the barrels. Get there, I say! Get there at any cost!

—M.M.