Now that we've finally got super villains,
we could really use some super secret agents, too
Now that we've finally got super villains,
we could really use some super secret agents, too
As of this writing, Osama Bin Laden is still missing, despite vast rewards offered and the most intense manhunt at least since the end of the Second World War.
And yet, the American public couldn't care less. Why should they? He remains at large along with the mystery anthrax mailer, just like the killers of JonBenet Ramsey and Nicole Simpson (remember them?) among an uncounted multitude of murdering monsters.
Because of his great wealth and geopolitical vision, Osama is not like lesser "evildoers" however. After all, rogue multi-millionaires with violent global ambitions are a new kind of creature — like James Bond villains come alive.
In all those books and films, the major Bond baddie is an internationalist, usually an incredibly weathly, socially prominent yet still an outsider plutocrat who has made his fortune by ruthlessly unorthodox means and is beholden to none. Most are not mad scientists themselves like Dr. No or Drax, but merely employ them for their own unscrupulous ends. They are usually businessmen, with stark financial interests. Perhaps, like Goldfinger, they merely want to protect their investments (although he was willing to do it with a nuclear device smuggled across the Mexican border for him by the Red Chinese).
Beyond the reach of law, able to bribe, threaten and otherwise manipulate entire nations, these men scorn the current international order from their hidden lairs. While they may have magnificent mansions and castles, their real seats of power are usually their secret fortresses, on islands, in the jungle, or at sea, outside governmental control. From there, surrounded by mysterious, blinking gizmos, hordes of minions (and a few babes, of course,) the typically megalomanical Bond villain plots against the powers of the status quo which 007, suave protector of the British Empire, represents.
These characters are as paradoxical as their foe. They are sociopathic individualists as much as Bond is, interested in creating a New World Order of their own definition by blithely trashing the old one. They are not terrorists in the traditional sense though they pose a similar threat. However, they seem to represent the emerging power of multinational corporations which bestride the planet, too large, rich, and diverse, to be controlled by any government or even international agency like the UN.
With their untimately futile efforts, the villians in fiction do transform the world by uniting it against them, for not even our brave hero can take them alone. He, too, must rely on a "coalition of the willing," — or at least whatever Royal Navy and CIA assets that might be handy.
This kind of bad guy wasn't an original creation of Ian Fleming nor of Hollywood. He can be found skulking at least as far back as the works of Jules Verne. Verne's marvellous madmen, rugged scientific anarchists like Captain Nemo and Robur the Conqueror with their fabulous Victorian machines, defied the global empires of the 19th Century in pretty much the same way as Fleming's 20th Century figures would defy the superpowers. The main difference is that the Frenchman's villains tended to be insane idealists, where the Brit's later characters are utterly selfish sociopaths, much like Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Prof. Moriarity, "the Napoleon of crime," whatever noble motives they might claim.
But now, here at last in the 21st Century, these bad guys are no longer science fiction.
Since 9-11, we have become horribly aware of just how real they have become. They are truly wildcards because as global terrorists they don't have to play by any established rules. Armed with immense wealth, bound by no agenda but their own, who knows what they could do?
Could these archvillians possibly exist? Is some billionaire like Bill Gates or Richard Branson, say, plotting in a secret lab in an extinct volcano on an island somewhere to unleash unthinkable horrors on the world?
If so, he will not only bring about his own destruction like in the spy novels, but alter the world in order that this kind of unbridled, individualistic power can no longer exist.
A friend recently pointed out that if our worst fears ever come true – if, for example, a nuclear bomb is detonated in Baltimore, or Denver, or any other city, that spells the immediate, global end to national sovereignity. The New World Order will be ushered in by a mushroom cloud.
Once a terrorist's nuke annihilates a metropolis as our leaders have solemnly assured us will someday inevitably happen, anyone who has them or seeks to possess them, anywhere on the globe, instantly becomes an enemy of the rest of us, of civilization itself. Martial law will descend like a curtain over the entire world, not just in the United States. There will be house-to-house searches from Karachi to Kansas City, Murmansk to Mumbai, Amsterdam to Anchorage, Stockholm to Sidney. No state anywhere will be left untouched. Civil rights will be meaningless in such an environment of fear. No resistance will be tolerated. National IDs, internal checkpoints, internment camps, and random searches will become the new norm overnight. Even the wild reaches of the Internet will be tamed. Before too long, we might all long to receive our implanted chips, just to make the security rigamarole of our daily lives a tiny bit more bearable.
Irregardless of anyone's wishes, our homeworld will have one, single government someday, or it will burn. Simple as that. Whatever form it takes, from the United Nations, some sort of American Empire, or a new entity completely, cannot be foretold, but it will happen because it must. With atomic and other weapons of mass destruction, the planet has become far too small a place to let any madman have possession, be he Kim Jong-Il or Michael Eisner.
There's a lot of noise being made about how Osama and his buddies are now desperate fugitives, harried and fearful, unable to strike back, but the fact is they're still out there somewhere. By their continued survival, Bin Laden and his boys mockingly thumb their noses at the vanity of the superduperpower which blunders about like a drunken elephant in the dark searching for them. They have defied the awesome might and money of the United States and so far have apparently survived, a fact which you can bet has not gone unnoticed by our enemies.
They may still be able to organize and inspire their followers. Indeed, al Qaeda may have more members now than ever. And the longer Bin Laden stays uncaught, the greater his threat grows, not less, as his legend grows. The steadily mounting toll of dead, missing, and wounded among our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would seem to be tragically growing proof of that.
We could surely use a couple of superspies like James Bonds or even a Sidney Bristow or two out there now to fight these supervillians.
Of course, the existence of "00" agents with licences to kill would never be revealed, any more than international death squads or mind-controlled sleeper agents. But behind the "Black Curtain" of National Security, supposedly our all-seeing intelligence agencies couldn't even predict the fall of the Soviet Union, and their warnings of 9-11 were disregarded. The vast but conservative bureaucracies of the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI, and all the other spooky anagram agencies would not seem conducive to such high-profile operators, especially these days, with the rumored political purges. Long gone are the days of "Wild Bill" Donovan and his OSS band of rowdies.
Yet ironically, the covert operatives of the War On Terror who will be the major enforcers of this future intelligence superstate may currently be serving as the last bastion against its final implementation. But if they fail to keep the unthinkable from happening, that atomic ignition will burn more than steel, stone, and flesh. It will consume the last tattered rags of the nation state and individual rights. And a new era of history will dawn, as this planet of warring states is slowly but inevitably welded into a world empire.
In many ways, the 21st century has been a real disappointment so far. Instead of jet packs, we have Segways. We hoped for a world ever more united in the peaceful exploration of space; yet despite some hopeful international cooperation like tsunami relief, since 9-11, we have one seemingly ever more divided against itself, and the achievements of our technology turned ever more towards darker ends.
But that dreadful day that a nuclear 9-11 happens, all will change in an unbearably bright flash. In the smoke and ashes of that awful morning, the rising iron fist of universal tyranny might be seen as our sole salvation.
Links
Spy TV sites:
All Alias
Alias TV
Official FOX "24" homepage
Lots of Bond links out there. Here's a couple to start with:
James Bond Official Site
James Bond Multimedia
Verne & Victorian Villiany:
Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Zvi Har
Previous — Assassins Among Us
Next — Funny Money
