Alma 60

Moroni wrote this testy letter to Pahoran and whoever else in the government would pay attention:

To: Pahoran, chief judge governor, etc., including anyone who oversees the military

I’ve had it with all of you. You are supposed to draft soldiers and arm them with any weapon they need and send them to fight Lamanites wherever we find them on our land.

But I and my men, Helaman and his men, we’ve all been whipped to the bone, our tongues like middle-eastern dust, our stomachs chewing up our spines, our whole bodies wrung out like sickroom rags.

If that were all, I wouldn’t complain.

But you really have no sense of what it’s like to be stranded on this perpetual battlefield, killing without thought, watching your best friends keel over in their own blood, tying up wounds and wrapping up bodies, always knowing that you may or may not support us with food or fresh weapons or new warriors. Do you ignore us out of boredom or spite?

Do you sit around eating pineapple and watching your “nieces” dance while we’re being gutted to keep you safe? It’s not like we’ve given you the chance to pay us some of your precious “mind.” We don’t get to give you anything but the rest of our lives in mock servitude. You get to give us everything from the thrones of alleged “judgment.” But you give us exactly—what do the Arabs call it? Oh yes: zero.

The rivers of our blood will crawl like snakes into your dreams. And not the nice, colorful ones you keep in cages for amusement. I mean vicious, venomous desert snakes we have to walk through while gathering up the severed limbs of our best friends.

You hide behind your judgeships like we hide behind our battered shields. But if you think God will protect you because of your office, your “judgment” is no better than that of my youngest son, whom, by the way, I haven’t seen in years because of your neglect.

Alright, I know we say people die because they sinned. But I know my men. If you think God killed them because they weren’t worthy of serving you, it’s you whose soul should be butchered.

My theory, not that you care: God lets good people die to shame the wicked people who live. In the end it all gets sorted out. And good people can relax forever in God’s presence, while bad people are never at ease. Forever anxiety-prone. That’s hell. And I wish you’d visit it.

I’m scared, frankly. I’m scared God will rain wrath on all of us for laziness in general and lazy government in particular. And to be more precise, for bad veterans affairs. That’s right: you’re inept at taking care of your sacrificial lambs under my command.

All this rage I’m feeling started when we declared war on ourselves, the monarchists taking aim at us freedom types. If they hadn’t broken rank with the general populace, we’d have the unity needed to stop all these Lamanite incursions in the first place. If they had focused outward at our enemies instead of inward at their own kin, we would have won every skirmish, outbreak, assault, whatever you want to call it. We’d have won. Because we would have been one. God honors that.

Now, again, as usual, Lamanites are ravaging our land and property, including wives and children, hauling away any resisters, and setting our civilization back centuries. This is one-hundred percent the fault of the monarchists in our midst.

But why am I talking to you? You may be a puppet. You may be a traitor. Are you just bathing in luxury’s hot tub, oblivious to the veterans’ cause? Are you completely out of touch with God’s ways? Have you forgotten our collective history? Do you think God will spare you when you’re sitting on the throne that ought to be his in this culture? Will you just go on lazing in the dregs of the upper class—along with ten thousand others who do the same—while we waste our bodies and psyches to defend you?

One final rhetorical question: Do you really think God will ignore your culpability in our deaths? Okay, I’ll answer this one: No.

Remember that God said to wash the inside of the cup you drink from before you worry about the outside. So, if you don’t recognize, regret, and rescind your behavior, get off your couch and send us some food, we’ll stop focusing outward (on the Lamanites) and focus inward (on you and your cronies). We’re quite prepared to scrub the inner chambers of this government.

If you don’t take this seriously and meet with me personally and get us food, bedding, medicine, clean uniforms, whatever we need and want, I’ll bail on my troops—who can handle the Lamanites quite well without me, thank you— and barge into your quarters to see if there is one spark of decency left in you. If there is, I’ll be the first to defend you, even with fists. I’ll make your enemies go extinct. Just one spark. That’s all.

I’m not afraid of you or your big-cheese intimidation factor. Only God scares me. He scares me enough to grab a sword and kill people in his honor, when he asks me too, which obviously is all the time. You’re the villain in my book, because you’re not helping me. Time to get off your consecrated rear end and stick up for the regular folk. Do that or God will swing his sword at you himself. And he’s got a hell of an aim, literally.

But he might be busy. A lot going on. So I’ll do it for him. You make us feel like the center of the earth or I’ll personally bang into your office and slice you in two. Then we’ll see who loves freedom the most. And if anyone asks, I’ll tell them, “The Lord made me do it.” Because he’s not going to let you get away with this scandalous neglect of the men in uniform.

Do you think God will look the other way while you muck up the world with your vanity and lust for eminence? You break God’s law—and his heart—every day. So he’s sending me on an errand—there, I said it—to put my blade against your neck until you repent.

I can’t help it. I’m under a vow to make people do his will. In your case, that means sending us more stuff. Give us more food or we’ll steal it from your table at swordpoint. Obey God, mister.

You know me. I’m Moroni, the guy all the kids want to be like. I make no power grabs except to grab it away from anyone that challenges me, who represents God. I’m a man of the people and the people is I.

Think about it—but not for too long. God doesn’t have all day.

Brazenly yours,

Captain Moroni