"The wheel."
"To begin the ceremony, we all do cartwheels
As a symbolic tribute to the one great wheel
at the center of our town.
Then we club one of our neighbors over the head,
Kiss him on the cheek,
And feed him to the wheel.
To function, the town needs the wheel to turn.
To turn, the wheel needs to eat.
Call this a reciprocal relationship.
Don't ask me about the science of it all.
The people who could explain the science
have all been fed to the wheel.
I think it goes like this.
The wheel begins its haunted mission.
The gears rotate, Hallelujah.
Civilization advances.
Then we wipe up the blood,
Listen to Elvis, and go to brunch.
When progress slows or the gears do that raspy, grindy thing,
We just toss another guy beneath the wheel.
The wheel eats the guy.
The guts oil the gears.
Is there a better way to proceed?
Could we find an alternate substance to grease the machine?
I don't know.
That's an engineering question.
And the engineers have all been fed to the wheel.
I can feel you looking at me,
Getting all judgy from your moral precipice,
Ready to wag your finger in my face and tell me about justice.
Must be nice to live in a town whose buildings weren't
built with unpaid forced labor,
Whose children wear shirts that are always clean,
Whose citizens would never feed an innocent,
Or 1,000 to a bullet or a bomb or a wheel.
But the truth is this.
The wheel seems to be everywhere.
What do you think a planet is?
The circle,
This massive stone,
Buzzing through the dark,
Ravenous with hunger,
Rotating beneath you.
[APPLAUSE]