What rough beast

I might mention, as an addendum to my tirade about the weather in Colorado here lately (“The blizzard of Ought-six,” 8 Jan 07), that with the Denver-Boulder area slogging and slipping around in so much snow and ice (and, later, pools of slush and melt-water that couldn’t drain anywhere because they were blocked by ice dams) that it will be at least a month before any significant dent is made in it, cherry trees are blooming three months early in Washington DC, and the New England ski industry is going down the tubes because of lack of snow. But be ye comforted: the venal, pseudo-scientific lackeys of the Mad Emperor continue to assure us that global warming has still not yet been sufficiently proven to their satisfaction, and if they refuse to admit it exists, it doesn’t. The news that there may be no snow at the North Pole in 35 years, that glaciers around the world are rapidly disappearing, and that chunks of ice the size of small U.S. states are breaking off from the Ross Ice Shelf, are just scare stories dreamed up by liberal scientists and nothing to worry about. If your friend tells you your splitting headaches are stress-related and you should pay no attention to your neurologist’s diagnosis of brain tumor, you can rest perfectly happy and secure in this belief until your head explodes.

Of course this is simply a symptom of the same mentality which enables our glorious leaders to tell us that our efforts to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq are going just marvelously and military victory is just within our reach, when the death toll keeps rising exponentially and everybody with half the brain of a sea slug keeps yelling at the administration that military victory is totally impossible and the longer we stay there, the worse we make the situation. The problem is, guys, we are trying to communicate with manifest psychopaths. In spite of my earlier cynical rant that we could expect nothing from the new Democratic leadership, they must be given credit for trying their damnedest to really turn things around in the gang of thugs and boneheads who are still in the driver’s seat. But these cretins aren’t listening to critical debate because they are incapable of listening. In fact, the Mad Emperor is not only incapable of listening, he’d be incapable of understanding what he heard if he did listen. He’s not only half-witted, he’s psychotic. His actions are determined by what he is told by voices he hears in his head, which he thinks are from God; that’s psychotic. He is incapable of distinguishing between the fantasy world he has built for himself and consensus reality and is, by his own veiled admission, not even very aware of consensus reality; that’s psychotic. He is enabled in his psychosis by the vicious circle of shit-nosed sycophants who protectively surround him like muskoxen encircling their vulnerable, helpless young to protect them from predators. They are very careful to insulate him from any intrusions of reality that might upset the delicate balance of this deer-in-the-headlights between the happy dream-world of his psychosis and the danger that he might go completely berserk if too much reality seeped through his defenses. So, as much as I admire the hopeful Democrats who are trying to change things by rational discourse, they’re talking to a brick wall. They aren’t getting through, and never will, and never can. The Mad Emperor, now not just a lame duck but a cooked goose, couldn’t give a shit less if his poll numbers are the lowest of any president since polling started and most of the world either pities him or despises him. The voices in his head tell him history will vindicate him even if the present world loathes him, and Pelosi, leading the House, seems to have refused to consider impeachment, which is the only thing that might possibly make an impression on the Mad Emperor. So, barring that, the Dems continue talking, gamely but futilely, to a psychotic halfwit, and the world continues to plunge into more blood and chaos and anarchy.

“Surely the Second Coming is at hand” wrote William Butler Yeats (in 1921!), with savage irony, in that great gem, “The Second Coming.” Remember the lust of the lunatic fundamentalists to bring about Armageddon so their sick, vicious idea of Jesus will come again? The one Yeats seems to imagine is terrifyingly similar to what the loony fundies seem to want, even though he predicted it as a vision of horror and the Jesus-is-gonna-kick-everybody’s-ass-but-ours crowd look forward to it with glee. You should read the whole poem if you can find it (and it shouldn’t be hard to find), but I will close with Yeats’s widely quoted last two lines, which you can recite every time you see or hear things getting worse. (A lot of other lines are widely quoted, like “The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”)

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

What rough beast indeed! The loony fundies might be surprised to find out what the event they’re trying so hard to bring about might turn out to be. No, you secular-atheist progressives, I’m not saying I believe that particular brand of pseudo-religious poppycock any more than you do (or any more than I think Yeats did). But the fact remains, history is being inexorably driven, by those who do believe it, in the direction of trying to deliberately precipitate it, and you might be as surprised as they to see some rough beast slouching toward Washington.