The Nutty Professor

1. From an article entitled Glenn Beck is obsessed with Hitler and Woodrow Wilson. (I'm just saying.):

Once you liken your opponent to the Nazis, any form of rational discussion becomes impossible. But Beck, it seems, has a Nazi fetish. In his first 18 months on Fox News, from early 2009 through the middle of this year, he and his guests invoked Hitler 147 times. Nazis, an additional 202 times. Fascism or fascists, 193 times. The Holocaust got 76 mentions, and Joseph Goebbels got 24.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks....? Blackboard Jungle!

2. "....any form of rational discussion becomes impossible."

You may remember we pretty much said the same thing back in Februrary (Two for Two: American Years of Lead).

3. Next up: Sabrina the Teenage Witch. "I am not a crook witch!" Waggle jowls, flash victory sign.

4. Followed by: Hogan's Heroes, guest starring Tea Party favorite Rich Iott as the lovable Reinhard Pferdmann of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking....

5. Saw a thing on the Washington Post where some guy from Slate talked with Todd Gitlin and whined about the Right attacking Christ Coons for his article entitled "The Making of a Bearded Marxist." He's got a point. Coons never called himself a Marxist--it was joke by friends remarking on the future divinity school student's humanitarian outlook upon his return from-- gasp--conspiracy alert--Kenya!! Maybe Beck is on to something....

Anyway, what a pussy. The Right is making hay with this because they know nobody will actually read the article and it helps them develop their narrative that America is being eaten alive from within by Socialists. Or Nazis. Catholics, Freemasons, Jews, Muslims. Whatever works.

Same reason why the Left is hammering Iott for dressing up as a member of the SS and mocking Christine O'Donnell for her confession that she had a first date on a blood-spattered Satanic altar. One spouting off about a love of freedom and the other the evils of having a wank.

Hey, one good slander deserves another!

6. Holy shit, politicians exploiting an opponent's gaffes, indiscretions and "weird" hobbies! Political partisans attacking other people with the same means they decry in their political adversaries. Hypocrisy! Distortions! Half-truths! Outright lies! Say it ain't so!

Gog and Magog: Ruminations

Last week I promised to meditate on Gog/Magog while vacationing. This is what happened.

Riding from a carnival. “Something’s happening!” my son yells. “Something’s happening!”

I was shamefully unmindful, caught instead by the realization that each age receives the prophecies it deserves.

We receive what we request.

I considered the two prophecies: Bush proclaimed himself as ben David set to rectify his father’s Persian setbacks—while others decried Bush as Gog himself.

But these are just twin visions operating in the same prophetic space. I can see the two armies clashing as clearly as the valley viewed from the hillock. Yet I also sense a blind spot, something horrible, unseen and looming.

Norman O. Brown, considering H.G. Well’s sense that Mind had reached the end of its Tether, saw a snarling dog (yo!). Only holy madness can break Brown’s leash—ever lunging forward. But it seems to me that the better metaphor might be prophecy as territory.

We are still exploring that prophetic space set in Revelations, discovering new valleys with new interpretations—but outside of this territory is blankness, and our civilization is winding down as we run out room to expand.

“Something’s happening!” my son shouted for the third time.

And then he pooped his pants.

My wife frowns while she sleeps.