Cerebus Eats two of his Heads,
or
How the unholy alliance of Rand’s Ghost Devoured First the Talibangelists, then the Heritage Foundation, Resulting in the Beast’s Death.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, they say, and this current administration in Washington of late definitely proves that old saws are often more than merely passe. Once Reagan entered the White House, the road to perdition was smoothed and freshly paved by three disparate groups, often with conflicting or neutral views towards one another, yet capable to reach agreement on enough to achieve hegemony over the American political scene. The first group is the unabashed rabid capitalism, the apostles of free trade, the lords of the universe, those lubricated with expensive Scotch whisky and nurtured on petroleum, in short: Ayn Rand’s Ghost.
The next, the Talibangelists, who had not a problem one with laissez-faire economics, but enjoyed the challenge of finding “biblical” reasons to discredit such annoying principles as graduated income taxation, employment security and environmental laws – while finding Heather Has Two Mommies an agent of Satan and sodomy a crime against God and society worthy of death.
The last, which this writer hopes does not conclude the reader to find any evidence of anti-Semitic bias in this essay, we may term the Heritage Foundation for shorthand, only, as there are many, many other groups with whom we lump them, such as the PNAC and the AEI. AIPAC certainly has had many apologists for the rabid anti-everything-not -supportive-of-Israel bunch who throw out the “anti-Semite” charge every time anything that doesn’t smack of a planted article written by Ariel Cohen is printed in a paper in Britain or the US. The charge is so distasteful that it makes serious, dispassionate adult analysis and dissemination of the results all but impossible for a writer to bear. These are the “Terror! Terror! Terror!” mantra repeaters. They see Old Sammy under every bed and wish to bug every phone and wreck nation under nation in order to preserve a self-anointed role as “Big Daddy of the Universe,” from whom all must march in step or become a bug under the sole. Why? Why to make us all free, of course. Even if we have to endure semi-tyranny in the process. In short: Israel and the United States of America, good; UK and Canada, almost good; everyone else in Europe, tolerable; and everyone else evil. Especially countries that dare to be vocal about their rejection of US values. But this crowd does not see individuals, only groups; thus, group punishment is meted out for opposition: terror bombing in cities, cutting off of the trade of medical supplies and other vehicles. To cross them runs one in danger of being labeled either an appeaser of terrorists or else accused of hating the Jewish religion and ethnos or both. Their revolution is as eternal as was Lev Trotsky’s. However, at least Trotsky came down from his soapbox and won a civil war, instead of scribble and screech as do Kristol, Norquist, et al., the first head of Cerebus.
Well, we have the three heads of Cerebus, now we also know some of their names. Talibangelist: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, as well as anyone who wears a diamond pinkie ring and snake skin boots while allegedly “preaching” on television while begging for money. Their “theology,” if it
deserves the benefit of a greco-derived nomenclature, is diverse, an odd hodgepodge of “born again” ranting and “feel good” old fashioned revival theatrics, with an occasional “healing” or miracle or wind fall of sudden cash thrown in. But that is just good ole’ flim flam. Hokum. Bunk. What is especially troubling about these true believers, these Jacobins of the Pulpit is the supposedly “moral” code they wish to impose upon an Enlightenment nation – a return Leviticus, if one will. They see the old desert tribal superstitions not quaint nor obsolete, but a perfected method of everyday life. This folks, is the Earth is Six Thousand Years Old Crowd, and lucky for us all, Noah was not inspired by EL to put T. Rex on the Ark, or we’d all be dodging dinosaurs today instead of Old Sammy’s airplanes. These are the “defund public education and libraries” crowd – agents of Satan, one knows. These are the “better a coat hanger and an aspirin than the ‘morning after pill’” crowd. We are all too familiar with them, and they have been tossed a bone or two for delivering enough hate to get the uneducated blind semi-literate non-thinking masses to give them votes. They also love guns, this makes the second head of Cerebus especially dangerous.
And then we have the Ghost of Ayn Rand…as the gin-soaked Chris Hitchens late of London once said, her sole redeeming factor was her stringent atheism: the Rumsfelds and Cheneys and Daddy Bushs that reek of Famous Grouse and crude. They are CEOs, people who set “energy policy” behind closed doors, those for whom a nice little war is certainly worth having in the far west of Asia in order to threaten the rapidly depleting oil reserves, thus driving the price ever higher. Their brothers, the old school capitalists, are living a Dickensian fantasy: not even a goose for Tiny Tim’s Christmas table, as Bob Cratchet has lost his job to an outfit in Mumbai. How are we supposed to buy trinkets made in China and wear clothing made in Bangladesh if we clean floors and groom greens for a living? These men – and there are but a few of them women – are producers of nothing except flatulence of the anal and oral varieties. They bravely cheer on the troops to bombs under the streets of Baghdad while dining at Kennebunkport on fresh Maine lobster. They print their signatures on condolence letters. They are the men who read every word from the Vienna School as if it were holy writ. Then they quote holy writ ignoring the overall message of the revealed religions. They are the third head of Cerebus.
The first and second heads slowly consumed by the first – as Stalin warned once, never be part of a troika, as the first and second members will always ally against the third, leaving only one, with which the first then secretly allies with the third’s replacement– leaving only a shill and the first after the second has a care of the mysterious Russian Flu. Sorry, Pat and Ari, Donnie just ate you. Robertson and Cohen are rapidly being relegated to the Lawn Garden of history, as anachronistic as Freud’s “glove paralysis” cases.
Unfortunately, business must go on, and the Carlisle-Boeing-Exxon Group must have its way, there are enemies awaiting, that is to say, Chinese trinkets to be sold and new generations of missiles to test. We must have the bases in Mesopotamia, the Iraqis be damned, what if they really got angry and the oil didn’t just slow down but abruptly end? What if the Baathist message of secular anti-monarchy got out and spread to Saudi Arabia, that would be a fine
pickle, then, wouldn’t it. No, the farce must continue and the Senate debate trivia such as flag burning and how saving the rich from taxes is good for us all and that in order to be free we must become a security state. The Randistas do not care about security, save the securities of the negotiable type. They do not care who plays house. All they want is your money, and if a few thousand here and there from the US need to die, well, then there are intellectual and religious justifications available from Ariel Cohen and Rev. Pat Robertson. Please, do not let the news get out: free trade is what this is all about, the free trade of oil at the highest possible price, with a few stable suppliers. All else is useful rhetoric to justify this.
However, the stumps of the severed heads are bleeding profusely, and save an October Surprise – Old Sammy, anyone? – a severing of the third head is inevitable come November, courtesy of a newly testosterone drenched Democratic Party. And oh, my, there shall be singing in the street when Johnny comes marching home.
Posted by wickedtrio 
Posted by wickedtrio 
Posted by wickedtrio 