Author’s note: It will be obvious to many reading this post that I’m greatly indebted to the work of Dr. Justin A. Frank and others who have done us all a great service in illuminating some of the darkest corners of our current Administration. -Dubh David Black
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
–Oliver Cromwell, as quoted by Keith Olbermann
Oliver Cromwell tried to live as a committed, faithful Christian, if only according to his own interpretation of what that meant. I would argue that he was utterly deluded and corrupt; he bears responsibility for many of the cruelest, most appalling acts of genocide in all of recorded history. If one were familiar with Christianity only from reading the New Testament and then were to read various histories of Cromwell’s attempted annihilation of the Irish, with all references to specific motivations, era and location removed, connecting the two would bugger imagination. But as has so often lead to the making of history, psychosis and insight can co-mingle and mutate, each by turns diminishing then enhancing the other. Cromwell was a man capable of great insight and complex ideas, even if they were ethically indefensible or downright evil.
But the Cromwell quote Keith Olbermann used as part of his recent indictment of the President and his deep sickness is the one that years ago I’d happened to read, then paraphrase and copy-scrawl across the cover of a notebook. I have often had it in my head, sometimes more naggingly than others. Though it apparently originated with one of history’s most destructive psychopaths, it is often a consideration worth taking.
Well done Mr. Olbermann, and peripheral props to the network that employs him for actually airing in its full glory a deeply detailed(12 uninterrupted minutes on tv!), articulate, and passionate piece that will be remembered as among the very best and most pivotally influential in the history of American broadcast journalism and opinion. We cannot allow the GOP and ‘religious’ right to further erode and pervert the Constitution and our inherent mandate to be a shining beacon of hope, liberty, and opportunity to the world.
This President is perhaps the only person on Earth who won’t ask his father(who himself, you remember, prosecuted a war in Iraq as President; the GOP and corpo-clone-MSM sure hope you don’t)–won’t even ASK his father HW for advice, observations, or input of any kind. In regard to anything. He seemingly won’t even consider it, as a means to both punish his father, and to protect himself from facing any perception of disappointing him further. To further illustrate the absolute psychological dysfunctionality of this, consider that Bill Clinton himself–apparently still The Lying Arch Devil Fornicator in the view of an ossified few– states unequivocally that if he were in W’s shoes, he’d immediately seek HW’s input as regards Iraq and how to extricate ourselves, while still helping the Iraqi people achieve an at-least-minimally safe and functioning society. Hopefully with a lower murder rate than Washington, DC, circa-1990. Hell, if Hugo Chavez were in W’s image-prop cowboy-boots, he’d ask for HW’s input.
My prayer as a Christian(and its logical political corollary, a Progressive Liberal) is that W would acknowledge and accept the actual central essence of his stated belief system– Christianity– instead of living in accordance to a dangerously perverted and clearly ill-defined set of de-contextualizations.
W is by many accounts the son of a shockingly neglectful father and a petty, bullying mother. Until this child can hear and understand his own ‘small, still voice’, he cannot express the anger and howling pain he so obviously feels towards his exceedingly accomplished ex-President father and scathingly dismissive mother.
Because W seems so deeply wounded by his father’s absence and lack of engaged guidance all throughout his life, he imperils our very nation and the world with his unthinking reactions and utter inability to consider options or consequences. W needs to find the peace that would come with forgiving his parents from the dimmest, most primal depths of his being. For his own sake and ours, he needs an intervention.
The root causes of his toxic actions and complex pathology need to be confronted and treated. In other words, he needs to ‘man up’ to the harm he’s already caused and immediately use all of his self-expanded powers to significantly alter the course of his administration’s policies. His personal demons need to be cast out. Son needs to himself be invaded and deposed of the stunted, terrified and rage-addled lost child that now rules and guides him. Son needs to ask father why he was forsaken. Son needs to shriek and sob and curse and wail. He needs to jump headlong into his river of tears, let the unconquerable currents propel him through enraged rapids and over the falls. That bullying, bullied child has to be drowned more completely than with only the symbolic immersion of Christian baptism. This feral being needs to mature into personhood and can no longer be allowed to roam loose, unsupervised and free to destroy any plaything he discovers.