Ted Rall Update

So, you know, a religious maniac was "elected" President of Iran, basically drawing power from lower-class, low-educated men who are members of hardline extremist religious militias.

He belongs to a sect so extremist and lunatic that the Ayatollah Kholmeini banned it as dangerous.

He considers it his holy obligation to speed along the coming of the new Muslim messiah by putting the world through "chaos and bloodshed" (required for the coming of the Mahti, doncha know) is determined to get an atomic weapon.

His clerics proclaim fatwas that God wants Iran to have a nuke.

He has all but announced he views it as his sacred destiny to nuke Tel Aviv and New York City.

So... who is Ted Rall concerned about as regards dangerous religious extremism?

You got it.

Maniacal Messianic Prepares to Fulfill His Destiny

"I have fulfilled my destiny," the president says manically. He has just entered the nuclear launch codes that will trigger World War III. Seconds later, he emerges from a bunker. The Secretary of State squeezes between two soldiers. "Mr. President!" he shouts. "We have a diplomatic solution!"

He smiles. "It's too late," he replies. "The missiles are flying. Alleluia. Alleluia."

The above scene, from David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the horror novel "The Dead Zone," is a classic if slightly preposterous nightmare of a world destroyed by a demented demagogue. Now, incredibly, a lunatic out of a Stephen King movie has brought the United States to the brink of Armageddon.

Until I read Seymour Hersh's expose in The New Yorker and subsequent follow-up coverage by other journalists about the Bush Administration's plans to start a war against Iran, I had dismissed talk of George W. Bush's messianism as so much Beltway chatter. True, he hears voices, even claiming that God and Jesus Christ talk to him. "I believe God wants me to run for president," he told a friend in Texas. Eschewing mainstream religion, he routinely parrots the apocalyptic ravings of fringe Christianist cults: "And the light [America] has shone in the darkness [the enemies of America], and the darkness will not overcome it [America shall conquer its enemies]," he said during his fevered campaign for war against Iraq. He mimics Old Testament cadences: "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them," Bush told the Palestinian prime minister in 2003, "and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

Nooor-mal.

Despite the man's wacky religiosity, I have been giving Bush the benefit of a small amount of remaining doubt after five years of the most disastrous rule this nation has ever suffered. I believed that he was breathtakingly bigoted, stupid and ignorant. But I didn't think he was out of his mind. Until now.

He has been giving Bush "the benefit of a small amount of remaining doubt" "until now"? Really?

The trouble with always having your outrage meter pinned at 11 is that you can never really get the attention you want by announcing your outrage. It's about as surprising as Ted Kennedy coming down for Sunday breakfast with his genitals exposed.

So you have to begin lying and claiming that before, you weren't really outraged, it's just now you're really, really outraged.

Why does this douchebag have a column? Cripes, I used to think his cartooning's caricatures were crude and tasteless.

Thanks to Jack Straw.

posted by Ace at 08:08 PM

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