The Whore Rides a Monster

The latest McCain attack ad was predictable enough. It goes after Obama for not being a tough guy, characterizing him as a wimp, unwilling to do what needs to be done to protect the Empire of the Pentagon, Inc. from jihadist dangers and the perversions of the Persians.

Assuming that Obama actually said what the ad claims he did -- that Iran is a "tiny" country which offers "no threat to the United States or Israel," the only part I find to disagree with is the "tiny."

The McCain video, of course, thumps away monotonously on the usual lie -- that Iran is threatening us with a nuclear weapon she doesn't have, which she is about to acquire by way of a nuclear weapons development program which she likewise doesn't have, as we were informed last year by the Empire of the Pentagon's very own intelligence services.

However, cheerleaders for imperium and the spoil of free oil for everybody never let the truth stand in the way of a useful grudge and a possible war. Iran makes for a particularly useful object lesson, because its history shows what happens when one of the Empire of the Pentagon's prize possessions manages to stage a successful revolution and slip out of the Beast's claws. That, and the fact that the movement now known as "jihadism" began there, is Iran's real crime, not their supposed ability to drop a big one on us or on Tel Aviv, as the fantasy cooked up in feverish and overheated imperialist brains would have it.

Those who would grasp the levers of Empire never forget anything, and they never learn anything.

Tim LaHaye, I'm sure, would disagree, but watching the McCain attack ad this morning I was reminded of the passage in "Revelation" in which a whore is riding a beast with seven heads and ten horns. I haven't read LaHaye's take on this powerful image, but if his interpretation is literal, which I suspect, he misses the point. Writing in about 95 CE from the rock called Patmos whence he had been banished by the Emperor, John may have been describing the first seven emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius called Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and after the turmoil of 68-69, Vespasian and his son Titus, and Domitian) and the ten main possessions of the Empire: Africa, Egypt, Cappadocia, Asia, Greece, Britain, Gaul, Germania, Hispalia (Spain), and Italy. Of course I'm guessing, since there's no way of knowing exactly what John of Patmos had in mind.

But he was certainly writing about the Empire, and in a way, describing all empires, which are all founded on the universal instinct, so productive of bloodshed and tears, to dominate and control others. For their own good, of course.

Some of our instincts enhance our survival; others are sent straight from hell, and work from within for our destruction. The instinct which causes subjects who used to be citizens to chant "USA -- Number One!" and causes a whore like McCain to ride the beast is one of the latter.

The Empire of the Pentagon, Inc., as no longer a country, but a for-profit enterprise. As long as we're an empire, we will never be a democracy.