"Everything is falling into place. It can't be too long now," he says with eyes bright as meteors. "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon."
These warnings could have come from any knights-and-sorcerers fantasy novel, fiery Bible-thumpin' preacher or wild-eyed, sandwich-boarded crier on the streets of the city jungle. Instead, that epic grandeur, righteous zeal and irrational fear were cooked into a strange and dangerous brew by a president of the United States of America.
It was former president Ronald Reagan who rode them almost 20 years ago on an army of high hyperbole against the "evil empire" of communism. If such apocalyptic fire-breathing is unsettling, is that because of its outrageousness, or an eery familiarity? In fact it is something America has heard--shouted in pulpy fictions and from towering pulpits--throughout its history. And now that the end-of-times mantle is held once again from on high, as President George W. Bush leads our country into the dark lands with swords raised to the sky.
Reagan invoked obscure Bible passages of doom and rapture against the atheist Soviet Union. Bush has swallowed the word "crusade" but still trumpets in the name of good, heralding "our progress in ridding the world of this great threat to civilization." "God is near," he says, as if it was His hand that descended into South Florida to anoint this prodigal Texan son. No, really--our president believes that it is his God-given destiny to rid the world of terror. George Dubya, the Great Eradicator.
His "axis of evil" phrase has echoed in foreign policy reports in the weeks since the battle cry State of the Union address. Axis of evil: a crude and reckless terminology that simultaneously invokes the 20th century's two real threats to American hegemony--the fascist triple axis and communist evil empire--and obscures the daunting first challenge of our new age.
Sure, Iran, Iraq and North Korea pose grave threats as oppressive regimes armed with very dangerous weapons. But this childish and atavistic demonizing draws our foreign policy into the comic book pages of a superhero's universe, brushing away the precarious interdependency of the world stage. And that world stage, the horrified audience to Bush's quixotic belligerence, cries out in dismay. Anatole Kaletsky gave voice in The Times of London to the alarm of a continent that months ago was united in support of the rallying United States but now stands aghast, watching Bush "terrify the American public with bloodcurdling rhetoric about the infinitely greater horrors of nuclear and biological terrorism that lie in wait." Noting the self-destructive and isolating effects of such rabid mongering, Kaletsky asks, "Is America about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?"
Not according to our presses. The uncharacteristic acclaim for Bush's righteous wrath came not just from the war lords--commentator David Horowitz hailed it as the mark of "a brilliant leader"--but from more leveled heads. Former presidential candidate Al Gore crawled out of silence to call for a "final reckoning" with Iraq. Columnist Thomas Friedman noted that Bush's zeal makes us look "as crazy as some of our enemies" but then firmly approved of such bullying and raving. Reason has given way to what sounds like the rapturous outbursts of an evangelical choir--our judicially anointed will lead us to victory. Hallelujah!
But if Bush was out of line, he would have been called on it. Truth is, he marches in beat to the very pulse of American history. After all, this zealous fundamentalism landed with piety and good works right off the Mayflower. We are a country of believers--at heart, even our craggiest apologists are eschatologists--imbued with a deep faith in the galvanizing beam of our beacon of light. Most students will hardly remember the last time our country donned the jeweled crown and stood tall against the forces of evil, and yet this is all still a language we speak in unconscious words--the roots of our mighty Redwood trees of myth, running deep in the fruited plains. We are the city on the hill, the New Jerusalem, the shining light that leads the whole world out of darkness, and all will see it, be they Indian or Filipino, Vietnamese or Islamic. But notice how easily "Free them all!" blends into, "Kill them all!"
And for several months of the new millennium, that city was under siege, its walls ruptured--if more in spirit than in stone. Trouble befell the republic, and for a moment we cried, "Surely, the end is nigh!" But the puny infidel armies were quickly smitten and evil fled to the dark corners of the earth. The giant was awakened, and then he got grumpy. Now this hybrid of cowboy arrogance and holy warrior rustles up the troops. You can just barely hear the apocalyptic urgency and almost-ecstatic hysteria when he tells us, "Time is not on our side."
Evil is not as flagrantly ugly as an orc, nor is it easily consolidated into an axis. National fantasies about freedom and morality and baseball and Camelot are one thing. But to count everyone who doesn't stand behind us as standing up against us will surely leave us standing alone. All the world will step back slowly from the gun-flailing, bomb-strapped man in the red, white and blue trench coat.
Greg Bloom is a Trinity junior and managing editor of Recess.
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