THE FANATIC AND THE FRAUD

(At first sight, this is a “dated” entry, going back to the Presidency of George W. Bush, when it was, indeed, written. But, as I noted on several occasions already, certain negative patterns in American political life and ideology cannot be relegated to and confined within the Bush-Cheney time frame, as they had started before their political ticket had come to Washington, they continue still under the current Obama Presidency, and they will be still with us, I am afraid, when Mr. Obama ends his run of the White House. It is, therefore, proper to regard this entry as one dealing with a general long-standing subject.)

In this day and age in America, when the neoconservative ideology has seized the reins of government in Washington, the big question to ask appears to be, whether we are being ruled by the fanatic or the fraud? Which of the two is more dangerous? According to Nietzsche’s immortal wisdom, “Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.” This is probably true, because the lies can be disposed of by their public exposure, but convictions can only be trounced in a fierce struggle to the end.

The tragedy of American national confoundment (if I may employ this unusual word honoring JK Rowling’s cleverly coined term “confundus charm” of the Harry Potter fame) is that the said neoconservative ideology is driven both by the manipulative fraud, at the source of this ideology, and by the illiterate and incompetent fanatic who has found for himself a one-dimensional cause to stick to. In this unholy symbiosis, the fanatic’s zeal is fed by the lies of the fraud, and the lies of the latter are somehow given credence by the great zeal of the former, to the detriment of all.

The good news, if anything positive can be gleaned from this sad picture, is that with lies, sooner or later, the chicken come home to roost, and the lies, eventually exposed, will bury under their rubble not only our stupid fanatic, with his dangerous convictions, but also the clever fraud, whose cleverness might otherwise have allowed him to escape the exposure, but not with the fanatic so tightly attached to him, and constituting the fraud’s Achilles’ heel. As the dumb fanatic falls under the heavy weight of the fraud's lies, so does the fraud, with all his cleverness, courtesy of the clumsy company he keeps.

…Some very wishful thinking here, perhaps? Maybe, but it is such a good feeling to imagine that one day, in the words of Maxwell Smart, the forces of niceness will triumph over the forces of evil… Yes!