Dreading the sequels

Dad and I share a love of black and white horror movies. You know, the black and white menace of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Cheney Jr. and all that. When I was little, it was sort of my weekly treat to stay up late with Dad and watch horror flicks from the 30s and 40s. However, I was allowed to do so with the proviso that I didn't cover my eyes during the scary parts. To this day, I wonder whether Dad knew that I "cheated". I'd sit with my feet on the couch, watching right above knee-level, and scootching down ever so slightly to watch my knees if the music turned too ominous.

This early exposure to the macabre probably explains a lot of my personality. Yet I never did develop a taste for slasher flicks of the 1980s. Nay: Too vulgar for the genteel and relatively bloodless world of black and white, wherein the monster could at least be counted on to just stay the heck dead, already. (Although monsters did sometimes manage to procreate--i.e. all the "Son of" movies. Mind you, given how B&W movie-characters were as asexual as Barbie and Ken, we'll probably never know how, exactly, this procreation actually happened.)

But going on six years into the horror-show known as the GWOT, I realize that real-life horror is actually the worst of both worlds: The monsters escape after siring new incarnations.

Cases in point: GW Bush will retire to his dude ranch, having taking Reagan's place as the living Caesar-God in the pantheon of the Far Right. Cheney will withdraw to a Forbidden City-esque setup where the clamor from the enraged peasants cannot reach his ears. Suffice it to say, both will almost certainly die untried by any court save History's.

But, the optimist might object: Tho' the monsters escaped, they have been effectively neutralized, have they not? Surely one can take comfort from the fact that they will never again take the reins of state, yes?

No, not really. And here's why I refuse to take that as any consolation.

Dearest actually managed to sit--nostrils pinched firmly together, methinks--through Cheney's rationalization of his 1994 description of a Saddam-less Iraq as a sectarian "quagmire". You guessed it: "9/11 changed everything."

Dearest and I had precisely the same response to that. To wit: "9/11 changed everything. Except reality." Four hijacked planes did not stop Shiite hating Sunni, Sunni hating Shiite, nor either hating Kurd. Four planes did not bestow an iota of strategic competence on the chickenhawks who milked the tragedy to share its spoils with the unholy alliance of theocrats and plutocrats who helped them to their ill-gotten offices. Four planes did not render our armed forces in any way more fit for nation-building in two very alien cultures. And, lest it be trampled in the heat of rhetoric, four planes did not change the fact that Iraq had @#$%-all to do with their hijacking or subsequent mis-use.

Any sensible person realizes that. But by repeating the lie that those four planes magically changed "everything" for anyone other than those directly affected, fledgling monsters like Guiliani, Romney, Huckabee, Brownback, Thompson, et. al. are spawned and suckled by the politics of fear and hate and shameless revisionism. And thus are electorates dumbed down by the Weapons of Mass Distraction.

That's a sad-sack "sequel" by any measure. Yet--as Ash of the "Evil Dead" movies could well tell you--we haven't run short on monsters, not even the first generation ones. As I write, Karl Rove shrinks away from the constables' flashlight-beams, slithering into the darkness in search of a new host. Dearest, I must admit, had the right of it a few years ago: "Rove-sputin" is neither a genius nor invincible. All the same, there is no question that he is still highly dangerous while at large, and most especially when out of sight. I haven't yet decided whether a Lord Voldemort or a Sauroman anology is most apt here, but you get the idea.

And, meanwhile, the latest candidates for monster-in-chief continue to seek the tanna-leaf elixir of money and the pulpiteering that will sustain them through the election cycle. They will slurp from the corporate/PAC chalices, even to the lees. And make whatever transfigurations are necessary to purge any trace of the humanity that would damn them in the eyes of right-wing priests and pundits.

Cutting the purse-strings of election fund-raising seemed daunting at best (despite the best efforts of Sen. Feingold). Finding and snipping the Dominionist puppet-strings on top of that seems downright Sisphysian. In Hollywood horror terms, this just doesn't jibe: As bad as it can get, horror movie heroes never have to fight two evils at once. They just have to pay attention to the music, really. Be that as it may, ducking behind my knees and not watching isn't an option nowadays. Not for me, not for any of us.