Maniac time

In an earlier post, I posited that the anti-Bush movement threatens to spawn the kind of mass irrationality that we associate with the anti-Clintonites of the 1990s. My revulsion toward Dubya has not lessened -- indeed, it grows by the minute. Even so, I fear that an ill-educated public's newfound distrust of Dubya could lead to widespread public acceptance of the mad weltanschauung expressed in (for example) this video.

If you laugh at the things I laugh at, you'll get guffaws aplenty from this gaudy production, especially if you watch late at night with beer in hand. The film's epigram is a grabber:

"After I am dead, people will say that I gave birth to the 20th century" -- Aleister Crowley

Once more, the dark insinuation of a Bush/Crowley connection. The meme spreads. It cannot be killed.

Neither can the right-wing's fondness for False Quotation Syndrome. AC never said those words or any similar words. If memory serves, a version of that quote appears in Alan Moore's From Hell, a fictional treatment of the Jack the Ripper story. Or was it the film adaptation? (I haven't the book to hand.)

Either way, we see here -- as in our earlier discussions of Aaron Russo's work, or of the Larry Silverstein "pull it" quote -- that right-wing conspiracy buffs possess a psychological deformity which prevents them from accurately quoting anyone on any subject. An older book called The Hoaxers documents this peculiarity, and it is a very thick book indeed.

That fake quote indicates the grim hilarity of the afore-linked film, which posits that Abu Ghraib was a Satanic/Freemasonic ritual. After all, one of those infamous photographs shows bodies piled in a pyramid. A pyramid. Get it? And there's a pyramid on the back of the dollar bill! Yes, yes, it's all coming together...

Some of you may wish to spring to the defense of that thesis. Any attempt to do so would buttress my own belief that a lost war can drive a nation round the bend. (Not to mention my other belief that some of my readers aren't worth talking to.)

Added note: This, from a comment appended to a previous post:

"It's unclear what your standards are to distinguish the supposed irrational wild ravings of the hoi polloi compared to the sage ruminations of the skilled conspiracy researcher/scientist."

The request for standards is fair. I would say that False Quotation Syndrome is one marker -- though hardly the only one -- separating the wild raver from the sage.