night in a Century 16 moviehouse premiere of "Dark Knight Rises" in
Aurora, Colorado, perpetrated by an unhinged shooter, Barack Obama
quoted from a certifiably unhinged biblical prophet: John!
The John quoted by Bam narrates his post-apocalytic, frenzied,
psychedelic delusions in a yarn called The Apocalypse, a book also
mildly known as "The Revelation of John."
I prefer calling that book by its former name, The Apocalypse.
Fittingly so, for it was Apocalypse Now for those victims felled,
maimed and terrorized by the pyschedically-tainted-haired mass
murderer called James Eagan "Jimmy" Holmes aka The Joker.
Quoting from Apocalypse 21:4, Obama intoned:
"Scripture says that 'he will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor
crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."
Then, bupkis! No presidential exegesis of the quoted passage.
There only ensued presidential paradoxically relevant non sequiturs
about the actual tragedy.
Now, allow me to push the pause button right at that point in Obama's
heartfelt speech and preface my comment by saying that Bam made a poor
choice of the book of Scriptures to quote from.
Just think a minute about the following.
Mass murderer Holmes-The-Joker would have relished unleashing all the
horrors from the bottomless pit minutely detailed in The Apocalypse
upon Aurorans, Coloradans, and Americans.
And indeed upon the entire species of earthlings!
I read for instance a chilling story filed by Matthew Lysiak and
Alison Gendar on the New York Daily News to the effect that cops were
saying that the AR-15 military-grade assault rifle Holmes-The-Joker
"was toting was capable of firing 50 to 60 rounds a minute"!
The story quotes police officials as saying that fortunately the AR-15
"malfunctioned" and jammed, forcing the real-life Joker to switch to
relatively slower death-dispensing weapons in his arsenal, thus
"potentially saving several lives."
So, Holmes-The-Joker's mission of thorough death and destruction
wreaked upon the earth was far from been accomplished that terrible
Friday night, in his view.
That's why Bam quoting from the hallucinatory rants of a wacky prophet
is all the more unfortunate and even wrongheaded.
As a matter-of-fact, the passage Obama is quoting happens when the
entire planet has already been laid to waste.
And John, in his bath-salts-like-induced hallucinations, sees an
entire "holy city, new Jerusalem" dinking slowly "down out of the
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband"!
After which John hears a booming voice issuing from the throne of God
that announces that "the dwelling of God is with men," that God "will
be with them" and--here comes the passage quoted by Obama--then "he
will wipe away every tear!..."
As in a Hollywood movie, this blissful moment happens in the
penultimate chapter of a disjointed and "dissociated" narrative--just
like the narrative of "The Dark Knight Rises" (as David Denby rightly
observes on The New Yorker)--filled with mayhem, blood, pestilence,
and death.
David Denby wrote on The New Yorker after the Aurora massacre: "I
haven't yet seen 'Dark Knight Rises,' but I certainly saw the last
Batman movie, 'The Dark Knight.' Talk about dissociation! The movie
was a visually stunning series of ruthless set pieces that made almost
zero sense as a narrative. The story didn't hang together in time or
space. The Joker was everywhere at once; people seemingly dead came
springing back to life. A jolly sadism was the dominant effect."
David Denby might as well have been writing about John's Apocalypse
for that matter.
The excerpt quoted by Obama happens after the seven seals had been
broken followed by the seven angels blowing their trumpets-- visiting
upon the earth and humankind all manners of death, slow torture, and
destruction.
Here's an unexhaustive sampling of John's "ruthless set pieces":
A white horse snatching peace from earth;
A pale horse with Hades following at its heels, with the power to kill
the fourth of humanity with famine, pestilence and wild beasts;
Devastating earthquakes and tsunamis;
Fiery stars raining down upon the earth;
Sun and moon switched off;
Furnace from the bottomless pit from which issue locusts-scorpions led
by the locust-in-chief called Abaddon, slowly torturing with their
venomous tails for 6 full months people without "the seal of God upon
their foreheads";
Angels from the Euphrates unleashed "to kill a third of mankind," etc.
For Obama to quote for the benefit of grieving families and a nation
in mourning from the writings of a man whose rambling could be used by
the US National Institute of Mental Heath (NIMH) to refine its
description of "positive symptoms" of schizophrenia is tantamount, in
my view, to political malpractice.
Especially as families and a nation are plunged into this state of
shock by the actions of a man who obviously happens to be a
hallucinating and delusional pyscho.
In Bam's speech, though, not a peep about the two elephants in the
room who happen to be on terra firma, and not in some outerworldly,
heavenly colony: the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the
antiquated Second Amendment of the Constitution that have a
stranglehold on American political discourse on guns!
"They don't have a spine anymore," Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy had
exclaimed on Meet The Press about politicians bullied by the NRA.
"They pander to who's giving them money!"
Politicians like Obama that don't get money from the gun lobby are as
just equally terrified by the NRA to speak up.
And when the next mass murder is committed by another psycho, cowardly
politicians will add insult to injury by quoting from the raves and
paranoid delusions of madmen.
John Fogerty was onto something in Change In The Weather:
"Down on your knees, go ahead and pray,
But every demon has to have his day!"
***
ILLUSTRATION: Mike Keefe
CREDITS: denverpost.com
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