T. M. Copeland
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IUNCTIAN THEORYI have published two new essays on the "works in progress" page today (1/26/09). These essays are the first attempts I am making to explain to myself how creation and life works. While I have a great interest in theological issues, of late it seems to me that religion is primarily used to justify acquisitive and/or destructive behavior by one group against another. Whether it is a militant Islamist seeking to justify terror against others, certain Christian organizations using religion to justify wars of choice, Hindus cloaking themselves in Krishna, Jews citing ancient texts to justify seizing property of others or any number of other instances, it seems humans are increasingly envoking "God" to justify doing evil to others.
So, partially as a consequence of this continued misuse of the sacred to justify the most profane acts imaginable I have begun to think and write about a secular explanation of the existence of all life and all creation. A say "partially" because it is also true I have arrived at an age where life's ceremonies, births, deaths and funerals, seem to be coming at me with increased rapidity. This acceleration of life's milestones tends to put a fellow in a reflective mood. So, to some degree, I would, no doubt, be giving all this some thought if the death cult Christians and the whacked out Muslims and the hysterical Hindus and the ever insecure Israelis were being kept in some semblance of check.
I have named the over all theory "Iunctian." I derive this from the Latin root iugo and its conjugation iunctus, meaning "to bind together, connect, couple." I chose this because, not unlike animism, the theory presupposes that all life is interconnected. However, unlike animism, iunctian theory has no theological suppositions. Iunctian theory does not confirm or deny the existence of a soul or a Creator. Iunctian theory does not presuppose the existence of good or evil and has no capacity to offer such judgments. The theory is intended by its author, me, to be entirely secular and descriptive. The theory is also just that, a theory. It is not "truth" or received wisdom or divinely inspired. The theory is nothing more than the musings of an individual limited in both knowledge and understanding. It should be read as nothing more than that.
NEW YEAR’S MESSAGE 2009
RUMINATIONS
This year, more than most, it seems that we are on the cusp of something significant. The cusp of what, I cannot say. Whether this cusp portends dark and dreadful events or mere nasty and unpleasant ones, is impossible to say. It is even possible, I suppose, that we may be on the cusp of something truly wonderful. In any event, we are going to live out the ancient Chinese curse. We will experience interesting times in the year to come.
It appears, in retrospect (Retrospect being the only way one can look back on things.), that 2008 was a year of strange, though predictable, and strange and unpredictable happenings. On the one hand, I have had another birthday. This event, while confidently expected was, by no means, a sure thing and does have an unworldly feel to it. I am now sixty years of age and remain resolved to press on into the future. The future seems just as resolved to press on into me.
In 2008 I did manage to shed some sixty odd pounds of excess body weight. I accomplished this feat by going on the “pork chop” diet. I did so at the direction of my physician. The Good Doctor (GD) sat me down in March and asked why was it I did not want to live to meet my nonexistent, but theoretically possible, grandchildren? I immediately disabused him of that odd notion, saying I very much wanted to meet any future grandchildren. Grandchildren are a parent’s only means of revenge against their children and I certainly do not want to miss out on that. God knows, I deserve a little revenge.
He, the GD, then explained that, based on the clear, unbroken trend line of weight gain evidenced by my chart. (At this point in our conversation, the GD sat opposite me waving a piece of paper as if he were Joe McCarthy on a Commie hunt and I were Alger Hiss.) I had, the chart claimed, shown a weight increase of around three to five percent per year over the past two decades or so. He pointed out that, should present trends continue, I would, in three to five years time, weigh in at well over three hundred pounds. The GD cheerfully pointed out that I was unlikely to sustain life for very long under those conditions.
Well, I was shocked. You may find it absurd, but I, in my mind’s eye, remain the skinny college kid I was forty years ago. The Doc’s conversation lifted this veil of self-deception and I began to see clearly the gigantic porker I have become.
After discussing this very unpleasant surprise for a bit more, the good doctor suggested I go on the Adkins’ Diet. He decided this would be the best for me, as it requires very little will power or strength of character, two facets of human personality I possess in small quantities. “The beauty of the Adkins’ Diet,” he explained, “is you don’t have to starve yourself. If you get hungry, eat a pork chop. If you are still hungry, eat three pork chops.” I don’t have to tell you that, in the past year, many a pig has given its life in the service of my emerging svelte. Indeed, I have shed upwards of sixty pounds to date. I am, quite literally, a shadow of my former self.
Diet Issues
1. Pounds To Go Before I Eat: However, all is not sweetness and light. In the first place, even having lost sixty odd pounds, I regret to inform you I still have another forty or so to go before I arrive at the target weight the GD says is appropriate. This will give you some notion of how far out of control things had gotten. I was in no danger of setting any world, fat man records, but I was beginning to receive mention in some local, tourist guides.
2. What Is Lost Is Found Again: In the second place, sweetness and light wise, as you may know, the big problem with the Adkins’ Diet is not losing weight. The problem is keeping the weight off once lost. As you attempt to maintain your maintenance weight, you migrate to a diet very much like the Mediterranean Diet and/or the South Beach Diet. Both of these require a smallish portion of high carbohydrate foods such as pasta, rice, etc. When I say smallish, I mean microscopic, proportions measured in ounces, not pounds. Self-discipline is required to limit consumption of these foods to prescribed amounts. If people who go on the Adkins Diet had any self-discipline, we would not be on the damn diet to begin with. We would not be so damn fat. Consequently, most Adkins’ Dieters either gain it all back in fewer months than it took to get it off or stay on the diet and waste away to cadaver-like appearance, unable to make the required adjustment to maintain the desired weight. We shall have to see how this dilemma resolves itself with me.
3. Erotica In Another Form: In the third place, and anyone who has done a low carbohydrate diet will verify this, the diet is SO BORING. Sweet Jesus, I dream of bread and French fries. Rice and pasta have become forbidden, erotic objects of desire. I want to bathe in spaghetti. Candy, ice cream and gooey fruit pies are but the “opium” dreams of a processed carbohydrate addict.
4. On The Bright Side: Still, there is an extra spring in my step as I stride the Earth with muscles accustomed to carrying sixty more pounds per step than they are currently required to do. That is, for as long as it lasts, a good thing. Also, clothes I have not worn in ages, because my thigh had grown larger in circumference than my waist had been, fit again and I am considerably more stylish. (The image to keep in mind here: the gander, though no swan, is more stylish than the drake.) I’ll never again be a babe magnet, but, as I recall, I never was. In the meantime, I feel a bit better.
Minutia
1. Coming Up Roses: Also on the plus side for 2008, no dogs died, the members of my family remain healthy and employed and, through this month at least, the mortgage is current. Not bad, all things considered.
2. But The Roses Grow In A Bed Of Feces Fertilizer: There have been one or two negative events and processes that happened in 2008. You may have heard of some of them. For instance, control of government, without recourse to an election, has passed from God-fearing, free market Republicans into the hands of Godless socialists. Oddly enough, this happened in October of 2008 without any personnel changes. The God-fearing Republicans simply transformed, like Zeus into a swan, in order to seduce the economy. As a result, capitalism has all but vanished from the face of the Earth.
How ironic that George W. Bush, the Great Uniter, the man who did not believe in “nation building,” did not think government should involve itself in free markets and wanted to get past partisan bickering and do it “like we do it in Texas” where everyone, apparently, believes the bullshit he espouses, should be the one to nationalize the entire world banking and finance system. How ironic Bush should be the one to unite us, bringing us together behind someone, a new President, who promises to undo virtually everything Bush has perpetrated upon us.
3. Keeping It Real: To be fair, though he proved to be the “Great Divider” through most of his two terms and imposed government ownership of banking (and manufacturing, before it is over) on the markets, President Bush kept his promise not to do any nation building. Indeed, the worthless son of a bitch has just about destroyed every nation on the planet. (He did not manage to get Cuba. However, Castro has pretty much already destroyed Cuba. So, Bush’s formidable talents were not required.)
4. Boomers In Paradise: In spite of the massive intervention in the markets by governments all over the world, economists tell us we can look forward to years of flat, perhaps shrinking, economies. As we Boomers ride off into the sunset of our lives, we can take solace in the sure and certain knowledge that for a long, long time to come, we will prove to have had it the best anybody is ever going to have it.
It will be said that we boomers, in our passion for living, left “nothing on the table.” We not only squandered everything left to us by our forbearers, we saddled out children and grandchildren with an impossible and impoverishing debt burden. Historians may look back on us and say the decades from the 1960’s through the first decade of the twenty-first century were the high water mark of fun and excitement. I wish I had been sober enough to remember them.
BATTING AVERAGE
My ratio of predictions to fact/occurance was remarkably high this past year. In matters of torture, finance, war, peace, domestic politics and so forth, I was accurate to a degree unheard of by Nostradamus or Madam Le Flute´, a lady of mysterious origin who practices her dark art down at the river in Plum Branch. Right on more than ninety percent of my prognostications, I far exceeded my own market “guidance.”
1. I was dead right about the primacy of torture in our cultural consciousness. I said it would become so commonplace in our thoughts that we’d forget all about it, and damned if we didn’t.
2.a. I was spot on regarding the financial abyss into which we have plunged. Even mentioning the late, lamented Bear Stearns by name. Hot damn, I’m good! While I did not specifically use the term “debt bubble,” anyone reading between the lines could tell that is what I was writing about. As I am the only judge of what I meant, I declare this to be so and sage beyond mortal comprehension. 2.b. I predicted we Boomers would survey the financial carnage strewn about us and exclaim, “What the fuck!” and we have, each of us in our own way.
3.a. As to the election, I said Mitt Romney would follow the family tradition of flip-flopping on the major issues of the day and it would kill him in the Republican primaries and he did and it did. 3.b. I predicted, in a bold gesture, that Ron Paul would lose and he did. 3.c. I predicted the Republicans would pray for a Hillary victory in the Democratic primaries and they did. 3.d. I did not explicitly predict the Obama victory, but I thought about it once or twice so I am counting that too.
4.a. On the war front, I predicted the Brits would declare victory in Iraq and go home and they did. 4.b. I predicted the revived poppy industry would save the Afghan economy and it has, along with the Taliban’s balance sheet. 4.c. I predicted Pakistan would slide toward lawlessness in the north and it has. 4.d. I did not predict the fall of Musharraf from power, but, again, I thought about it.
5.a. I predicted Israel would do nothing to establish cordial relations with its Arab neighbors, or Jimmy Carter, and was right on both counts. 5.b. I predicted Hamas and other Arab nationalist groups would continues to show two faces to the world and they have. Indeed, some of these groups have developed third and fourth faces, for use on special occasions.
6.a. I did not predict the financial collapse of Russia, nor, to be honest, did I think about it. 6.b. I did predict the further consolidation of centralized power under Mr. Putin. The truth of this last prediction is evidenced by his beefcake calendar published late in 2008. So, I am putting Russia in the win column as well.
7.a. I predicted South America and Africa would continue to suffer from various plagues and maladies, natural and manmade, and they have. 7.b. I predicted that Africa would remain more fashionable among the glitterati as a focus for celebrity attention to tragedy and it has. However, the world is paying ever less attention to the third world comings and goings of Brad and Angelina and more and more attention to nitwits and posers as they cruise the hard, suffering bars and clubs of LA. Jen’s star rises. 7.c. As far as I know, George Clooney has not been sighted in a bar in La Paz. However, he could have been and I just didn’t hear of it, so I am not counting off for that prediction.
8. As predicted, financial power continues to migrate westward from Europe, across North America to the Asian states of the Pacific and Indian Basins. The leaders of the European and North American nations see this migration of money, material and power and celebrate it as evidence of something good, but inexplicable.
9.a. Unfortunately, “Hi Gorgeous,” the computer game purporting to teach geeks to pick up fashion models in bars, bombed. Who knew geeks weren’t interested in models and never went to bars. Apparently, in the pre-release marketing surveys, the geeks thought the surveyors were referring to “computer models,” not human women. 9.b. However, a Japanese company did pick up on the idea and used this basic setup to teach Japanese men how to look a woman in the eyes. Many Japanese men were surprised to discover women have eyes, as they had not ever looked that far up. 9.c. Not to be left out, the creators of “Hi Gorgeous” are recasting the game to teach models, out of work from the collapse of the fashion industry and no longer starving on purpose, to identify geeks who are, as yet, still employed by the technical industry. The application then teaches the models how build an avatar to pick up the geeks during on line games, as that is were you find them.
10.a. In a way, I was wrong about the importance of the American consumer. Since there is no longer an American consumer, the world is in the throes of a painful adjustment to figuring out who will now buy all the crap it makes. 10.b. On the other hand, I did say the world would discover the paramount importance of the American consumer and, albeit in a negative way, this is what happened. So, on balance, another correct pick for me.
11. Bush has not formally rented the American military to the UN or any other foreign power. However, the Navy is coordinating the spectacularly unsuccessful, to date, effort by the civilized nations of the world to stop Somalian pirates from seizing ships on the high seas. So, while I missed this one, it may be I only missed the timing of it. We’ll see.
12. Speaking of pirates, these outlaws did not, yet again, seize a major Mediterranean coastal metropolis. As my regular readers will note, I anticipate this event every year and am continuously disappointed. Undeterred, I hereby make this prediction again this year.
13. I did predict Wall Street would “lose half its value,” all the while believing this prediction to be my most absurd and ludicrous one. Damned if it wasn’t pretty much on the button.
14. The New Paganism is still emerging. On the other hand, the landscape remains littered with death cult Christians. I guess I missed this one.
15. Al Gore was, once again, not elected President. I missed that one too.
16. Monica Lewinsky did not change her name. She did get a graduate degree from an internationally prestigious university shocking the shit out of everybody, particularly Bill. To be fair, when with Bill, she never used her mouth for speaking. Therefore, there was no way he could have known how intelligent she is. Certainly, she never did anything in his presence to give him any indication of intelligence, so I guess it isn’t entirely his fault he failed to notice.
17. True to my prediction, Justice Thomas did not get any of Anita Hill’s “booty.” None that I know of, might have though. With no Kenneth Starr keeping tract of such things for Justice Thomas, it is possible Big Clarence did score some of da’ booty and nobody told me. Under these circumstances, I cannot, in good conscious, count off for this prediction either.
18. All those predictions about Bill Richardson, Monica Lewinsky, Al Gore, Texas and Mexico did not happen. Might have, but Richardson opted for the Commerce Secretary job under Obama. Who could have predicted that?
19. There are only four political parties represented in Congress, not the predicted five.
As predicted, the spineless Democratic Party remains spineless and did nothing about the vast crimes against the nation and mankind perpetrated by Bush and his Bushies.
20. Dick Cheney has not yet been named Secretary General of the UN. I guess I missed that one.
21. The Ronnie/Filcher Ice Shelf has not yet broken off. So, all those predictions about Governor Mark Sanford surfing to Orangeburg haven’t happened yet.
22. The President Pro Tempore of the South Carolina Senate has not yet had a cow, as was predicted.
23. As predicted, Strom Thurmond is still dead.
PREDICTIONS FOR 2009
BOOMER MELT
Prologue
Baring some horrific calamity that elevates Joe Biden to the Presidency, it appears that the Boomers, the generation that defined the age through its excess, indiscipline and general lack of purpose, will only get two Presidents. If so, how fitting and proper that they be Bill Clinton, a gifted but ill disciplined man, and George W. Bush, a functional moron of meager gifts but highly disciplined in his personal conduct. The WWII crowd, the, so called, “greatest generation,” had, if one counts Eisenhower, eight Presidents. Between them these “Greatest” guys, maintained a stable foreign policy, presided over the building of a political, military and economic super power that was without peer in our time. The two Boomer presidents presided over the slide of this super power into mediocrity in a metaphorical blink of the eye. Sixteen years of Boomer leadership and POOF, all gone. If you, like me, are a Boomer, you cannot say you were not well and truly represented.
The “Great Debt Bubble of 2008” will go down in history as the first financial bubble to effect all classes of assets and to do so simultaneously. Those of us who have long thought of a line of credit on a credit card as just another checking account were stunned to discover all the hotshot Wall Street bankers thought the same about their various, exotic financial instruments. Who knew they were as irresponsible about money matters as the rest of us.
The financier Warren Buffet is reputed to have said, “You can’t know who is skinny dipping until the tide goes out.” Meaning, of course, until financial times get hard it is impossible to know who is well situated and who is merely faking it. With the advent of credit default swaps and other forms of unregulated financial instruments aimed at exaggerating leverage to ratios of forty times equity, or more, it now may be true that you cannot tell if you are skinny dipping until the tide goes out. You may not know whether that stock you own in proverbial First National Reliable Bank has any value, not until all the debt instruments it holds are marked to market. Could be it is worth less than you are. It might even be worth less than me, though that is hardly possible.
Prognostication
1. The Market: During 2009 the various stock market indices will continue to go up and down. The general trend line will be down until it stops heading in that direction and starts to head up. It will then be on a BULL MARKET RUN until it changes its mind and heads down again. In this event, the BULL MARKET RUN will be renamed a DEAD CAT BOUNCE.
All this will occur many times during the course of the year and will drive people crazy, until they get used to it. Experts will, on a daily basis, show up on a variety of television shows making pronouncements about the direction of the markets or this or that stock, bond or other asset. They will all be wrong except when they are, coincidentally, correct. A great many people will make a great deal of money during all this upping and downing. Likewise, a great many people will lose a great deal of money during the same process. Interestingly, most of the people making money will be the same people who are losing money. It will feel like running a marathon in pluff mud.
2. Personal Finance: Many of the Boomers will lose just about everything. This is another way of saying they will no longer have vast credit lines on which to draw and they will no longer have sufficient income to service the minimal payments required on the lines they continue to have. Fortunately, at about the same time realization sets in that the credit spigot is turned off, Boomers will rediscover the simple virtues and will once again impose our generations’ notions on an ungrateful, resentful population of other generations. Except, of course, the dwindling remnants of the Greatest Generation. Those of that demographic cohort who still live, and are not senile, will continue to ignore the Boomers and be mildly, and affectionately, amused by us. All other generations will, as if we were one giant, cumulative George W. Bush, count the days until we are gone.
FINANCIAL MELT
1) Saving the Banks: In the first week of January, the outgoing Bush administration will rescue the banking system by changing the generally accepted accounting principles GAAP). The new GAAP rules will allow bankers to declare debt instruments held in their banks to be worth the cumulative value of all payments due on the instrument during the life of the loan as if already paid and in hand on day one. This will have the effect of reversing the current concept of discounting the net present value of a potential stream of income, by allowing bankers to book the entire stream of funds on day one of a loan closing. This new GAAP rule will result in an enormous incentive for bankers to issue loans in order to book income; income needed to offset earlier loses caused by write downs of assets under the old mark to market rule. Individual bankers will be incentivised by the payment of generous commissions on all new loan business. The ensuing flood of new debt will re-energize the economy for several weeks and necessitate the Obama administration having to bail out the banks again in late February.
2. Bank Consolidation: These first two, of the seven bank bailouts that will occur during 2009, will not “cost” the federal government anything because they will be handled through adjustments in accounting procedure. These interventions will result in there being only sixteen independent banks in the United States by April. Prior to the dawn of 2010 there will be only one big bank operating in the United States, The Royal Bank of Scotland. RBS will be a wholly owned subsidiary of a company owned by Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, a member of the Bin laden family, several other Arab persons with unpronounceable names, the Patel family of everywhere and a shadowy Chinese figure named Fat Chow. Never the less, a new political party will emerge based on the proposition that it is all the fault of Jewish bankers, of whom, there will be no longer be any.
3. International Finance: The financial center of gravity in the world will shift ever westward across the Pacific and Indian Oceans and on to the Arabian Gulf. New York will became a major branch bank in world finance and London will be relegated to “drive through” status. The phrase, “I have a yen for a burger,” will come to mean something more than a mild desire and/or hunger for dead cow. It will mean you must have yen to buy a burger.
POLITICAL MELT
1. The Right Strikes Back: In February Rush Limbaugh will no longer be able to contain his glee and will disclose that the entire “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” (VRWC) convened and devised the Bush economic plan. The “Plan” was designed to destroy the functional capacity of the United States economy so that, beginning in October of 2007, the VRWC began to “short” American equities, real estate, debt default swaps, municipal bonds and, finally, the Republican Party. In the process, every member of the VRWC made hundreds of millions and billions of dollars betting against America. These ill-gotten gains were then changed from dollar denominated assets into other, safer assets like cocaine and heroine, as well as butter and North Dakota farmland. Rush will explain to his herd of brain dead ditto heads (BDDs) that he deserves the money and they deserve to get screwed because they failed to shoot Democratic voters on the way to the polls in the last election (2008) and the Congressional elections of 2006. “What do you expect? You guys let me down and allowed Nancy Pelosi to get power. I deserve the money and you deserve to suffer. But, I didn’t do it. Pelosi, Clinton and Jimmy Carter did it.” Predictably, the mere mention of the Pelosi name, along with other icons of the Right’s PANTHEON OF EVIL (POE), will deflect any resentment the BDDs might feel toward Rush, the Bush family, Dick Cheney, Hank Paulsen, Condoleezza Rice and all the others. This will allow them to focus their anger on the POE, Godless Democrats all, where it belongs.
When President Obama, on being told of the short selling scheme, will be greatly relieved. At last, the shenanigans and financial manipulations of the previous administration will make sense. Representative Barney Frank will convene a hearing and demand the various participants in the scheme come before his committee and explain themselves. They will decline, citing obscure Constitutional authorities allowing them to tell him to “stuff it.” This resolution will satisfy everyone except the BDDs, who will continue to demand Obama resign as soon as he fires Biden and appoints Cheney as the new Vice President. FOX News will champion this idea, praising it, in the words of Bill O’Reilly, “This is an inspired solution to an international crisis brought on by the criminal incompetence of the Obama administration.” (Remember, it will only be February, one month into Obama’s term.) “The nation,” Billo will continue, “needs the seasoned hand of Dick Cheney at the helm during this horrible situation, a situation that is entirely the fault of the Democrat Party.” CNN, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor will, in the spirit of journalistic balance, give equal time to all sides of the argument. The sides will be: the Democrat Party, the Republican Party, several congressional Republicans who have somewhat different take on the crisis than the Party, an independent spokesman for the BDDs, Peggy Noonan, James Dobson and Laura Bush. MSNBC will lose all sense of perspective, Chris Matthews will fulminate against crooked Republicans until someone in GE Corporate reminds him who pays his salary. At that point Chris will begin ruminating about “mad dog Democrats, foaming at the mouth about ancient history.” Chris will confess, on air, that the idea of a Cheney Presidency sends “shivers and chills up my rectum, but not in a bad way.” Keith Olbermann’s head, during a “special comment,” will actually explode on live television and Rachel Madhow will profess love for a man. Senator Al Franken, thinking to defuse some of the anger surrounding the issue, will appear as guest host on “Saturday Night Live.” In a skit he will impersonate Rush Limbaugh. Unfortunately, Senator Franken will prove so outrageous, the BDDs who see it later on You Tube will assume it was Rush and immediately begin rounding up stray Democrats, as Franken (as Rush) advocated in the spoof, and placing them into “protective” custody.
2. Impeachment: By November things will progress to the point that an impeachment resolution will be introduced to convict President Obama of the high crime and misdemeanor of bringing attention to the crimes of the Bush administration, something Obama will continue to steadfastly avoid. These earlier crimes, crimes that Bush, Cheney, et al will continue to gleefully admit, it will be noted, were done in the name of the war on terror and free enterprise and cannot be questioned. Speaker Pelosi will express doubts about the legitimacy of the charges leveled against President Obama but will schedule impeachment hearings “to clear the air.” President Obama will announce that, under the precedents set by the Bush administration, no one from his administration will attend the hearings. The House, in lieu of hearings, will then immediately pass the Bill of Impeachment and send it to the Senate, “just to be fair.” The forty-one Republican Senators will demand, and this will be echoed by FOX News and discussed in a balanced fashion on CNN, that all Democrat Senators be recused from the impeachment decision. Joe Lieberman, taking the high road, will refuse to withdraw from the process but will announce his intention to vote to convict his “good friend” President Obama. As the year grows to a close the Democratic Senate caucus will still be considering the Republican “request.” Al Franken will no longer able to distinguish between the reality of “Saturday Night Live” and the parody of the United States Senate and will be hospitalized by his wife.
RELIGIOUS MELT
1. Gay Marriage: The Reverends James Dobson, Rick Warren, John Hagee and Jeremiah Wright, along with LDS President Thomas Morton, will go on a spiritual retreat into the wilderness of Colorado. There, after eating mushrooms found along the way, the ghost of Jerry Falwell will appear unto them. Jerry will lead them to a secret place where they will meet Jesus, face to face. Christ will then reveal to his supplicants that he has been living, for several millennia, in a really long term, committed, sexual relationship with Judas Iscariot. This revelation will cause some temporary dislocation of the certainties that govern the lives of the esteemed pilgrims. The “righteous five,” as they will be called in the popular media, will be discovered by “The National Inquirer,” having been tipped off by Judas, dancing naked, like so many Druid May Maidens, around a giant lodge pole pine. The wives of the righteous five will appear, silently, with their husbands at a subsequent press conference. The righteous five will profess their sin. They will apologize for the pain they have caused their families, friends and congregations. They will apologize to everyone but Christ, whose relationship with Judas will leave the church in a confused theological condition and will not be mentioned, ever.
2. The Rise of the Thurmond Cult: In an increasingly uncertain world, Congressman Joe Wilson of the Second Congressional District of South Carolina will announce his withdrawal from the world. Once the joyous uproar dies down, his audience will be disappointed to learn he is speaking metaphorically. Congressman Joe will clarify his comments by saying he is, without actually vacating his office, withdrawing from political and personal obligations to take on the portentous task of leading a new religious cult dedicated to the minor deity, J Strom Thurmond. Thurmonism, Congressman Joe, now and hereafter to be known as “the Bubba,” an allusionary homage to the Buddha, will be defined by a basic theological dogma. To wit: A. Accept the suffering of others as a means to their betterment. B. Oppose any suffering to yourself as an unselfish act allowing others to be bettered whilst you stay sunk in prosperity. C. Grace is available to all sinners but continued public discourse is only available to confessed right wing sinners. D. When dancing naked around a lodge pole pine, one should take care there are no cameras or press about, unless one happens to be a comely young female, in which case, the more cameras the better. E. Live by the golden rule, “He who got the gold rules.” F. When in doubt, always ask yourself, “What would Strom do?” or, put another way, “Hooray for me and fuck you.” The Bubba will conclude by saying, “I recognize that such a complicated theology may confuse Thurmonism’s followers. Remember, our creed. It condenses the theology to its core meaning, “I got mine.”
