Hallelujah, the Missiles are Flying

It first occurred to me on a Thursday.

In the days previous, a number of seemingly unrelated stories?in the news and otherwise?started to display a pattern that took me a bit to recognize.

It's a point I've made before?I'm as politically apathetic as they come. I don't trust the motives of anyone who chooses to run for office regardless of the party or the office. I try to simply ignore political news and commentary as much as possible?being much more interested in plane disasters, toy recalls, savage preadolescent crime sprees and the like.

Still, I couldn't help but notice that during his first few weeks in office, nearly every action that our new President took involved, or was motivated in some way by, his specific religious predilections. A national day of prayer, cutting abortion funding for Third World countries, the Cabinet choices, the prayer breakfasts, government funding of religious (or "faith-based") social programs?and that widely circulated Internet hoax about how he took 30 minutes out of a postelection meet-and-greet to explain the joys of being born again to some lost and troubled waif.

Now, I'm pretty much the same way with religion as I am with politics. It leaves me alone, I leave it alone. Religion and I have gotten along just fine that way for many, many years now. The President wants to be a proud, born-again Methodist, that's just fine by me, so long as I don't need to hear about it every goddamn day.

Then these other stories started popping up. Completely unrelated stories. Some kids fall through the ice on a frozen pond in Queens. I see the headlines, and the first thing that pops into my head (geek that I am) is Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone, yelling, "The ice...is gonna break!" A few days later, having completely forgotten about that frozen pond incident, I sent a note to a friend of mine who was recovering from recent brain surgery, asking if he now found that whenever he touched a doctor or nurse, he got an almost electrical psychic blast, revealing their past and future. (He hasn't told me yet.)

It was the day after I sent the note, actually, when it all started coming together, and I realized that George Bush was actually Greg Stillson.

For those of you who have neither read nor seen The Dead Zone, Greg Stillson (played by Martin Sheen in the David Cronenberg film) is a corrupt independent candidate for the Senate with an eye on the White House. He's also a closet religious zealot who feels that it's his destiny to bring about Armageddon.

(You don't find that out until near the end, though. Sorry if I ruined it for anybody.)

Stillson, we're told, is a onetime door-to-door Bible salesman who lost his job after kicking a dog to death in someone's front yard. His campaign proposals involve a mishmash of liberal and conservative policies?there were social programs for junkies, as I remember?and he resorts to using thugs and blackmail to keep negative stories about him out of the papers.

And then there's the whole "Apocalypse" thing.

So I had The Dead Zone on the brain (so to speak) when I started paying more attention to all this religious hoo-hah being spouted by a "former" cokehead drunk of a president. There he was that Thursday morning, standing in front of a prayer breakfast crowd, talking about "Armies of Compassion."

"Armies of Compassion"? Why not "Chainsaws of Peace"? Or "Lugers of Love"? How could I not put two and two together? Especially after hearing the stories from Bill Monahan, who was on the Bush campaign plane (as reported in New York Press)?stories about Mr. Bush telling him to put down his pen, because it's "part of the rules" that reporters don't report what happens on the plane.

Difference between Bush and Stillson, though, I suppose?well, two differences?first, Stillson was an intelligent man. Insane and dangerous, but intelligent. Our current President is not. And while Stillson seemed very self-assured?he knew his destiny, after all?our current President always seems to have this look of terror and pain in his eyes whenever he speaks. Almost as if he's being told exactly what to say, knowing that he faces a sound thrashing should he make a mistake.

So then I got to wondering if our current President might just possibly have apocalyptic visions playing out behind his lids while he lies in bed at night. Visions of not only being our current President, but our last.

I don't know. And what's more, I don't know what to think if he does. I'd had high hopes for Ronald Reagan, but at the time I was a disaffected teen into the whole hardcore business, with plenty of apocalyptic visions of my own. And I guess those still linger around, popping up now and again on an overcrowded train, or when the phone won't stop ringing. But you get the impression that people don't worry themselves too much about the Apocalypse anymore. Especially since we made it through the past two News Year's Eves unscathed.

But I'm real tired today. The brain isn't as sharp as it used to be. And when you get right down to it, I just don't care too much one way or another. So what if our President is based on a fictional character? And so what if he's comfortable ignoring certain basic tenets of the Constitution? I say go ahead?let him blow it all up?I certainly didn't vote for the guy.

Hallelujah.