Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer brings us Jong's overwrought blather and also notes that Jong seems to think the same worries are being echoed by many of her jet-setting comrades. Jong notes that Jane Fonda, Naomi Wolf, Ken Follett and others have agreed with her that the world will end if the messiah isn't elected.
Horowitz translates what he calls "the more spirited quotes" from Jong's Italian interview:
"The record shows that voting machines in America are rigged."
"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."
"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."
"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"
"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets."
"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."
She also laments that not all of America's men of letters share her devotion to Obama.
"Tom Wolfe and John Updike are men of the right and Philip Roth is at this point a hermit who leads a monastic life in Connecticut, far from everything and everybody."
Luckily, she said there is her and Michael Chabon, who, she says, have "taken the place of Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer respectively."
They have the same political sensibilities, she said, but a better "sense of humor."
I am particularly amused that Jane "Commie Jane" Fonda is "crying her eyes out" so much.
But, notice how unbalanced the left has become with the Obama candidacy? They see racists following them everywhere, they see "hate speech" from the mouths of every disbeliever, they see anti-Americanism everywhere they go. They feel that the whole country will erupt in death and blood unless their religious figure wins office. And this, I believe, is just the problem. This is all about religion to them, not politics.
You see, these extremists are universally anti-religion. They feel that they have grown smarter than religion, gotten past what they consider the "superstitions" of religious expression. Yet, because of man's natural tendency toward religiosity they have but traded a belief in traditional religions with that of a new messianic figure as embodied in Barack Obama. Obama isn't just a mere politician to these people, he's a god on earth.
And, if you doubt their god they react in exactly the same way as any unthinkingly devout "true believer" would. They cannot see any reason or logic in opposition to their god. They can make no room for legitimate opposition, no honest disagreement with Barack is permissible.
And, should he lose, they do not foresee a mere political setback, but a rejection of their religious beliefs and, therefore, complete Armageddon. What's more they want an end to everything should their god perish. It's better to see all ended than to go on without their religious beliefs mollified.
Picture what happened to the insane masses after the French Revolution(s). It wasn't a new nation they wanted to build in emulation of the U.S. Revolution and Founding. It wasn't logic and reason they wanted to enshrine. They did not want to fix their society, they wanted to erase it and remake it anew in a way that defied human nature. Whereas America was founded upon human nature, the French wanted to reinvent human nature. They began to see their cause as a new way, a new religion to replace the old. And, for anyone that disagreed the sentence was death.
This is the tendency to which Jong and her ilk are prone. To them, an Obama loss is the end of the world and they are reacting like apocalyptic religionists would. With a lament of the destruction of all we now know should they lose. All hail Obama. May he reign forever... and if he doesn't may all the universe go dark.
They are truly unhinged as Jong's little Italian rant clearly shows. Or, as The Guess Who once warbled, "She's come undone."
(Photo credit: www.wiredforbooks.org)
