Observing the Apocalypse
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

I. The New Politics
Politics, in all its forms, is bankrupt. The notion that we can
safely and successfully hand over the management of our daily lives
and the setting of priorities to a political class or elite is
thoroughly discredited. Politicians cannot be trusted, regardless of
the system in which they operate. No set of constraints, checks, and
balances, is proved to work and mitigate their unconscionable acts
and the pernicious effects these have on our welfare and longevity.

Ideologies - from the benign to the malign and from the divine to
the pedestrian - have driven the gullible human race to the verge of
annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated
everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned
fruits - Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism - have wrought misery
on a scale unprecedented even by medieval standards. Only Fascism
and Nazism compare with them unfavorably. The idea of the nation-
state culminated in the Yugoslav succession wars.

People are voting with their feet. Most elections draw to the ballot
boxes and the polling stations less than half the electorate.

Three models seem to be emerging as the dominant forms of future
politics:

I. Anarchism, both destructive (international terrorism, for
example) and constructive (the Internet, for instance).

II. Participatory democracy, both destructive (mob rule and coups)
and constructive (people power, especially in Asia and Latin
America).

III. In certain countries, mainly in the West, a disenchanted and
uninterested citizenry will relegate power and vest it in various
oligrachies, forfeiting its decision-making prerogatives altogether
and permanently in return for material welfare and personal safety.

One such oligarchy is the Church.

II. The da Vinci Syndrome

"The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ
was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest."

(English historian Edward Gibbon on Pope John XXIII)

The history of the Catholic Church reads like the annals of a global
crime concern. It gave the world the inquisition, incestuous and
murderous popes, religious warfare, pedophiliac sex scandals,
idolatry, and the gnawing guilt that comes from embracing life-
defying ideals. Its intentional lack of transparency, murky
dealings, and refusal to be held accountable for the actions of its
adherents and officials have rendered it complicit in the most
horrendous events of the last two millennia.

With a modicum of justice it has been accused of anything and
everything from collaborating with the Nazi regime (and helping war
criminals flee justice) to instigating and perpetrating the more
insidious forms of anti-Semitism. Its current head was a willing
member of the Nazi youth movement. Its former, long-serving, chief
actively spread AIDS throughout the developing world by prohibiting
the use of contraceptives.

Hence "The da Vinci Code" and a slew of other anti-Catholic tomes.
This genre thrives on the widespread conviction that there is
nothing the Catholic Church will refrain from doing or find too
abhorrent to further its earthly wealth and might. Alas, history
this time is on the side of the conspiracy theorists.

III. The Familar Gone Awry

The Catholic Church is a private case of a larger trend.

In this nightmarish world of ours even the erstwhile comfortingly
familiar has gone awry and menacing.

Birds, those soaring symbols of liberty and beauty now carry death
and devastation in the form of avian flu.

Airplanes, the reification of overcoming gravity and attaining
freedom, these harbingers of the global village, now wreak havoc by
slamming into skyscrapers and bombing weddings.

The Internet, this eruption of joyous creativity and boundless
interaction, is now a minefield of flame wars, malware, gambling,
crime, spam, and child pornography.

The United States, once considered by many the beacon of democracy,
the home of the liberal ideal exiled from Europe by wars and
genocides - is now a thuggish, brutish, murderous threat to world
peace and stability.


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AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)



Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com