The Metamorphosis -- In which our liberal author awakens from uneasy dreams (Outstanding Read)

National Review Online ^ | September 30, 2009 | David Kahane

[Zakeet]

I have a nightmare.

I have a nightmare that sometime before the 2010 elections, the scales will fall from your eyes and you will see us as we really are.

I have a nightmare that you will read C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and realize that it is not fiction.

I have a nightmare that you will read Plunkitt of Tammany Hall and get firsthand instruction in how we steal elections.

I have a nightmare that you will read Machiavelli’s The Prince and realize that we got there way ahead of you.

I have a nightmare that you will read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and recognize us in the figure of Ellsworth Toohey — the “friend” who is in fact your mortal enemy.

I have a nightmare that you will read Dickens’s Bleak House and see us in the character of Mrs. Jellyby, the “telescopic philanthropist,” who lets her own family go to hell while she frets over the fate of an African tribe.

I have a nightmare that you will re-watch Saving Private Ryan and realize that Corporal Upham, the liberal stickler for process played by Jeremy Davies, saves the German prisoner’s life only to get most of his platoon killed, including Tom Hanks. And then commits the very war crime he tried to stop.

I have a nightmare that while you’re enjoying the scatological dialogue and ultra-violence of Pulp Fiction, you’ll realize that Vincent Vega, the unbeliever, dies unredeemed in Butch Coolidge’s bathroom, while Jules, who accepts the reality of miracles, grants absolution to Pumpkin and Honey Bunny and is thus saved.

I have a nightmare that you will go back and watch any B-movie made between 1933 and 1963, like Gun Crazy, and see an America that was not afraid of inanimate objects like firearms, and instead blamed the man for the crime.

I have a nightmare that some of you are old enough to recall a time when the law was an honorable profession, the Constitution was not so deconstructed that, essentially, all that is left of it is the Commerce Clause, and your doctor charged a fee for service and made house calls.

I have a nightmare that when you think of the late Ted Kennedy, resting peacefully at Arlington Cemetery, all you will be able to see is Mary Jo Kopechne, gasping for air in the Oldsmobile while the senator returned to his hotel room and went to sleep.

I have a nightmare that you will remember that Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian who hated Bobby Kennedy because of his support of Israel.

I have a nightmare that you’ll realize that, far from being a right-wing nut, Lee Harvey Oswald was a self-proclaimed Marxist who defected to the Soviet Union, came home with a Russian wife, agitated on behalf of Castro’s Cuba, tried to re-defect to Russia, returned to Dallas, brought his rifle to work, and killed JFK with a classic marksman’s shot group: miss, hit, kill.

I have a nightmare that you’ll remember that, in the week leading up to the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, there was no right-wing “climate of hate” in San Francisco as Nancy Pelosi, aka Maerose Prizzi, would have you believe. Instead, the city was riveted by the murders of Congressman Leo Ryan and journalists Don Harris, Bob Brown, and Greg Robinson at the Port Kaituma airstrip on Nov. 18, 1978. This was followed by the “revolutionary suicides” of hundreds of Jim Jones’s radical-leftist Peoples Temple followers, most of them African American. One of the suicide notes read, “I, Marceline Jones, leave all bank accounts in my name to the Communist Party of the USSR.”

I have a nightmare that people will eventually realize that Dan White, who shot Moscone and Milk not over gay rights but over Moscone’s refusal to give him back his seat on the Board of Supervisors, was a Democrat.

I have a nightmare that one day Dianne Feinstein, a good and decent woman who not only was there but owes her entire national political career to the tragic events of Nov. 27, 1978, will straighten out Maerose Prizzi, as well as the rest of the country.

I have a nightmare that eventually you will recall that, just a few years after the events depicted in Milk, the newly liberated gay community in San Francisco was decimated by AIDS.

I have a nightmare that one day you will recognize the destructive philosophic effect on the American way of life of the “Institute for Social Research,” aka the Frankfurt School of radical neo-Marxists — Adorno, Horkheimer, Fromm, Habermas, Marcuse et al. — who, fleeing Hitler, arrived in America in 1934 and promptly affiliated with Columbia University, where they injected their notions of “critical theory” and “scientific Marxism” into the body of American academe.

I have a nightmare that one day, perhaps during another Great Awakening, the Supreme Court will overturn Murray v. Curlett, which outlawed school prayer in a lawsuit brought by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists. In 1995, O’Hair was murdered along with her son and granddaughter by another American atheist, who chain-sawed their bodies into bits.

I have a nightmare that one day the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, thus returning abortion to the states — although, alas, we will never get those 40 million dead souls to pay into the Social Security system.

I have a nightmare that I will still be alive when the Mother of All Ponzi Schemes finally beggars the nation, and the heroic, eco-friendly childless couples starve to death as they realize they forgot to manufacture their old-age meal tickets.

I have a nightmare that you will finally understand what the Manchurian Candidate, “mmm mmm mmm / Barack Hussein Obama,” meant by “fundamental change.”

I have a nightmare that one day Bill O’Reilly will wake up and realize that he’s letting a valuable television franchise descend into idiotic “culture warrior” and “body language” segments, and that he needs to stop hawking his books and Factor gear and remember to dance with what brung him — before the audience abandons him in favor of Glenn Beck.

I have a nightmare that we liberals won’t be able to stop Andrew Breitbart or any of the other maquis now shooting at us from every tree and from behind every rock, turning our own tactics against us, mocking us and rendering us frustrated and impotent.

I have a nightmare that W. will go on national television, rue his not naming a viable successor, castigate McCain for his disgraceful accommodationist campaign, and apologize for not fully executing the Bush Doctrine when he had the chance.

I have a nightmare that, one day soon, the New York Times will collapse into irrelevance, along with Time, Newsweek, and The New Yorker, and no one will be there to set the TV networks’ agendas, forcing you to once more think for yourself.

I have a nightmare that you will pick up a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and actually read it, boring and poorly written as it is.

I have a nightmare that you will organize and rally to take back your country from the frauds, poseurs, hollow men, gangsters, communists, atheists, perverts, Daley Machine hacks, ballerinas, and Jake Lingles who have parlayed a desire for Change, a touching but absurd reliance on Hope, and a huge dollop of racial guilt into something this country has never seen before.

I have a nightmare that you will come to understand the truth of Goya’s axiom that “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.”

I have a nightmare that Sarah Palin will get the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

I have a nightmare that she will win, scattering us like so many scuttling Gregor Samsas.

I have nightmare that . . .

Nah. Never happen. You’re too stupid.

[Zakeet]

... And I am the nightmare ... because you're so stupid!

[freekitty]

This author does have a nightmare which is rapidly turning into reality and may he have an eternal migrane.

[The Californian]

bttt

[Reddy]

bump

[fortunate sun]

excellent piece.

[Lou L]

I have a nightmare that while you’re enjoying the scatological dialogue and ultra-violence of Pulp Fiction, you’ll realize that Vincent Vega, the unbeliever, dies unredeemed in Butch Coolidge’s bathroom, while Jules, who accepts the reality of miracles, grants absolution to Pumpkin and Honey Bunny and is thus saved.

Never really thought of "Pulp Fiction" in this way, but I like it...interesting take. I just don't over-analyze movies in this way.

[browardchad]

Let’s all remember that Kehane plays the role of a liberal, sometimes too well, for NRO.

[AnAmericanMother]

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

[geologist]

It is difficult for all of us to get outside our up bringing, education, experiences of our youth,... no matter whether it was radical left, middle moderate left, or hard right, radical right.

We simply do nor learn much outside of our meaningful experiences. Some are simply “deadlocked” into our/their mind set.

To view dispassionately is possible to consider ... but there is little or no emphasis for action ... unproved in our experience.

There are quite a number of Americans that grew up without severe traumas ... (actually had ‘happy childhoods). So much of what they declare is largely theoretically based.

How to break through our shell ... is a scary idea ...

History shows the way ...

God has left us instructions on how to live life pleasing to Him. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do good to all men”,

Trust God and the Lord Jesus Christ to guide you in the way to go. “Enter in at the narrow gate, because wide is the way ..., and broad is the gate that leads to destruction, and many there be that enter that way.”

paraphrase ... There will be wars and rumors of wars,... tribulations in the last days. Turn you attention to loving God and learning to be like Him. This is a reward and a hope. Nothing is going to change the evil that men do in this world until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[loveliberty2]

"I have a nightmare that one day Bill O’Reilly will wake up and realize that he’s letting a valuable television franchise descend into idiotic “culture warrior” and “body language” segments, and that he needs to stop hawking his books and Factor gear and remember to dance with what brung him — before the audience abandons him in favor of Glenn Beck."

Sadly, this "nightmare" may soon become "reality TV" as O'Reilly becomes less and less relevant to Tea Partiers, Town Hallers, and millions of young Americans who have moved way past him intellectually in their pursuit of liberty, and don't care whether his "neutrality" results in another interview with the current pursuer of the Olympics or not.

[Louis Foxwell]

O’Reily must be losing share. Even CNN is sometimes a viable alternative to his wimpishness. He is waaay too caught up in himself to be a reliable source of insight and understanding.

[Kenton]

I was watching O'Reilly a week or so ago when the hot news was The Breibart/Beck scoop of ACORN, when O'Reilly tried to take credit for the story. He said something to the effect of "Where's the maintream media on all this? Breitbart and Beck and I are the only ones on it..."

O'Reilly is a self-aggrandizing pompous blowhard. Nobody I know take him seriously anymore.

[RipSawyer]

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
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Yeah, me too! And the horse he rode in on. Oogum Boogum and Ooby Dooby and all that. I’ll Bett zu einem dollar agin a doughnut on that fersure an’ like WOW, man!

Seriously, this has something do do with the writings of Kafka doesn’t it? Is that German or the Austrian language that Obamalama invented?

[AnAmericanMother]

Sorry - I should have posted a translation.

The title of this article is a reference to the opening sentence of Die Verwandlung - usually translated as Metamorphosis but "The Transformation" is more literal - a novel by Franz Kafka.

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from unquiet (or uneasy) dreams, he found that he had transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

Samsa (who is a standin for Kafka himself, as in so many of his novels) has turned into a giant cockroach. Things go downhill from there. I had to read Kafka during the years I studied German (or "Austrian" although Kafka was Czech) but I have never picked him up since. He is one of the most depressing writers of the VERY depressing prewar German school. Died young, of TB.