FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - The Witch in the White House

Rant Number 431 9 March 2011

White House Witch

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet

‘This is wondrously strange’ Shakespeare’s Horatio had marvelled, about Hamlet seeing his father’s ghost. The Elizabethans believed in the supernatural, of course, but intelligent men drew the line at the darkest superstitions. Such as witches. What would Horatio have thought, I wonder, on being told of...a witch now ruling in the White House?!?

Incredible, I know. I don’t believe it, yet...this tale starts not with Gothic fantasy but with plain, empirical fact. Such as President Obama’s inexplicable, dismal recent record. In Newsweek, Niall Ferguson, I guess the thinking woman’s favourite sexy historian, has damned Obama’s foreign policy as ‘a colossal failure’. ‘Obama ‘has alienated everybody’, the great Gibbon’s youthful Scottish reincarnation opines. The Israelis, the Saudis, Egyptians – now the Libyans, he might add – America has let down all. Failure to anticipate the Middle East scenario, to reassure allied, to discourage enemies, blah, blah, blah...

Ok, Niall offers an unashamedly right-wing rant, you don’t have to buy it. But Obama has patently wavered and flip-flopped too much over Egypt and the Arab unrest. What’s more, he, the leader of the world’s greatest superpower, has been humiliated. Powerless before tiny Israel’s refractory government. The illegal West Bank settlements go on faster than ever. As to Muslims worldwide, Qur’an- quoting Obama in the famous Cairo speech promised the moon: ‘America and Islam are not exclusive...they overlap in common principles, justice, tolerance, dignity...’ (Why not sliced brown bread, too?) Splendid. And now the same Islam-loving President is powerless even to close Guantanamo!

The problem. Barack Obama is a charismatic, cool, intellectual, humane statesman. His feelings, you sense, are on the right side. He cares, he has it written it all over his attractive, sensitive face. His racial background predisposes him in favour of the underdog. His compassionate healthcare legislation is proof to that. The priest can’t dislike the guy. (Feel sorry I denigrated the President in a talk I gave to a meeting at the House of Lords once. Mea culpa...) Not only does Obama look good, with his slender, agile physique, he also sounds good. His command of the English language, especially compared with Bush’s strangulated, constipated drawl, is admirable, inspiring. And yet...why is it not working? How can such a charming, inspiring fellow be so hapless? What makes him powerless? Bad advice, bad luck, bad judgment or...what?

Here is the amazing tale. Lady friend who’ll remain anonymous has sent me a link. It charts historical cases of alleged – hold tight! – witchcraft. Hilaire Belloc, on page 260 of his A Shorter History of England – a feisty ultramontane, Catholic counter-history – indicts Anne Boleyn. She really did bewitch Henry VIII into breaking away from Rome. The king himself later spoke of her in terms of dark arts. Belloc writes that the lady ‘... had a certain deformity, described by some as the doubling of the little finger of one hand, and by others as a sixth finger.’ Yak! A diabolical mark! Crazy but... pity we can’t examine Hillary Clinton.

Male witches, warlocks, can do it too, of course. Gladstone, no less, seriously suspected Disraeli of having hypnotised Queen Victoria, subjecting her to his unbridled political will. Well, perhaps Dizzy, smarter than po-faced Gladdy, just knew how to pet the Queen. Complimented her on her non-existent merits as a writer. Oldest trick in the book. Not magic but common sense. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus – what’s new?

The villain of this piece. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She who intends to champion women’s rights worldwide, apparently. (Plausible cover for someone meaning to do mischief. Were she sincere, she could have started with vindicating all the innocent, naive females her husband, red-faced, libidinous Bill, has ensnared over the years.) Ambitious, indefatigable, touchy Hillary. Covetous Hillary. Coveting Barack’s place. She who waits in the wings, patiently, for the President gradually to extinguish himself, to become utterly powerless to influence events, at home and abroad, so she can get the job herself. It makes sense because, you see...she is a witch.

Powerless, do you hear? Something occult entities used to accomplish. Utter nonsense, sure, but, according to those two Dominican inquisitors, Kramer & Sprenger’s terrible manual, Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches, that is what the critters accomplished. They robbed their victims first of their sexual, procreative powers, then of their mental capacities, till they were gradually turned into puppets, will-less, powerless automata moved by the powers of darkness. A sort of magical fascism, as exemplified by Thomas Mann in his fine allegory, Mario and the Magician. Cipolla, the master hypnotist, turns his victims into obedient slaves. Fascism as a political system, however, has long been kaput. Today is the liberal-democratic demagogues, the Bushes, the Blairs, the Clintons, the focus group manipulators who pull the puppet-strings, blinding the masses to the nature of their libido dominandi, their immoral games. These modern warlocks’ powers are not particularly supernatural – you can spot them at work every time you switch on the box, the I-pod or read the paper.

‘Hillary’s war’, one of her fans writes. Apt militaristic imagery. War. The favourite liberal-democratic pastime, it seems. First poor Iraq, then wretched Afghanistan, next...God knows. I tremble at the thought of another spate of crimes and bloodshed. I will hazard a guess. I watched Hillary giving a speech at the UN last week. It struck me how malevolently she gunned for Iran. Yes, Iran. The Middle East country which, at the dismay of the West, is not having a revolution because it has already had one. (If it came to that, it would not be a revolution but a counter-revolution.) Hillary’s loathing for Iran was perceptible. While Obama grows gradually incapacitated, powerless, Hillary’s own power and megalomania increase. And that is dangerous, infinitely so. Because if, God forbid, world war III were to happen, the Middle East is where it would break out. Because the people of the Middle East are those our all-too-natural witches and warlocks need to either dominate or destroy.

May God help us.