George W Bush is burning Faramir alive!

Hearing Bush's creepy proclamations of our commitment to prevent a "nuclear holocaust" in the unstable Middle East made my flesh crawl. Not just because we've already been through this 'phantom nukes' scenario once and it hasn't worked out too well (although the report on the surge is expected to be grim even with revision, BushCo is already planning to ask for another $197 billion, which would bring the cost to some $660 billion), but it marked the first time I've heard an American president sound like a flat-out lunatic.

It was the moment I became officially convinced that it isn't all cynical act-- he actually believes that he's a brilliant and put-upon martyr destined to work God's will, if not actually bring about the salvation of... somebody. While it's happened many, many times in history, most(?) of us still can't understand how killing tens of thousands of innocent people, spending vast amounts of money, and denying people freedom in the name of protecting it is supposed to be a good thing for anybody.

There have been comparisons of the Bush administration with the decadence and madness of Rome's worst emperors for years, and while we've seen enough avarice, caprice, and hubris for ten administrations, the simpleton running things now has added another terrible element that's brought down societies again and again: zealotry.

A better comparison than ancient Rome might be the much more recent, and just as senseless, Tai Ping Rebellion: with Bush as a hopefully-not-as-dangerous Hong Xiuquan.