December 1941 is usually remembered by Americans as that fateful month when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,

And collapse it did, as Hitler points out. The Soviet Union lost four million men; 8,000 aircraft; and 17,000 tanks; the Fuhrer boasts. The Soviet breadbasket region of the Ukraine was quickly overrun, along with half of Russian coal and steel output. Major Russian cities were captured, Hitler states smugly—Minsk, Kiev, Moscow, Leningrad. The commissars capitulated, the Russian people are cowed, and Soviet lands are open to master race colonizers.

Pausing for effect and waiting for the cheering to subside, Hitler brushes aside his trademark lock of hair that cut across his forehead like a black scythe and continues: “Wonder weapons!” he shouts. “Our scientists, our gallant workers of the Reich have produced miracles of modern technology! Soon the skies will be filled with jet aircraft, bombers and fighters, and rockets and missiles with enough range to hit any place on earth. We can destroy those who dare to challenge our supremacy in Europe, in Asia, in the world!” More applause, punctuated by vigorously bobbing heads and expansive grins of triumph in the crowd. “Our submarines patrol the Atlantic, a German lake! Britain is crumbling, ready to surrender.” Then, as an aside: “One torpedo from our new Type XXI submarine will sink that whole miserable island.” Riotous laughter and applause.

Then out comes the map, huge, blazing with colors—black and yellow and gray. Three vast spheres of influence, German (with a nod to the Italians), Japanese, and the Americas, light up the background behind the Fuhrer. The audience claps, and many begin imagining vacation junkets to Asia, Africa, and the farthermost regions of mighty Germania’s global domain. More glances at that huge gray area on the map; with a wink and a nod, someone in the crowd utters, “soon, all that will be ours, too.”

This is the world we avoided, one portrayed with disturbing plausibility by such writers as Robert Harris in Fatherland and Phillip K. Dick in The Man in the High Castle. Sound unbelievable? Consider this: After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, few observers expected the Russians to survive; even Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, was convinced that Russia would fall within three months, leaving the United States and the beleaguered British alone to face the monstrously powerful Third Reich. How powerful? After two years of war, Germany produced twice as much steel as Great Britain and the Soviet Union combined. Indeed, Richard Overy, in his superb Why the Allies Won, declared that “on the face of things, no rational man in early 1942 would have guessed at the eventual outcome of the war.”

Yet victory was achieved, as the result of the world’s other great powers pooling their resources to defeat what likely was the most ambitious threat to global civilization in human history. With American production genius, British perseverance, and the Soviet Union’s recuperative powers, the Allies beat their Axis foes in every dimension of total war—on the ground, at sea, and in the air; in the laboratory, on the factory floor, and at the strategic planning table; and most importantly, in the moral battle for the minds of millions of men and women, civilians and soldiers alike.

America’s role was of course indispensable, and not just in production figures, but in the spilt blood and sacrifices on countless battlefields in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. Indeed, the success of the Normandy invasion alone created conditions for America’s longer-term victory over its second totalitarian foe over the half century following WWII, the Soviet Union. Which means it’s hard to overestimate the profound significance of Victory in Europe Day, symbolizing the war that was won and the world we avoided.

Like many in my generation, I have family members who fought in that conflict, which is why I encourage everyone to visit a WWII military cemetery in the coming weeks, and—sometime in your life—to make a pilgrimage to that extraordinary American military museum at Omaha Beach. Gaze with somber appreciation at those regiments of crosses perfectly arrayed on that hallowed ground. Ponder the sublime meaning of those silent sentinels that commemorate freedom’s costly triumph over barbarism and tyranny. And remember May 8, 1945, V-E Day.

Dr. Marvin Folkertsma is a professor of political science and fellow for American studies with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. The author of several books, his latest release is a high-energy novel titled “The Thirteenth Commandment.”

When President Obama made his famous declaration about how he was confident that “that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” many observers figured the chief executive missed April Fools’ Day by a single digit. Certainly this comment—coming from what every pundit likes to emphasize is a “former constitutional law professor”—dropped jaws among legal scholars and supporters everywhere, sending virtually everybody referring to that favorite hunk of American constitutional DNA, Marbury v. Madison. It’s not hard to see why. In this case, Chief Justice Marshall declared that it is the duty of the courts “to say what the law is,” and further “that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that the courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.” In short, passing judgments on laws passed by Congress is what Supreme Court justices do and have been doing since the origins of the republic.

This is the perspective of a regime that had gone insane, one whose theory of terror in warfare had clearly put it outside the community of civilized nations. Indeed, Germany’s depredations during its second effort to dominate Eurasia instigated war crimes trials against its leaders. A special irony is that during the first half of the twentieth century, Germans were among the most highly educated, culturally sophisticated, and technologically advanced people on earth. Didn’t matter. Kaiser Wilhelm’s Empire and the Third Reich both perpetrated acts of unspeakable insanity.

The relevance of Germany’s experience to contemporary politics perhaps becomes clearer with an understanding of what a regime is. A regime is a complex of institutions, personnel, and practices committed to the preservation of a ruling ideology. A regime comprises the commanding heights of a political and social system, including public and private bureaucracies, major media outlets, and the academic establishment—all of whose members understand one another, defer to sympathizers’ needs, and devote their professional lives to self-aggrandizement and ideological conquest.

Naturally, not all regimes are alike and therefore do not go insane in the same way. Has the American regime—i.e., our governing political order—gone insane? Some may think the matter is debatable, but I think we may be taking the first steps on the pathway to political insanity.

For instance, the way regime officials and sympathizers have treated Tea Party people is nothing short of despicable, a mere hair’s breadth this side of insanity. Tea Party supporters have been characterized as racists, radicals, fascists, and traitors, none of which of course applies to them, but some of which are fair characterizations of some of those making such accusations. The liberal-progressive regime that has dominated America for the past generation or so cannot fathom a genuinely popular uprising. Regime adherents are cynically familiar with all sorts of fraudulent demonstrations, from their college days to union organizing, and can manage no better response to the Tea Partiers than to project their own race-class-gender-political identity bigotry onto their challengers. This rube-like narrowness of intellect would be amusing if it were not so mean-spirited.

Other growing manifestations of regime insanity are counterintuitive and often grotesque. For instance, would a sane regime member compare American soldiers to death-camp guards or terrorists—“Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some other mad regime”—as did Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill)? Would its minions enact policies whose inevitable trajectory is to bankrupt the country within a decade? Would a sane regime delegate authority to a government agency to regulate practically every puddle of water?

The list of questions goes on, much longer, from immigration to recent defense policy, the latter of which has been characterized by Charles Krauthammer as “incomprehensible.”

And if this isn’t quite at the stage of insanity, it is at least very bad policy.

The question is, what can citizens do about it? Here’s where I’m concerned, because the answer is: probably not much. Unless, that is, citizens reconstruct those institutions and fill their posts with fresh recruits from the ranks of civil society. That would mean ending the tenure of incumbents throughout the regime, in government, media, and academia, which is a tall order, one whose magnitude is likely not fully understood by Tea Party enthusiasts and their supporters. But absent a thorough changing of the guard, the liberal-progressive regime’s walk on the path to political insanity will continue.

This colossal arrogance generated colossal horrors, which, a half-century later, relegated the war’s participants to the status of effete sideliners—sideliners, that is, to greater historical dramas taking place elsewhere in the world. European hubris had political consequences far beyond the fortunes of national leaders, nearly all of whom put themselves first and their countries second. At lower levels in a political or military hierarchy, arrogance generates losses that are measured in the thousands, often multiplied many times. At higher levels, the fate of nations or entire civilizations is in the balance. In short, there is a geometric progression of consequences in the politics of arrogance, and politics informs all decisions in government, the military, and society in general. The inherent resistance to criticism and blindness to reality that are characteristic of oversized egos magnify such consequences.

Sometimes nations beat the math and survive the politics of arrogance practiced by leaders who identify their personal fortunes with the destiny of their country. For instance, in the opening campaigns of the Civil War, adulation of George B. McClellan reverberated hugely inside the echo chamber of his own ego, generating a conclusion that “God had placed a great work in [his] hands,” and the fate of his country rested solely with him. In fact, McClellan was an able organizer but an inept commander whose battlefield judgments were ludicrous and whose incompetence unquestionably lengthened the war. Unfazed by criticism, McClellan still ran against “the well-meaning baboon” Lincoln, who beat him soundly in the 1864 election. God, Grant, and “the original gorilla” saved the Republic to persevere, at least until another megalomaniac strode across the political platform to gain America’s attention.

Few fit this description better than Woodrow Wilson, particularly since he compared himself favorably to Jesus Christ, whose major shortcoming in Wilson’s view was the failure to produce a plan for peace. Wilson trumped the Ten Commandments by adding four—the Fourteen Points—and burned his life out leading a crusade for a cause few Americans cared about, the League of Nations. Wilson finally concluded that his countrymen were not ready for the grand project he had in mind for them. It’s hard to get more arrogant than that, but at least Wilson’s haughtiness produced few adverse consequences; international organizations are singularly inept at preventing war, and America’s membership in the League likely would have meant little. But Wilson’s politics of arrogance rendered him impervious to such considerations.

Which brings us to the present, with an administration filled with people whose self-esteem would make the Kaiser blush. America has a leader who reprises Sonny & Cher’s trademark song with the words, “You’ve Got Me, Babe.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s use of the personal pronoun suggests a new political formula to calculate arrogance—call it the “I-Test”—which refers to the frequency the President uses that letter in his speeches. But it’s not just him; his supporters numbered millions who were swept into the “we are the change we’ve been waiting for” movement, and the American Left still views the current political situation the way the German leadership looked upon Europe in August 1914: now is the time to strike, we may never have an opportunity like this again.

But it is almost impossible to conceive of the United States over the next decade “beating the math” to overcome a McClellan-like ego or vitiate a Wilsonian-type moral crusade. Efforts to create a European-style social democracy likely will produce a European outcome: a debt-ridden menagerie of stagnant societies smothered under a thick cloak of bureaucratic mediocrities oozing with self-importance. The prevailing politics of “never letting a serious crisis go to waste” so far has generated national debt estimates that cannot possibly be sustained without the United States suffering in economic terms what imperial Germany did in military terms during the Great War.

The question is, can this politics of arrogance be stopped? To this, another German, Otto von Bismarck, had an answer: “God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Bismarck is no longer around to give advice, which leaves America with only one alternative to combat our own politics of arrogance.

God help us.

The Brown victory will “send a message” to the Democratic elite, declare conservative pundits.

Progressive Scions of Sauron, beware! There may be a pesky, career-wrecking hobbit in your future, especially considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision on campaign advertising that give corporate Gandolfs more say than they’ve had since the darkness of restricted speech and the sclerosis of safe seats gripped Congressional Middle-Earth.

As scary as this short-term scenario sounds for Democrats, the prospects of progressivism continue to be positive, for at least two reasons.

First, a statement made by President Obama in an interview with George Stephanopoulos shortly after the election reveals, perhaps unintentionally, the philosophical soul of modern progressivism, one that is untroubled by short-term setbacks. In answer to a question about policy tactics, the president said, “We lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

Did you get that? It is not the job of leadership to represent Americans’ core values; rather, the president’s task is to explain to the country what its core values are.

Likewise, the president’s press secretary mouthed the same sentiment the following weekend. Regardless of what Scott Brown campaigned on-affirmed the press secretary and his president-the voters of Massachusetts sent him to Washington for different reasons.

This is all pure Rousseau, that imp of the French Enlightenment who scorned modernity and contributed to one of the most pernicious ideas in Western thought-the assumption that regardless of what ordinary people think they want, elites know better. Rousseau made a distinction between the “will of all,” such as decisions registered in elections, and the “general will,” an ethic that by definition embodies what is best for everyone, whether they like it or not. The general will cannot be represented by votes; in fact, as intellectual historian George Sabine stated: “A well-regimented minority, whose members are persuaded of their own inspiration … has proved an almost perfect organ for the general will.” Armed with this philosophical bludgeon, elites may insist that ignorant masses are “forced to be free;” that is, to obey the general will.

The assumption of elite omniscience and popular incompetence has fascinated intellectuals from the time of Robespierre through Marx’s concept of the masses’ “false consciousness” and onward to progressives’ rule by expertise. Obviously, not all elites have been as brutal as those who ran the gulag or death camps, but most have been as arrogant.

In short, expect the Brown victory to generate tactical retreats by some progressives who value their jobs; but do not expect a major reevaluation of their philosophical assumptions that would result in policy changes. They’ll simply wait for the mob to cool down, and then get on with the progressive agenda in another few years or so. Sorry, Senator-elect Brown; you’re just a passing fancy.

A second reason why the future for liberal progressivism looks bright is that progressive assumptions have been built into the institutions of governance and culture for at least the past three generations. Do Republicans, conservatives, Madisonian constitutionalists, tea-party patriots, and traditionalists of all stripes have any idea of the daunting nature of their tasks-that is, if they truly endeavor to try to stop the progressive agenda? Not likely.

Consider the challenge of tax reform, just to get started: Go ahead and attempt to eliminate that monstrosity known as the Internal Revenue Service and replace it with some form of the flat tax, under the radical assumption that how Americans spend and invest their resources is none of the government’s business. How far do you think that proposal would get?

Let’s try some others: Demolish the Department of Education, return some of its functions to the states, and rent the buildings it once occupied to The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

The list goes on: Privatize and/or abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and prevent any future government agency from taking on such cutesy names, much less such huge power. Deny federal aid to any college or university that grants tenure, which guarantees unlimited job security for radical academics. Slash budgets of every agency responsible for “discretionary spending” and don’t spend an additional penny on anything until the national debt is at least cut in half. And just for the fun it, fricassee a few spotted owls and deliver them au jus to whatever agency is in charge of protecting critters whose survival is deemed more important than the welfare of human beings.

In short, a change in personnel in Washington-Scott Brown included-means little to the future of the republic unless more is done besides simply giving pause to the engine of progressive expansionism, which dominates government, media, and academia. The question is whether a future Congress is up to the task.

“This is not funny, this is serious stuff!” intones a flock of furrow-browed politicos about that well-dressed couple who conned their way into a White House shindig. Yes and no, in that order, because some of us think this incident is more than a little funny and really not all that serious. “They could have smuggled a toxic substance in the guise of a perfume, or even an explosive!” someone exclaimed on MSN-Please-Take-Me-Seriously-BC. Well, okay, I suppose so; that might have happened in an “NCIS” episode; or was it “Loaded Weapon” or “The Naked Gun?” Can’t remember. At all events, my guess is that most Americans are more amused than upset.

The reason for this is that the romp of Mr. and Mrs. Coiffed-to-Perfection is the most amusing story to pop out of the ideological fever swamp of D.C. since Jimmy Carter confessed to lust in his heart, complained about killer rabbits, and deferred to his daughter’s profound reflections on nuclear war. Perhaps what shocks those in the political class is that White House intruders committed a genuinely honest con, as opposed to the heaps of dishonest ones they have inflicted on the American people over the decades.

One does not have to be a Mensa member to grasp the difference between an honest and dishonest con, or to appreciate the former’s subtle humor. An honest con is carried out by those who know they are conning people, and who also know that the con needs to last only long enough to achieve one’s goal, which in this case was to gain entry to the White House. Without question, the most brilliant exposition of honest conning is Herman Melville’s, “The Confidence Man.” Melville, along with Mark Twain, were America’s most insightful writers, in that they could smell a con game a continent away. To Melville, the great con was religion or religious-type quests; to Twain, it was the grand kaleidoscope of human affairs, but for a particularly well known example, read “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” For both, gullible Americans suckered into believing the con’s oily ruses may be victims, but they are also pathetic.

Melville and Twain were especially repulsed by a dishonest con-which is committed by those who lie to themselves as well as to others-in that the con artists refuse to acknowledge that what is being perpetrated is in fact a con game. American politics offers so many examples that it is sometimes hard to determine when a con is NOT being played. Still, several really big ones are going on right now, and their perpetrators are hoping that by the time Americans smoke out details of the swindles, it will be too late for anyone to repair the damage; the cons would have succeeded.

At least one, however, has finally been brought to light-the theory of man-made global warming. For instance, any quick check on CO2 emissions turns up an embarrassing fact about its role in the Great Greenhouse Gas Crisis, which is that man-made carbon dioxide is a trivial contributor to the total amount of this gas generated by the planet; that is, some 97 percent of such emissions is “natural.” Which means that ghastly EPA scenarios of humanity carbon-dioxiding itself to levels of Darth Vader rasping-”Luke! Sounding like me is our destiny!”-are a bit overdrawn. Still, well-funded apocalyptomaniacs will likely continue their feverish diatribes; facing facts is never pleasant, particularly when your livelihood depends on a massive con.

An even greater swindle centers on healthcare reform, whose managers have been trying to manipulate a number of cons simultaneously. First, that a new one to two trillion dollar entitlement is “deficit-neutral,” and second, that Medicare can achieve “savings” of some half trillion dollars over the next decade-and third, that all of this can be predicted about as well, as, say, Enviro-Cons can predict the weather a half century or so into the future. This massive con depends further on a number of “sub-cons,” so to speak, such as the insistence that Americans will not have to relinquish their present insurance plans, that everyone’s insurance costs magically will go down, and that illegal aliens will not be covered.

The upshot of all this is that not all cons are equal, and the larger the con, the greater the commitment of its perpetrators to keep it going; massive cons are literally “too big to fail.” This suggests a profound moral difference, as well. The “Oceans Eleven” con of White House crashers is trivial and entertaining, with few significant consequences beyond its discovery. Political cons belong to a different moral category altogether, in that they build huge constituencies to keep them going, even after they have been exposed. Which is as much to say that, in politics, it is possible to con most people most of the time, and that’s all our political con artists think they have to do.

Presidential comparisons that greeted Barack Obama’s election ranged from the sublime to the transcendent. He was variously described as the second coming of John F. Kennedy, a re-embodiment of Franklin Roosevelt, and even a budding Abraham Lincoln-a sort of Savior-in-Chief to rescue an aggrieved nation from the Dantesque tribulations of his predecessor. Mr. Obama’s public pronouncements signaled his determination to abrogate George W. Bush’s policies and send us all back upon paths of righteousness. And that was before the new president had even done anything.

Well, now President Obama has done quite a number of things, which bring to mind other analogies, some of which lurk beneath the worship continuum. Before Roosevelt there was Herbert Hoover, and before Lincoln there was James Buchanan, both of whom share the dishonor of being ranked among the country’s worst presidents, as Nathan Miller pointed out a decade ago in a perky book entitled “Star-Spangled Men.” About Hoover, much has been written; but it is President Buchanan who presents a really interesting case.

Miller’s review suggests that presidents fail because they are clueless or spineless or both. James Buchanan was both. Among the most reviled in the heap, he exhorted Supreme Court justices to deliver what was arguably the most disastrous court decision in American history-Dred Scott v. Sanford-and in the process egregiously violated constitutional integrity and the separation of powers. Buchanan lambasted Congress for not passing the notoriously pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution that would have admitted Kansas as slave state into the Union. To get his way he resorted to political thuggery: promises of cash to his supporters and dismissal of officials who opposed him. All to no avail; Congress defeated the measure anyway. A later vote in “bleeding Kansas” resulted in the defeat of the Lecompton plan by a margin of about nine to one, a result that surprised him. Cluelessness.

And when Southern States seceded one by one, Buchanan dithered and temporized, declaring such acts unconstitutional, but unlike Andrew Jackson before him and Abraham Lincoln after him, he did nothing. Spinelessness throughout. All this from a man who believed that defusing the time bomb over slavery would rank him at the level of George Washington, a hope that goes beyond cluelessness.

This is the danger of the Obama presidency, as Barack Obama juggles a half dozen major bills along with several foreign-policy challenges, any one of which risk failure that could damage his presidency severely, if not destroy it altogether. Since the summer especially, Obama’s executive style has been carefully documented with increasing alarm by president-watchers, even those who are sympathetic to his goals. Thus, on healthcare, Mr. Obama has insisted on reconstructing the entire industry in spite of the fact that all but a minority of Americans have insurance, and by large margins are satisfied with their coverage. Ghosts of Lecompton haunt this figure.

In foreign policy, Obama has courted dictators, spurned America’s traditional allies, and curried favor with adversaries such as the Medvedev-Putin duo by caving to their objections over a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic-apparently in hopes that appeasing the Russian bear will bear fruit in negotiations with Iran. Such spinelessness did not go unnoticed by the Iranians, who responded with missile-firing contempt. Finally, the president’s vacillation over Afghanistan while carbon-foot-printing his way to that other Euro-Superpower, Denmark, apparently to seek advice from Hamlet on executive decision making, hardly speaks well for his quest to find the buck that stops somewhere in the vicinity of the Oval Office. It’s hard to see how old “Public Functionary Buchanan” could have done worse.

The implications of these actions seem to escape President Obama, and therein lies the chief danger to his presidency. He could take a lesson from another predecessor to a favored president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Neither flashy nor eloquent, Ike actually had a life before writing about it and knew the world is not a global version of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Further, he possessed the good judgment not to inflict ambitious programs onto a population weary of war and the previous incumbent, much like Americans in 2008 who were tired of conflict and of George W. Bush. Initial reviews of Ike’s terms in office were unenthusiastic; more recently, his stature has risen among mature scholars who do not equate presidential greatness with increased federal power.

The question for President Obama is less about whom he resembles among the great ones; rather, it is about which among the others will be staring him in the face when he completes his term in office: Hoover, Eisenhower, or Buchanan?

So many poems, so many stories, so little space to use them all! Let’s settle on The Masque of the Red Death and see where that leads us. The tale begins with Prince Prospero gathering a thousand of his friends “into the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys” to seal them from a pestilence, the “Red Death,” which had claimed half of his countrymen. Within this secure confine these masquerading waltzers revel in the company of buffoons and ballet dancers, while cavorting through chambers where a kaleidoscope of colors sprays ghastly patterns across walls and floors. In one room, a giant ebony clock looms over all, sounding its “brazen lungs” on the hour, causing temporary surcease of frivolities. Into this mix enters a masked figure, “shrouded … in the habiliments of the grave,” with a physiognomy of a corpse dabbled in blood. His presence so enrages the prince that he assaults the stranger, only to drop dead in the encounter, as do all of his companions when they discover to their horror that the disembodied wraith was “untenanted by any tangible form.” At the last stroke of twelve, the ebony clock expires with the “last of the gay.”

What does this all mean? Poet Richard Wilbur explains that this windowless fortress represents a dream world whose inhabitants are free from the harshness of “waking temporal consciousness,” symbolized by the deathly figure draped in funereal garb speckled with blood. The ebony clock represents the inevitable countdown to the ruthless truth of reality, from which Poe spent his entire professional life trying to flee. Injecting the reality principle into the fantasies of the revelers destroys them and the world they inhabit.

So what does this have to do with politics? Plenty, especially if one no longer can make sense of stories about Washington’s revelers, whose antics defy normal categories of policy description and push to the farthest boundaries of political and economic sanity. A sampling: multi-trillion dollar deficits are projected for programs that somehow magically will save money, all while being opposed by a majority of the American people. Unemployment soars, in a world where fears of man-made global warming challenge Puff-the-Magic-Dragon for the award of the most favored fantasy of the decade. Charges are hurled against citizens who are regarded as cowards or children by those who haven’t the faintest idea of what lies outside the cocoon of Washington rhetoric. Patriots are prosecuted while psychopaths are protected; allies are betrayed, crucial decisions dithered on, adversaries appeased, dictators coddled, dissent dismissed with contempt and threatened by subtle hints of annihilation.

To some of us who once peppered our lawns with “I Like Ike” signs, whose eyes get watery with the sounds of patriotic music, and whose intellectual architecture includes John Phillip Sousa melodies and tales of Orson Wells’ attack of the Martians, it is all madness. It is Prince Prospero’s costumed specters whirling in masqueraded follies, insulated from the world and from the “red death” of reality. Even Poe would be challenged by such a lunatic environment; indeed, he should sue Washington for copyright infringement.

All of which leaves some with the feeling that what we are witnessing in our nation’s capital today simply cannot go on indefinitely; it is not “sustainable,” to use currently fashionable gibberish. A day of reckoning awaits us; or an apocalypse, call it what you will. Time and repetition have attenuated the shock value of facile comparisons to the Great Depression or banana republic economics. Something more profound is at work here, more disturbing. Call it deep anxiety, that creeping terror that hollowed out the souls of Poe’s characters, leaving them empty and quaking at the same time. Can a void tremble? Yes, it can, he taught us and experience confirms. We’re waiting for the reality principle to assert its truth, for that doleful clock to strike its final note.

God help us all when that time arrives for America.