Burnt Offerings: The Horror, the Horror

I would like to introduce my cousin Michael Rulle. My mother and his father were brother and sister, and his father, Uncle Mike, shaped a lot of our political ideas, though we thought he may have been the anti-christ, as he was a conservative and we were Kennedy democrats for a bit.

William F. Buckley was Uncle Mike’s favorite and we frequently were subjected to long dissertations.

Thank God for Uncle Mike.

When we were younger my cousin Michael and I would put on political skits. This was in the 60s and I must say we were ahead of our time. I like to think that we’re still ahead on some things — most recently when the economic crisis first started my cousin provided insights that only now some are talking about. He was WAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE, which is why I want to share his voice with you.

His latest piece, “The Horror……the Horror” is a good starting point. Then I suggest you go back to his blog “The Law of the Bad Premise” and share his stuff with your friends.

So a little about my cousin; he graduated number one in Columbia Business School, was a partner at Shearson Lehman Bros, CEO of CIBC Oppenheim Worldwide, ran an eight billion dollar hedge fund, another eleven billion dollar hedge fund, and is just shy of his Poli-Sci PHD.

I hope you enjoy — Robert Davi

The Horror……the Horror

by Michael Rulle

The Anti-American Left is Born

For the second time on this blog site I quote Karl Marx’s satirical critical witticism of Hegel: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”. Perhaps, like Marx, I too can add a twist to this aphorism. Oscar Wilde said that “life imitates art more than art imitates life”. Lets see if I can sew the giraffe’s head onto the elephant’s body. How about “All great artistic themes in history appear, as it were, twice. First as a tragic representation of profound truth, second as real life absurd farce”.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard heads down river in search of an Army operative, Colonel Kurtz, who had gone very much off the reservation. In a paradoxical morality play, Kurtz had become so distraught by the horrors war had rendered, he rebelled by endlessly recommitting those same horrors, but without the false pretense of purpose or meaning. The death and torture machine Kurtz established down river was visible to all who approached, as heads, corpses and skeletons lined the entrance to his encampment. Willard fittingly releases Kurtz from his self inflicted psychic hell by hacking him to death with a hatchet/machete while Jim Morrison sings “this is the end, beautiful friend”. Brando/Kurtz memorably leaves this movie-world’s stage straining out the whisper “the horror….the horror”. Apocalypse Now – Kurtz Dies

I am pretty certain you have already figured out where I am heading, but, hey, lets just get on with it. Apocalypse Now, surely one of the great movies of the last 50 years, definitely caught and reflected the historic change in this country’s intelligentsia’s values and morals that occurred during the Vietnam war. A new anti-American, anti-military world view was born. Kurtz, who was identified early on by his superiors as a future leader of the military, was the logical final perfect product of this inherently corrupt system. Killing for killings sake. Evil beyond all evil. A giant genius had lost its way.

You can read this post in full here.