The Sum of All Fears

The following clip is from The Sum of All Fears which, in turn, was based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name. I think that it’s so weirdly ironic that I ran across it on TV yesterday, just when the scene from the clip was playing, right after I published my 53 Years of Nuclear Testing in 14 Minutes post. Talk about synchronicity!

Now you should all know by now that, for a “head case” like me, drowning in fears inspired by a life sentence in seems like a global asylum to me, that kind of Cosmic Synchronicity just sticks out like The Thread To… OMG!!!!! that I’m totally unable to resist pulling on! Unfortunately, unlike that post, chasing down the “nougat” at the end of this trail wasn’t nearly as much fun. But I will try my best to keep this as short as possible.

First, I hope you all know that I make light of my “mental issues” only as a way of poking fun at the poorly considered impressions that people operate on and not because I think that mental health problems are actually funny. The truth is that I don’t think being considered “defective” because I see things differently is very funny at all. The fact is that I think everyone I’ve ever known suffers from, and has sought out their own way of ameliorating, the psychic damage that results, quite logically, from living in a world where emotion so often rules over reason.

Second, the whole “synchronicity” thing stems from the fact that I always look for the fundamental philosophical underpinnings that connect various issues. So, while the news of the day may be filled with all sorts of emotionally charged stuff about politics, economics, and violence, these things are all related on a level that all those “sound bite” driven news organizations are simply unable, and even unwilling perhaps, to deal with.

Great examples of this are the upcoming US presidential election and the anti-American protests in the Middle East. As I have said many times, and despite the economic ramifications for me personally (being dependent on government assistance), I see no fundamental differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. And despite how sickened I am over the crazy stuff going on in the Middle East, by all the pointless deaths and injuries in particular, I can’t see where there are any real philosophical differences between the Islamic extremists over there and the religious nuts we have running loose right here at home.

The bottom line to me is this my friends: Despite the terrifying costs of the Cold War, the real war in our world has never been about Capitalism vs. Communism. Despite what the politicians would have us believe, it’s never been about Liberal vs. Conservative politics. And despite the ever looming nightmare prospect of an all-out holy war (the thing that I fear above all), it’s not even about Judeo-Christian vs. Islamic mythologies.

My friends, the real war is the same one we’ve been fighting – in our minds and on the battlefield – throughout human history:

The War between Reason and Madness

I just hope we come to our senses before it’s too late…

I want ice water.

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