Magical Thinking

If you've ever tried to get a crush to phone you through telepathy, or wore Lucky Socks to a job interview, you've been practicing Magical Thinking. I bring this up because of this story Kevin Drum brings to our attention:

NO PROTESTING ALLOWED!....WE WON A MANDATE!....And so it comes to this: merely protesting the war is now enough to bring the Secret Service calling.

It seems that some high school students in Boulder are opposed to the war — that's a shocker, I know, students opposed to war — and planned to sing a Bob Dylan song at a student talent show. Dylan, if memory serves, was some kind of anti-war hippy himself.

Anyway, a few local parents and students apparently decided the Dylan song was being used to "promote an extreme leftist point of view" and that the lyrics to "Masters of War" were a direct threat to the president's life. So the Secret Service was called.

Delightful, isn't it?

The song, written in 1963, inveighs against all the purveyors of war, and ends with these words: "You might say that I'm young. You might say I'm unlearned, but there's one thing I know, though I'm younger than you, even Jesus would never forgive what you do … And I hope that you die and your death'll come soon. I will follow your casket in the pale afternoon. And I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed. And I'll stand o'er your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead."

You see my point, I think? The phrase "I hope that you die", directed at some nameless members of the 'military-industrial complex' has magically seen into the future to target a President forty years later, with a direct physical threat, that can span the distance from Boulder, Colorado, to Washington DC. That is some kind of powerful mojo!

And yet, who among us would doubt that if anyone could master such titan forces, it would be Bob Dylan?

Seriously, though, doesn't this tell us all we need to know about the Bush Believers? When he declares Mission Accomplished, all evidence to the contrary, they believe. Tinkerbell is a very healthy little fairy in Jesusland.