The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

If Osama bin Laden was killed during the furious American bombing assaults on Tora Bora, then he is headed for martyr central. But, speaking from the strictly academic angle, isn't it at least equally heroic for the mythic figure to slip away from near-certain destruction to fight another day? This now appears to be the case with ObL and it is looking more and more as if George Ure's prediction weeks ago may be correct: that ObL will lie low in friendly quarters out of Afghanistan until the time of the Hajj in mid-March, 2002, when multitudes of Muslim pilgrims converge at Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Then, ObL will appear before them, exhorting them to jihad against the west and its miserable servling friends.

Osama may be a villain, but he's no fool, as evidenced in yesterday's latest videotape. He says that America is fragile. I agree. Our insane Ponzi economy is running on credit card fumes. He says that America can be run off its rails by applying a little more exogenous economic stress. I agree. Ironically, ObL is articulating the terms of a national emergency (here in the USA) that Americans themselves are obdurately unwilling to entertain.

I came across an interesting phrase this morning in Erik Davis's wonderfully-written recent book "Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information." The phrase is "consensus trance," coined by psychologist Charles Tart. This consensus trance is what keeps Americans in the groove of our car-crazed consumer clusterfuck. The consensus trance supports the exceedingly unrewarding living arrangement of Suburban Nation. The consensus trance keeps us convinced that this is the only possible American Dream.

ObL is the proverbial two-by-four making contact upside America's head. Evidently it takes such a villain to awaken the sleepers from their consensus trance.