I've been re-reading Joseph Heller's brilliant
Catch-22 this week. I haven't read it in at least 10 years, and it is blowing me away. I've been earmarking some pages with particularly relevant (I might also say
eerily relevant) passages, but one just hit me square in the gut.
Chaplain A. T. Tappman has just checked himself into the hospital with a case of "Wisconsin shingles" (which do not exist, of course), and he is thrilled with his powers of deception. In the passage that follows, Heller could be describing any number of Bush's inner circle.
Follow me below the fold for the passage and a question for discussion!
The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character (Chapter 34, "Thanksgiving").
Remind you of anyone?
The ludicrous, insane, mindnumbing jackassery of Heller's characters has become our reality - it has become policy. Were Heller alive today, I suspect he would be simultaneously amused and sickened to see the psychotic machinations of his characters brought to life in the United States government. What he no doubt intended as a hyperbolic satire of the McCarthyism and hyper-patriotism of the 1950s has become straight commentary on the leaders of our nation. Who could have imagined?
There have been many references to Orwell's 1984 over the past 5 years of life under the Bush administration. Catch-22 has not received the same attention. Are there other novels you have read that merit some careful reading as we try to make sense of the madness?