Illusion

Blaise's article is superb, a dark garden of thorny prose and deep, flowery cynicism:

Lord, there is no such city anywhere, but all is a vision. America’s spires and turrets are built on mountains of debt and a fairyland of trust in the faithless apostles of the unregulated Free Market. We have indulged ourselves in fantasies of national superiority and continue to do so, all the while condemning the Islamists who make no bones of their urge to subdue the world to their own vision of harsh justice and superiority. Think Obama won’t perpetuate these fantasies? He’s going to send even more troops into Afghanistan, recapitulating the failures of Bush in Iraq, in the one place in the world where every textbook of military history tells us empires go to die. Less Lincoln and more Plutarch for President Obama: let our Fearless Leader see how Alexander fared east of Persia, both in the nature of Alexander’s successes and failures.

Anon, the whole fair city had disappeared, the reckoning has come due. Yet the illusion has not been dispelled.

Obama is a fine man, as good a man as the times have produced and the country is well-pleased with him, both Republicans and Democrats alike are charmed by his glamour. But of old, the word Glamour meant a spell of illusion...

Read the whole thing.