The Weekly Screed (#691)

If you don’t buy this war,
we’ll kill this dog
by David Benjamin

“The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking round.”
                  —  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

MADISON, Wis. — With the recent beheadings in the Middle East of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and British aid worker David Haines, decapitation shot to the top of the charts as the hottest political fad of 2014. To suggest that the Republican Party is not feasting ravenously on every fresh, grisly YouTube video of a black-clad masked marauder — as he saws off the heads of hapless hostages — is to naively misconstrue the morbid glee of the GOP.

Of course, everyone says solemnly that they’re appalled, outraged, livid and totally grossed-out by these gruesome scenes, but hey…

If Foley’s murder had not showed up on YouTube and several hundred other websites, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Jim Inhofe and their GOP co-hysterics in the Senate never could have justified the hearings in which they’re demanding an immediate damn-the-torpedoes U.S. invasion of Syria, Iraq, possibly Turkey, maybe Iran and oh-my-god! What about Yemen?

Graham, who is currently beating the war drums even harder than John “Bomb Bomb Iran” McCain, said in June, “I don't think we need boots on the ground. I don't think that is an option worth consideration.”

After Foley lost his head, Graham’s tune went like this: “This idea we’ll never have any boots on the ground to defeat them in Syria is fantasy.”

What a difference a severed noggin makes.

Meanwhile, as I watched Graham and McCain demand that our reluctant generals send hordes of dumb, patriotic kids from Yellow Snow, Idaho to die on the thankless sands of Iraq and Syria, it occurred to me that the bloodthirsty militants of ISIS (or ISIL, or Daesh) might actually be led by a literal-thinking fraternity of post-Sixties nostalgia buffs. Look closely and you can’t help but recognize the Foley, Sotloff and Haines videos as a blatant (and clearly tasteless) real-life variation on perhaps the best satirical magazine image of all time — when the cover of the National Lampoon depicted a nervous mutt with a gun to his head, next to a caption that read: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”

Today, 41 years after that Lampoon, Republicans in Washington are riffing — without a hint of irony — on that warped, but hilarious message. They stridently warn President Obama that “If you don’t start this war, Muslim terrorists will keep decapitating innocent white people, and it’ll all be your fault, Rastus!”

Sen. Graham and cohorts know a useful trend when they see one. Before James Foley bit the dust, no one had the least appetite for clogging the Syrian quagmire with doomed American GIs. Now, approval for U.S. troops to fight ISIS is 34 percent. That doesn’t sound like much? A couple of weeks ago, the number was zero. If this was the Top 40, Casey Kasem (rest his soul) would be playing the Foley/Sotloff/Haines triple feature every hour on the hour and raving about how the surprise hit, “Another Pointless War,” was heading for Number One, “with a bullet.”

There’s no telling how far and fast the vogue might spread. But it will. I can see embattled incumbents all over America leaping onto the tumbril in panicked droves. Picture, for example, an apparent campaign ad for Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes. A black-hooded figure, perhaps wearing a black t-shirt with the visage of Ms. Grimes, holds a razor-edged Ottoman sword over the neck of a bound, blindfolded African-American virgin. An ominous voice-over intones these chilling words: “If you vote for Mitch McConnell, this high-school valedictorian and scholarship student at the University of Kentucky will die horribly, before your very eyes, at the hands of this Democrat executioner.”

Of course, the ad would be a plant by the McConnell campaign. But imagine the impact, especially on the black voters who normally despise Mitch — especially if, in a follow-up ad, the girl actually gets her head hacked off (or so it seems). Talk about viral!

Presumably, the subterfuge would be discovered and fact-checked by some newspaper that nobody reads. But by then, YouTube hits would be in the millions and Grimes’ candidacy would be deader than the headless virgin.

By and by — although they’re traditionally slow on the uptake — Democrats might fight back with decapitation clips of their own. I’d love to see, for instance, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin whacking off the head of a unionized kindergarten teacher and mounting it above the wet bar on his rumpus-room wall next to last fall’s twelve-point buck.

But, as we saw in France toward the end of the Reign of Terror, and in England after Henry VIII beheaded his ninth or tenth wife, the public will exhibit what psychologists call “guillotine fatigue.” The shock value wears off. Heads keep rolling, but the bloodthirsty crowds — who’ve seen it all before  — begin to thin. Replica-head soccer balls stop selling at Dick’s, Wal-Mart holds a half-price sale on black hoods, and the YouTube views for ISIS dwindle to a trickle.

The last gasp of the decapitation fad might well be our own president desperate for one lonely legislative victory before leaving office. He stands on an Alaskan ice floe, aiming a twelve-gauge shotgun. He says, “My fellow Americans, if Congress doesn’t raise the minimum wage, I’ll blow out this baby seal’s brains.”

Too little, too late. Nobody watches. The president lets the seal go. America keeps mopping floors and flipping burgers for $7.25 an hour.