Apocalypse Now?

Over at Digby's place, I read an enjoyable rant comparing Hank Paulson to the insane Colonel Kurtz, the iconic character played by Marlon Brando in Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

The comparison struck me as strangely apt. In this crazy world where none of the rules seem to apply anymore, where free-market fanatics are asking for the largest government intervention in the markets ever, where deregulator John McCain is claiming to support increased regulation of Wall St., we become like Martin Sheen's confused Captain Willard, sent up-country on a mission, not sure which way to go.

I was reminded of the scene at the end of the film, when Willard meets Kurtz. A passage from that scene, with very little alteration, seems apropos.

Imagine, if you will, Hank Paulson in the Marlon Brando role, speaking first in horror and then in awe of the work of his fellow Wall Street investment bankers, the men who brought us to this awful place:

There they were in a pile...A pile of little ARMs. And I remember...I...I...I cried...I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never wantto forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that defeats us."

Men without judgement, unfettered by the human faculties that make us recoil in horror, driven by their primordial instincts, maybe not to kill, but to steal and cheat, certainly. Sounds like the people responsible for this economic meltdown, all right.

The horror. The horror...