'Hubris Is Deadly'

So said Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina in this a.m.'s NYTimes. He was speaking about over-reaching, as in this present administration. Sanford should know a thing or two about overweening arrogance, having served with Newt in the infamous 1994 Republican take-over of Congress. "How'd that work out for you, Newt?"

"Hubris." El Presidente will have to reach for his old Webster's, since he was laying out of class hung-over on the day they discussed it at Yale. The root meaning of "hubris" was a compound meaning "outrage" and the violence that can come from outrage. From there it came to mean the arrogance that practices overbearing power alongside power's handmaiden, violence. Characters in Greek tragedy often exhibited "hubris." That is, they consistently made the mistake of thinking they were above the gods in power. Aldous Huxley wrote, "The Greeks knew very well that hubris against the essentially divine order of Nature would be followed by its appropriate nemesis."

Where's my Webster's? "Nemesis": comes from the name of the Greek goddess for retributive justice or vengeance (don't ever mess with a goddess!). The root wood for nemesis in Greek is the verb meaning "to allot," to pay back one's just desserts. The most garden-variety use of "nemesis" in English means "an unavoidable result."

In Texas, they would say over the smoking ruins of some wheeler-dealer, "he got too big for his boots." The crash was an unavoidable result. Hubris meets nemesis.

Let's outline our current national drama. Act One: the rage of George W. Bush. Set off by 9/11, fanned by a patriotic furor which insists the USA is always right, fueled by born-again self-righteousness against all who oppose the "godly" ... that makes a sufficiently large enough bonfire of the vanities.

Act Two: getting "bigger than God." Well, certainly as big. Evidently in daily contact with the Heavenly Throne. So in synch with the Divine Will, in fact, that Jehovah appears to be doing W's bidding rather than the other way around.

Act Three: overbearing power blossoming out of anger, strutting in very big boots on a world stage. Preemptive warfare.

Then comes Act Four, nemesis. Retributive justice, one's just desserts. We're tempted to think in terms of Mother Nature as the offended goddess who'll have revenge on this administration, considering the hubris of this bunch toward the stewardship of our natural resources. Or the world community, perhaps. How long will they allow the USA to stomp all over their druthers while sucking up the lion's share of the wealth? Or a storm in the economy. But any of these possible nemeses will wreck us all in bringing down their target, so we shudder at the prospect and dread Act Four.

According to the article in this morning's NYTimes, Bush's nemesis could well come in the form of a smiling ally, a fellow Republican, say, in government, whose grip on reality is firmer than his tendency toward grandiosity. Chuck Hagel, perhaps. "Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who is talking about running for president, said on 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos' on ABC that he did not believe the White House had a strategy to extricate the United States from Iraq." Bush's nemesis could well be an erstwhile friend who decides to speak the truth about him.

Or maybe a miracle will transpire, Howard Dean will become head of the DNC, and Democrats will rise as the Republican nemesis. Nah! While we believe in tragedy, we don't bank on fantasy.