Monday, June 8, 2009

Constantine Complex - a modern condition?



There is that thing about short men with an inferiority thing called a Napoleonic complex.

Looking at some present day figures does not necessarily bring to mind the Napoleon thing. If Napoleon had succeeded with his bloody military thing, the EU would have been born a century and a half sooner and WWI and WWII would have not likely happened. Theory and conjecture do not make a real history of facts.

Of course, now I see what I call the Constantine complex in this modern world. It has to do with megalomaniac egos and trying to start new world religions or belief systems. It has to do with marshalling the forces available to fuller the power of the one over the many by any means possible. It also has to do with “I am Right and you are wrong! Period!”

No doubt a light bulb or I should say a torch lit up in the great Emperor god Constantine’s mind when he sought the means to glue two halves of an empire back together again. The key word here is “one”. One Emperor, one world Empire, one world religion. The monotheistic christian religion was no doubt an ideal fit into the emperor god’s grand megalomaniac plan for his new world order in the fourth century.

One current candidate for the title or label of the Constantine complex is the movie maker and actor Mel Gibson. Of course if Gibson were alive in the time of Constantine he would have approved of laws forbidding Jews from owning christian slaves or Nuremburg type laws imposing death if a Jew dared to marry a christian. Constantine! What a guy! Founder and cosmic enabler of the present church in Rome.

Gibson’s grasp of defending the 16th century tridentine mass in Latin as the only bridge to the one absolute God that he and his cult alone can fathom and defend perhaps has its limits. While Mel is divorcing his wife of twenty eight years and he is about to have a child out of wedlock, he is a little upset with his congregation of 70 fanatics who he suddenly doesn’t feel loyalty from. He is supposed to have threatened to shut down his church tax shelter because his fellow congregants are gossiping about him. Minor stuff, the real Constantine killed one son and his second wife because of palace gossip. Thank God Mel is only a minor tin god reflection of the real standard.

Mel is so pure, he is more holy than the pope, more catholic than the pope etc. Of course Mel has a few mortal flaws but is none the less one of my candidates for the label of having a Constantine complex.

Fast forward and the current age of mass media which is not a two way media, and they got rid of the fairness doctrine, whereby a balanced point of view is supposed to go out on the airwaves. The king of this modern day Constantine complex thing – this absolute rule of “I am Right and you are wrong! Period!” - would have to be “Boss Tweed” Limbaugh spewing nonstop confusion and hate over the radio air waves both for himself and his dying political party.

Also, suddenly Pope Newt the First, newly arrived in the Constantine faith, is telling his constituency that besides being always absolutely right that we are surrounding by “paganism”. What the hell is Gingrich mumbling about? Or is this just a new label for secular humanism? We don’t need a new world religion Newt when so many of all the others don’t work that well or work at all.

The domestic culture wars I hope are over. While we are at it, isn’t it time for the Armed Forces of the USA to stand down from WWII and the Cold War. There are better uses for the money in the social and domestic needs of the American people. Constantine is dead and so too should be his idea of empire, combining church and state, that so many these days seem to want to emulate.

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