Contemporary Cassandra

Troy’s King Priam had everything going his way until Agamemnon gave him a wooden horse concealing a bellyful of Greeks.

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Obedient, adoring plebeians populated Priam’s province. He had a loving wife, two warrior sons, Hector and Paris, and Cassandra, a drop-dead gorgeous daughter. Zeus’s boy, Apollo, was so smitten by Cassandra’s comeliness that he granted her the gift of prophecy. But the mortal lass didn’t care for the immortal lad, and in a rage of unrequited love, Apollo devised a curse that cramped Cassandra’s style: She could still prophesy accurately, but nobody believed her — even Priam, when she told her dad a horde of hidden-in-a horse hostile Greeks would destroy Troy, which they did. I feel like a contemporary Cassandra, especially since that pre-presidential election Sunday in 2008, when the preacher exhorted us to pray for the next president, even if he wasn’t our choice. On Judgment Day, nobody will ace that final, final exam, and in addition to many other questions I’ll miss, especially those having to do with forgiveness and tolerance and turning the other cheek, my final score won’t be enhanced by the fact that I didn’t always mind my minister. I’m certainly not going to pray for a president who I’m convinced will “change” my country for the worse and deny my grandsons the freedoms I’ve enjoyed, as he implements socialistic measures that will replace individual rights with dependence on an ever-enlarging central government. In support of this assertion, I have waxed prophetic. No doubt my predictions, like Cassandra’s, will fall on unbelieving ears. I prophesy that the man secular progressives call “Messiah” will show his true colors — those of a charlatan and a liar — from the time the inaugural honeymoon is over until (Oh, please, Lord!) he is bounced from the Oval Office. Here’s why. He who lies down with dogs rises up with fleas, and since his political life began, Obama has lain amongst mangy Illinois Democratic curs, including two of his current corrupt chums, Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel. I predict Hussein Obama will abandon Israel, a move that will embolden nuke-happy fruitcakes like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, along with countless terrorist groups, will seek American targets more aggressively than ever before. I predict that the bumper sticker joke —“If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it’s “free.” — will become harsh reality, and all Americans will become over-taxed inmates in a nanny state where medical care, education, military protection, and all other societal infrastructures will degenerate to levels comparable to those of rogue nations dreaming of destroying Americans. I predict that abortion will be unrestricted, and become a sort of “drive-through” procedure, no questions asked. I predict that homosexuality will flourish to the point that same-sex marriages will become commonplace. I predict that private gun ownership will be outlawed, although the enforcers will have to pry cold dead fingers from my beloved Smith & Wesson. I predict … heck, what’s the use? It’s no fun being a contemporary Cassandra.