BuzzFlash is linking to a song by Steve Conn called "How Does It Feel?" -- "How does it feel to know you're the one who started the fire that ended the world?" Conn asks George W. Bush. The question is repeated several times in the song (it's a very good song, not just a throw-away protest, and Conn is a talented singer). The question becomes more and more haunting as you listen. Has Bush started the fire that ends the world? It's possible. The more directly you look at what he's done and force yourself to contemplate likely reactions and consequences by the part of the world that is not George W. Bush or his cronies and friends, the more dread grows.

The song especially speaks to me because of a dream I had during the Kosovo crisis. I dreamed I was entering a church; the spirit of my deceased father was to my left in the wings, he had brought me there to see something important. I opened the door to the nave and saw pews filled with congregants and candles lining the aisles and altar. A white-robed minister was administering communion rites to congregants kneeling at the altar. From somewhere behind me, I hear a Dan Rather-like voice blandly say, "and now he will self-immolate." The alter bursts into flames around the minister. He begins to sweat, his eyes grow wide with fear, he stuffs communion wafers into his mouth so he won't scream. I do scream, throwing my arm over my eyes in horror, running from the room. The minister has led the congregation to this ceremony of self-sacrifice. But it is not until the flames begin licking at his own robes that he understands the fire will consume him, too, and feels the terror. And the guilt, perhaps?

If Bush has started the fire that ends the world, I wonder if he will ever feel guilt or fear about it. Conn sings that "some say you're evil, but I'd like to think you're just hungry for love." Maybe. But Bush is also a grown man with a soul to guide him just like all the rest of us. The idea that he might be doing so many horrific things as desperately misguided attempts to belong or be loved would only indicate a level of narcissism that would surely be the same thing as conscious evil.