During the 14th century when Europe was being ravaged by the Black Death, there arose a cult of people who thought that the reason for the plague was the displeasure of God, earned by mankind's wickedness. These people hoped that God would forgive them if they acknowledged their perceived evil, and they went from town to town, carrying crosses, and scourging and beating themselves for their imagined sins.

It didn't work of course, if they were trying to mitigate the Black Death, but it did work in other ways. Women would follow them in their progression through the villages and catch their blood in cloths, and apply it to their eyes, claiming miraculous powers, and women would find them irresistible and they'd party--they were the rock stars of the day. Or perhaps the environmentalists.

They were the flagellants. The Catholic Church recognized a challenge to their totalitarian stranglehold on the populace but were advised, at first, not to say anything, fearing an uprising. And then the Pope spoke out at this direct challenge to his ideas and authority, and was ignored. The party went on--moaning, self-denunciation, drama, loud protestations of evil and sin, and of course the endless supply of groupies and debauchery which came with the dramatic profession of evil, renounced, loudly, for a holy cause.

I have had the scales fall from my eyes in the last week. All of these years I have thought that the world was a cold, cruel place which didn't care about me or my ideas, and that it was up to me to fit in the world and to make sense of it. But I was wrong. I see that all I have to do is insist on my Ideas and Authority to make it all better. Better insofar as I am concerned and that's all that counts.

Islamists hate us and want to die to kill us. Well, before I would have worried. But now, by my Ideas and Authority, I decree that we shall all hug an Imam and all will be right and we'll meet for a macchiato at Starbucks. And if I'm lucky, using my Ideas and Authority, they won't cut my head off.

Gas prices are high, but I don't want drilling in my back yard, or windmills where I can see them, and the caribou don't really like the warmth of the pipelines that they cluster around in Alaska but by my Ideas and Authority I shall decree that gas prices...just...drop. And that no exploration for energy be done. But that the prices...just...drop. By my Ideas and Authority.

I don't like having to live on my income; it vexes me and I have so many good ideas on how to spend money, and whose money it is doesn't matter. By my Ideas and Authority I shall spend all the money that I want, and since it's OPM that's all right, and if they don't like it, that's even better because it's arising out of my Ideas and Authority and I like it when people are displeased by my Ideas and Authority.

And what about those times that I itch in the nether regions? By my Ideas and Authority I shall have complete suasion over any gym of my choosing. By my Ideas and Authority no one that I want to have suasion over will object, even if that person can bench press #250. Because by my Ideas and Authority I will bench press a hundredweight more.

Why stop there? I really want to be able to eat a half gallon if chocolate mint ice cream a day without straining elevators. And so I shall because by my Ideas and Authority I decree that I can eat what I want without getting fat.

This is great. Beats the hell out of working, thinking, being responsible or adult. Why, oh why, did I ever try to responsible when all I had to do was pitch a fit? And this way I don't have to be more than the sum of my resentments.