The ancient bards tell us that "whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." Having exceeded this century's allotment for narcissism and fatal hubris, our third-millennial Sun King is now reaping the ironic and convulsive wrath of both man and nature. Having promised to slow the rising of the oceans and to begin healing the planet in June of 2008, Mr. Obama is learning the adamantine lesson that grandiosity, altruism, and rhetoric can carry a demi-god only so far, and that the three Fates alone decide where and when the political Ribbon of Life is to be severed. Like an aging Oedipus who cannot escape the prophesy of his own malevolent downfall, the lies of Benghazi and the ghostly shades of four innocent men are wraiths haunting his Oval Palace; and in the augury of tea leaves and entrails of poultry, the Fall of the House of Soetero has been long decided. Moreover, if adding insult to injury is not of itself sufficient, less than half a fortnight before his quadrennial affirmation before the Demos, the wrathful Poseidon is filling the streets of the City of Great Apples with the same briny sea that he boasted his powers would forestall.

Time either makes heroes or fools of us all, and the decline and fall of the fortunes of the insolent and the proud should be instructive to men who should solemnly affect the posture of grace and humility. For the impiety of having navigated our ship's compass bearing with the constellation of the sinister Crescent and Star while having offered our holy fire to false and venal gods, we duly witness with fear and trembling the tragic end of our Sun King. There is indeed a providential justice as the citizenry watch aghast as his smoldering vessel floats mournfully down the flooded streets of Manhattan, saluted only by those in the Tower of the aging and dour Grey Lady -- before proceeding west towards the fading and dreaded Isle of Dreamless Sleep and Failed Memory.