After avoiding it, I saw a copy of the livestream from the recent self-immolation protest at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. I have seen some of this before -- Tibetan monks from long ago -- this being the reason I avoided it.

For those who have not seen or heard, a United States Air Force airman, in full uniform, covered himself in a flammable liquid and lit himself on fire. It took him some time to strike the flame, and in this and the subsequent horror, I fail as I try to understand him.

He was a human being (he has died of his injuries), and it seems right to me to try to understand what madness would lead him to overcome the paralyzing anxiety of striking a lighter while covered in fuel? It is a simple act to use a lighter yet he noticeably fumbles, rather a lot.

For whatever delusion led him to such a thing, my heart still breaks for a man. He shouts his slogans while the flames eat his face. I have been burnt, I have accidentally inhaled hot exhaust -- but to be engulfed? I know little of his politics (apparently rather extreme) and I am horrified by his insanity, but he was still a human. This is a horrific fate I would not inflict on my most bitter enemies.

If this appalling vision were not enough as his uniform melted and the fire finally made him fall, a Secret Service agent decided that the most appropriate response to a man engulfed in flame was to hold him at gunpoint. Seriously.

Other officers appear with tiny extinguishers and do a frenzied and rather poor job of a reasonable response (though I understand, as they were all in shock), but this absolute lunatic agent kept his pistol pointed at the immobile smoldering man -- only moving it when other responders interrupted his line of fire. What on earth did this psychopath think a gun was going to do?

I have read some excuses for the Secret Service man, all of them absurd. I have read some ridicule of the airman, all of them are sociopathic. My concern is not for the geopolitical issue to which this is attached.

It is the most horrific and most appropriate tableau of today's America that I have ever seen. One man is so eaten alive by ideological programming and flatly satanic mind-viruses that he overrides the involuntary and reflexive instinct towards self-preservation in an extreme way. Federal authority responds in the most thoughtlessly stupid, useless, and inappropriate show of force to, at best, do nothing to improve the situation.

Whether an Amish man is SWATted over milk; the White House claims there is 'no suspect' for cocaine in the most surveilled building on the planet; a school board claims 'inappropriate language' as it is quoted from their own homosexual book at a protest meeting; anal sex in the Senate chamber; or any other individual anecdote of our absurd reality, it all strikes me as within this singularly haunting incident.

Our people become increasingly absurd, and it seems the authorities can do nothing but make it worse. I am at a los to describe this contrasting madness -- because it is certain, they both are insane.

Spencer D. "I normally wear pants" Miles; Emeritus Guy, Super Important Director of Things and Stuff, FAS, MDBS, FPDHA (hons), Hominus notimportantus atallii

Image: Krokodyl