Metaphysical treason
By Michael Moriarty
web posted June 6, 2005
Having announced my intention to run for the Presidency of the United States in 2008, I'm obliged, in light of that commitment, to explain, at great length, just why I feel obliged to enter that race. The subsequent editorials, under the general heading of Metaphysical Treason, will explain in great detail, and under the general category of this title, just why I really have no alternative but to seek the title I must carry in order to help lead the United States out of the quagmire she finds herself in, the, yes, metaphysical treason that has invaded all spectrums of the American political, social and financial rainbow.
Metaphysics
The Random House College Dictionary, one of those necessities for the English-speaking world most easily available to the rainbow, middle-class, American family that I intend to personally represent, defines the word, metaphysics, as "the branch of philosophy that treats of first principles or the ultimate nature of existence, reality, and experience."
"Reality," a very seminal word in my presentation and the mustard seed, the spawning word of my third political party the Realists 2008. Reality should be translated by the Judeo-Christian audience as my synonym for God. In the last, most revealing political debate over abortion, that between Alan Keyes and now Senator Barack Obama for an Illinois Congressional seat, God or moral precepts or anything hinting at the Judeo-Christian civilization was easily used as a weapon against the unfortunately overly Puritanical Mr. Keyes. Senator Obama didn't bury him. An antiquated vision of the American Christ put Mr. Keyes last in the pack. In a nation where the "pursuit of happiness" is not only a right but an obligation, this albeit profoundly sincere Christian was drowned before our eyes and ears by his own anti-hedonism, or condemnation of pleasure-seeking. Lest I give the opposition the slightest window of opportunity to hoist me on the unfortunately exaggerated stoicism of sincerely spiritual men and women, I have settled upon Reality as the most massively gifted Roadrunner which the Wiley Coyotes of a benighted two-party system will ever face.
The Eternal Return
Milan Kundera, the extraordinary Czech writer and Free World prophet, examines, in his The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the "eternal return." Reality has a way of circling us in an eternal return. It tells a story, of course, but the particulars of which, the fundamental principles of the tale are the same. His book is a tragedy. The hero and heroine die unpredictably in an automobile accident. That Lady Di and her shockingly abrupt death by car crash come immediately to mind is only a small example of Mr. Kundera's prescience, his ability to sense the future.
Another prophet, of an entirely different kind, Bob Dylan, declared in the Sixties that something was "blowin' in the wind." He knew exactly what it was, quickly assimilated the names of all the major "jockeys," so to speak, hopped on the Beast himself and, like Marlon Brando, mumbled his way to millions. In the late Nineties the singer said unequivocally that anyone who hasn't made a mark or written his signature on history before the end of the Twentieth Century will be shut out to eternity.
Hmmmmm…………..that's quite a claim. It's as thunderous a pronouncement as Charles de Gaulle's "après moi le deluge." The giant Frenchman's prediction came true. France was, indeed, drowned in a flood of communism that now holds the Gallic race in its metaphysical tentacles. Metaphysical, in this context, describes, well, an eternal or would-be eternal "reality" or principle of existence. That is exactly what Bob Dylan meant by what is "blowin' in the wind." Should this "return" prove "eternal," he will, indeed, be proven right. It is the ultimate aim of the New World Order dreamers to insure that future history will be entirely "post-modern." If it is, then, as Francis Fukuyama predicted in The End of History, all previous heroes and heroines of Greco-Latin, Judeo-Christian Civilization will, at best, be remembered with the quaint nostalgia we recall Paul Bunyon or Ichabod Crane.
Well, gee, I became famous with Law & Order and, so, gosh, I may make it into post-modern history as a footnote. Okay. Having been so shut out of Soviet Hollywood, I can certainly endure more of the same. I have, actually, never been happier than in my quasi-reclusive ness up here in Canada as a television has-been. That's only one reason that, while running for President, I can't lose. It's a totally "win" situation and, should miracles occur like Ronald Reagan's lowering the Berlin Wall without firing a shot, and I enter the Oval Office for at least four years, it's a, well, a win-win.
Don't Die on Third
My grandfather, George Moriarty, was quite a third basemen for the Detroit Tigers. He was also one of the American League's best base runners. A very popular sports columnist, years ago of course, described my grandfather stealing home base and winning the game. He titled the article "Don't Die on Third." It was a chestnut oldie but goodie in high school speech contests.
I feel just like I'm on the third base of my life, staring down the last third of my time on earth. I could, quite happily, continue my life in semi-retirement, working occasionally for film in both Vancouver and Europe but, gee, the twenty-eight more years I know will be mine are a long time just sitting around film sets and Italian piazzas reminiscing. The White House would be a helluva home base, you know. Not to mention the dream of taking the American majority – no longer entirely moral because of the sexual revolution on that miraculous internet – of guiding the American, Rainbow, Middle-class Family to a Reality which our Founding Fathers made quite clear, so translucent it is "self-evident."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men are created equal, endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
I think, with that alone, I can make the bi-partisan opposition very nervous as I take long leads off of third base. The Democratic pitchers and my highly questionable Republican fellow team-member batters will, well, just have to get out of the way as I confuse them with the obvious, the "self-evident," the "no-brainers" they spent thousand of hours and dollars in the Ivy League to forget.
I'm an Ivy Leaguer from Dartmouth, the "Animal House" as the National Lampoon called it. My President at the time was James Dickey and he loved putting down Harvard. As for Yale, George Bush Sr.'s alma mater, well, George Sr.'s fellow graduate from Yale, William Buckley Jr., sounds like he walked Massachusetts' Harvard Yard more often than he perambulated Connecticut's very Yankee environs. Oh, Mr. Buckley is conservative, alright, but his perambulations, his thousand dollar words and profoundly enervated delivery, gushing so laboriously out of the longest breaths a television talk-show host has ever taken, they've said the right things but took at least ten more words than necessary to say them.
I can gush with the best of them, of course, just read my other editorials. However, I will prove the Democratic Party's victory of style over content as empty an achievement as any right-wing talk-show host's refusal to get their hands dirty, their obsession with remaining sophomoric, side-walk supervisors. I am grateful, however, for a few of their well-aimed titles such as Jesse "Rent-a-riot" Jackson. That was one of Mr. Rush Limbaugh's cleanest hits. It will put a number of the right team members on second base.
Of course, I wait eagerly on Third. Until the other two parties pick their pitcher and next batter, I'm simply doing what my grandfather did: "layin' eyyyyessss" on the other players, "keepin' a book" on them, as Henry Wiggins of Bang the Drum Slowly advised Robert de Niro to do.
This is fun, collecting memories and images from a forty year, fairly successful career in film, stage and television. These are snapshots of my life that many North Americans have already seen, you know. The government might demand that all my reruns be taken off of television in the name of "equal time," but by then my residuals will be smaller than the fifty-one cent checks I'm getting now. My running for the Presidency will give a lot of free time to a few Hollywood accountants. See how I'm already helping the economy?
This particular editorial is wandering off into the portion of my life most people are generally more interested in. I know I'll be obliged to go there in the next few years of campaigning but I will, as you might notice in my next editorial, bring the subject back to Metaphysical Treason and why both political parties, ever since Henry Kissinger convinced Richard Nixon that the American fight against socialism is a lost cause, are guilty of utterly disregarding the Declaration of Independence. 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who has appeared in the landmark television series Law and Order, the mini-series Taken, the TV-movie The 4400 and Hitler Meets Christ, a surreal tragicomedy based on the actor's controversial New York stage play.
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