Elevated from comments.
Mash's excellent diary on KaganWorld and how it maps to RealityWorld opens with a reference to Shakespeare's Henry V. His reference is more ironic than he thinks it is.
In early 2001, I attended a sneak preview of the keynote presentation that Ken and Carol Adelman were preparing to give to the strategic military re-alignment conference that Rumsfeld had assembled to launch his jihad against the Pentagon under the new Bush Administration. David Gergen emceed the occasion. Gergen was positively giddy about the event, a rare opporunity for ordinary mortals such as ourselves to gain extraordinary insight into how history really happens - the deep thinking of People of Influence as their brilliant strategy is devised.
Adelman, it turns out, is a Shakespeare buff. I think you can already guess where this is going. Instead of a thoughtful, articulate, and coherent presentation of the world view of a man responsible for holding the fate of civilization in his hands under Reagan, a man considered one of the intellectual giants of the Republican vision for humanity, we were treated to a presentation of the new Bush regime as opera. Well, more precisely, as epic drama. Well, specifically, as the DVD of Kenneth Branagh playing Henry V, interspersed with rhetorical eloquence by Ken Adelman and his lovely and talented wife.
We thought it was a joke at first, but as the seconds melted into agonizing hours, it became terrifyingly apparent that these guys really believed that Bill (Shakepeare) and Ken (Branagh) were speaking divine truth, casting a shining beacon on The Way Forward for a lean and deadly new militarism that would decisively establish the power of American empire through pluck, firm ideological determination, and brilliant strategic maneuver, hurling aside the forces of doubt and darkness and leaving a world reborn in its wake.
It was truly creepy, and the first hint for those of us watching the spectacle unfold of the horror show that Commander Codpiece and his wastrel crew would soon become.