Tribulation Force,<\/em> pp. 356-362<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the questions any storyteller must answer before tackling an epic tale of global disaster is the matter of perspective and point of view: Big Picture or little picture? Will the focus be on the halls of power where the full scope of the problem is laid out in detail, or will the focus be on an average person struggling to cope despite a lack of information about what\u2019s really going on?<\/p>\n Any worldwide, massive disaster is bound to involve some response from The Powers That Be, and the storyteller can choose to include that response in the story directly or indirectly \u2014 the view from the commanding heights of the Oval Office or NORAD or Ottawa. (Well, OK, I actually can\u2019t think of any global disaster epic that included the role of decision-makers in Ottawa, but it stands to reason that when the aliens invade or the asteroid looms or the zombies arise, the prime minister of Canada would be compelled to spring into action too.) Or the storyteller can focus elsewhere, on how most people, the vast majority of us far-removed from the halls of power, would be reacting and responding. The storyteller might include only the sort of fragmentary information from TPTB that most of us are privy to through the newsmedia, or they could omit that perspective entirely.<\/p>\n For some examples of these different approaches consider two movies about the invasion of earth by hostile aliens \u2014 Steven Spielberg\u2019s War of the Worlds<\/em> and Roland Emmerich\u2019s Independence Day.<\/em> Spielberg\u2019s updated version of H.G. Wells\u2019 story is told almost exclusively through the eyes of average people suddenly confronted with extraordinary and inexplicable calamity. Emmerich, on the other hand, chose to make the president of the United States and his top generals central characters in his story, allowing the audience to witness strategic deliberations at the highest levels of power. Those opposite choices were determined largely by the different thematic concerns of the two films. Spielberg and Wells were concerned with the fragility and humility of the human condition and their alien invasion was an expression of that. Emmerich\u2019s main concern, on the other hand, was with the technical and logistical matter of an actual invasion by technologically superior hostile aliens. His aliens weren\u2019t a metaphor for anything, they were just aliens \u2014 a problem to be dealt with and nothing more. As a general rule, stories of apocalypse told from the Big Picture, halls-of-power perspective tend to be, like Independence Day,<\/em> primarily entertainments in which the global calamity exists mainly to give the heroes a really big obstacle to overcome. Apocalypse stories told from the little picture perspective tend to be mainly about something else \u2014 with the calamity, whatever its particulars, serving as a metaphor for some other aspect of the human predicament. (Think of Cormac McCarthy\u2019s The Road,<\/em> in which the reader never learns the nature of the calamity that struck, or even the names of the story\u2019s protagonists.)<\/p>\n The Left Behind series doesn\u2019t fit into either of those categories. It\u2019s calamities and apocalypseses (\u201cI suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse\u201d) aren\u2019t a metaphor for anything else \u2014 at least not in the authors\u2019 minds. But neither are they problems to be solved. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins don\u2019t regard their apocalypse as a problem at all, but as the inexorable and glorious fulfillment of a divine plan \u2014 cause for celebration and gratitude.<\/p>\n The authors\u2019 main thematic concern in these books is the fictional vindication of Tim LaHaye\u2019s Bible prophecies through the fictional depiction of those prophecies\u2019 fulfillment. That means their narrative needs, like Emmerich\u2019s, to provide as comprehensive a Big Picture as possible, supplying the protagonists and the reader with as much complete information as they can possibly cram in. The series is thus obliged to bring readers inside the halls of power, which is why most of this second book is preoccupied with the business of securing jobs for Buck and Rayford in which each will have constant, personal contact with the Antichrist.<\/p>\n But what about the president of the United States? That office doesn\u2019t figure much in LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins\u2019 story, as the so-called \u201cleader of the free world\u201d is no longer really a leader in a world that is no longer really free. But still, a comprehensive Big Picture has to provide some<\/em> accounting for the president\u2019s action or lack thereof in response to this story\u2019s series of global calamities.<\/p>\n Jenkins addresses that here, in the section of Tribulation Force<\/em> we are considering this week. He doesn\u2019t take us to the Oval Office or to the famed White House Situation Room, but to a nondescript hotel room in Jerusalem, where the American President Gerald Fitzhugh is staying before the Great-Tribulation-inaugurating treaty-signing, an event at which he will, apparently, be little more than a spectator.<\/p>\n Sitting there in the hotel, the sidelined and impotent Fitzhugh fumes about his suddenly marginal role in world events. He launches into a monologue expressing his frustration with this newfound powerlessness and irrelevance in the New World Order. We readers are privy to this scene because Fitzhugh decided he needed an audience before whom he could express his most private thoughts and fears, and because the president decided the most appropriate audience for such candid, unguarded statements would be a prominent member of the press:<\/p>\n Buck saw an American Secret Service agent making a beeline toward him. \u201cCameron Williams?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho\u2019s asking?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSecret Service, and you know it. Can I see some ID please?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been cleared a hundred times over.\u201d Buck reached for his credentials.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that.\u201d The agent peered at Buck\u2019s identification. \u201cFitz wants to see you, and I\u2019ve got to be sure I bring him the right guy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The agent leads Buck to where \u201cFitz\u201d is waiting, during which Jenkins makes a point of their ignoring the shouted questions from his ever-jealous colleagues in the press:<\/p>\n The agents didn\u2019t respond. The media were not their responsibility, except to keep them away when necessary. The agents knew better than the press secretary when the president would move from one location to another, but that was certainly nobody else\u2019s business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s right \u2014 the Secret Service has two and only two responsibilities: keeping the president safe, and going on errands to fetch reporters he might want to chat with in private.<\/p>\n The GIRAT, of course, has a personal history with the president, and as Buck heads for this unexpected meeting, he reflects on the man who was, Buck thinks:<\/p>\n \u2026 a younger version of Lyndon Johnson. Fitzhugh had been just 52 when elected the first time and was now pushing 59. He was robust and youthful, an exuberant, earthy man. He used profanity liberally, and though Buck had never been in his presence when Fitz was angry, his outbursts were legendary among staffers.<\/p>\n Buck\u2019s lack of exposure to the presidential temper ended that Monday morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n During his penultimate year in office, Lyndon Johnson was 60 years old. Fitzhugh, by contrast, is only \u201cpushing 59.\u201d So picture this younger version as something like 13 or 14 months<\/em> younger.<\/p>\n Note that we\u2019ve also just been given an important clue as to the unfolding of Bible prophecy. The Rapture will come the year before an election year. That\u2019s unnerving, since 2011 is the year before an election year \u2014 maybe Harold Camping is right about May 21 after all? But at least we know that if the real, true Christians haven\u2019t all disintegrated by January, we\u2019re good for another three years worry-free.<\/p>\n As Buck heads through the group of reporters outside the president\u2019s hotel suite, Jenkins indulges the opportunity to remind us again how all the other reporters are all, like, super-jealous of him because he\u2019s always, like, scooping them and everything:<\/p>\n \u2026 members of the press corps expressed their displeasure with Buck\u2019s easy access.<\/p>\n \u201cHow does he do<\/em> that?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt never fails!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Much more like that, all based, no doubt, on the whispered jealousies Jenkins himself hears whenever he passes a group of less-successful novelists.<\/p>\n Buck is ushered in to the president who tells him to have a seat, then suddenly seems to realize how strange it is to have invited a reporter in to listen as he unburdens himself of all the thoughts he wants to keep hidden from the public. \u201cFirst off, this is totally off the record, all right?\u201d Fitzhugh says, and another page of dialogue is spent in a discussion of the rules governing off-the-record statements. It\u2019s one of those awkward scenes in which both characters already know everything that is being said, but the authors fear the reader might not, so they force the characters to say things like \u201cTechnically, you can\u2019t say something\u2019s off the record after the fact. Only before you say it.\u201d<\/p>\n Once they get all that out of the way, Fitzhugh starts in on what\u2019s really on his mind, telling Buck he\u2019s \u201cgetting pretty steamed\u201d by Nicolae Carpathia:<\/p>\n \u201cBut he\u2019s the most popular guy in the world since Jesus himself, so who am I to squawk?\u201d<\/p>\n Buck was staggered by the truth of that statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, I guess Nicolae is probably the third most popular person in the history of the world, ranking behind only \u201cJesus himself\u201d and, you know, Barabbas. At first, Fitz\u2019s complaint seems to be that Nicolae is even more popular than he is:<\/p>\n \u201cI invited him to the White House. He spoke to the joint session. I like his ideas. I wasn\u2019t a pacifist until I heard him talk about it, and by George I think he can pull this off. But the polls say he would double me in a run for the presidency right now!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n By George, Fitzhugh does<\/em> use a lot of profanity, but I suppose it\u2019s called for if \u2014 Great Scott!<\/em> \u2014 you\u2019re being outpolled by the foreign-born president of Romania.<\/p>\n Fitzhugh seems only dimly aware the Nicolae has already established \u2014 if not quite announced \u2014 his one-world government. That seems an odd thing for the president not to have noticed. As the now only nominal head of America\u2019s military forces he has the massive logistical task of destroying 90 percent of his nation\u2019s arms and armaments while ceding the remainder to the new regime in New Babylon. That task would seem so huge as to be all-consuming, and at some point in working to carry it out one would think it would have occurred to Fitz that passing off the right to a monopoly on the use of force was tantamount to passing off national sovereignty. You\u2019d think he\u2019d have noticed, in other words, that handing over the title of commander in chief entailed handing over the title of commander in chief.<\/p>\n But mainly Fitzhugh just seems upset about the airplane:<\/p>\n \u201cHe weasels me out of Air Force One, and now have you seen the thing? He\u2019s got Global Community One painted on it and is issuing a statement this afternoon thanking the citizens of the United States for giving it to him. I\u2019ve got a mind to call him a liar to his face and try to turn some of his good press around.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The president shares the obsessive interest that Rayford and CNN and the rest of the LB-verse has with this particular airplane, but like all the rest of them he seems to overlook the fact that \u201cAir Force<\/em> One\u201d is an Air Force plane \u2014 and therefore, despite his protestations that Nicolae has stolen it unfairly, he\u2019d already agreed to either destroy it or to hand it over to New Babylon.<\/p>\n Nicolae\u2019s devious stealing of this plane that had already been ceded to him makes Fitzhugh so angry that:<\/p>\n He swore. And then he swore again. Soon he was lacing every sentence with profanity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n By George, this is getting serious!<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, it\u2019s one thing for the United States to model leadership to the world, but what we look like now is one of his puppets. I\u2019m a strong guy, a strong leader, decisive. And somehow he\u2019s succeeded in making me look like his sycophant. \u2026 Do you know the trouble we\u2019ve got with the militia?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can only imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll tell you, they\u2019ve got a point, and I can\u2019t argue with them! Our intelligence is telling us they\u2019re starting to hoard and hide some major weaponry, because they\u2019re so against my plan to join this destroy-90-and-give-10-to-the-U.N. or Global Community or whatever he\u2019s calling it this week. I\u2019d like to believe his motives are pure and that this is the last step toward true peace, but it\u2019s the little things that make me wonder. Like the airplane deal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Clearly, if Fitzhugh is going to go through with his plan for total disarmament, he\u2019s going to have to contend with this threat from the heroic militias by destroying 90 percent of his weaponry and ceding the other 10 percent to the Global Community as quickly as possible. That way, Nicolae will able to respond more quickly to Fitzhugh\u2019s request for international police to arrive bearing some of those arms and deal with the militias. Or something.<\/p>\n This heroic portrayal of America\u2019s right-wing militia movement continues throughout the series. They are shown to be pretty much the only group or faction to resist the schemes of the Antichrist. The impression one gets is that the authors admire<\/em> them, regarding them as true champions of freedom rather than, well, a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorists and white supremacists who have abandoned reality for a live-action role playing game in which they\u2019re all Mel Gibson in The Patriot<\/em> (or Mel Gibson at a traffic stop \u2014 all the same to them).<\/p>\n LaHaye and Jenkins are never really critical of these right-wing militia groups, treating them as a potential constituency that they do not wish to offend. L&J seem to regard these groups as, if not quite brothers, close cousins. (After all, you can\u2019t spell \u201cChristian Identity\u201d without \u201cChristian,\u201d right?) The authors seem certain that the message of their books is one that would resonate with the militia groups. I suspect they\u2019re right about that.<\/p>\n Despite his characterizing \u201cthe airplane deal\u201d as a \u201clittle thing,\u201d Fitzhugh is clearly more upset about that than about his voluntary (and illegal, and impeachable and legally and logistically unenforceable) surrender of national sovereignty, because throughout the remaining pages of his long, one-sided conversation with Buck, he doesn\u2019t mention the disarmament scheme again, but he goes on and on about the airplane.<\/p>\n That subject provides Jenkins the opportunity to even the scales a bit. Having just spent half a page extolling Buck\u2019s praises as the greatest journalist in the world, he now has a chance to spend half a page praising Rayford as the world\u2019s bestest pilot:<\/p>\n \u201cWe got the new plane, we needed a new pilot. I don\u2019t care who flies the thing as long as he\u2019s qualified. We got a list from people we trust, but all of a sudden there\u2019s only one name on that list acceptable to the Grand Potentate of the World, and he\u2019s going to get the job. Now I should care even less, because I guess I\u2019ve given the plane and<\/em> the crew to Carpathia!\u201d And he swore some more.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, sir, I don\u2019t know what to tell you, but it is a pity you\u2019re not getting the services of the new pilot. I know him and he\u2019s tops.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tribulation Force, pp. 356-362 One of the questions any storyteller must answer before tackling an epic tale of global disaster is the matter of perspective and point of view: Big Picture or little picture? Will the focus be on the halls of power where the full scope of the problem is laid out in detail, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-left-behind","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\n