What is “Crazy?”
Some people are surprised that I don’t think Ahmanijad is crazy. What I do think is that he’s calculating, devious, underhanded, disloyal, and several other pejoratives.
If you want true “crazy,” then here’s a story from my own religion, Catholicism. Religion + Politics = The Suck.
“One thousand one hundred and four years ago a criminal trial took place in Italy, a trial so macabre, so gruesome, so frightful that it easily qualifies as the strangest and most terrible trial in human history. At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann’s The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), “subjected to the most barbarous violence.”
[bunch of papal history, and a brief bio of Formosa]
“On Stephen VII’s orders the putrescent corpse, which had been lying in its tomb for seven months, had been dressed in full pontifical vestments. The dead body was then propped up in a chair behind which stood a teenage deacon, quaking with fear, whose unenviable responsibility was to defend Formosus by speaking in his behalf. The presiding judge, Stephen VII, then read the three charges. Formosus was accused of (1) perjury, (2) coveting the papacy, and (3) violating church canons when he was elected pope.
The trial was completely dominated by Stephen VII, who overawed the assemblage with his frenzied tirades. While the frightened clergy silently watched in horror, Stephen VII screamed and raved, hurling insults at and mocking the rotting corpse. Occasionally, when the furious torrent of execrations and maledictions would die down momentarily, the deacon would stammer out a few words weakly denying the charges. When the grotesque farce concluded, Formosus was convicted on all counts by the court. The sentence imposed by Stephen VII was that all Formosus’s acts and ordinations as pope be invalidated, that the three fingers of Formosus’s right hand used to give papal blessings be hacked off, and that the body be stripped of its papal vestments, clad in the cheap garments of a lay person, and buried in a common grave. The sentence was rigorously executed. (The body was shortly exhumed and thrown into the Tiber, but a monk pulled it out of the river.)
Stephen VII’s fanatical hatred of Formosus, his eerie decision to convene the Cadaver Synod in the first place, his even eerier decision to have Formosus’ corpse brought into court, his maniacal conduct during the grisly proceeding, and his barbaric sentence that the corpse be abused and humiliated make it difficult to disagree with the historians who say that Stephen VII was stark, raving mad.”
December 16th, 2006 at 2:35 am
Very gruesome. These days I stopped believing that any of the cocktail of politicians across the world are crazy or stupid, there is always a very specific and very logical reason for any madness perpetuated, usually the reason includes enrichment for himself and his supporters or financiers. Unfortunately, the little guys get run over in the process.
December 16th, 2006 at 6:56 am
That’s freaky sh*t. Let’s face it… many politicians and religious figures simply crave power. No where so well demonstrated as in this strange tale. The really brilliant and wise minds seem to be off doing other things!
December 17th, 2006 at 8:00 am
No wonder Islam was having its Golden Age in those days (ca. 900 A.D.)… I think we should start a petition against this guy Stephen VII… and boycott any products produced in 10th Century Europe!