{"id":67791,"date":"2024-07-12T17:35:14","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T21:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=67791"},"modified":"2024-07-12T17:35:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T21:35:14","slug":"lbcf-get-in-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/","title":{"rendered":"LBCF: Get in line"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
(Originally posted December, 2004.)<\/em><\/p>\n
Left Behind,<\/i>\u00a0pg. 68<\/b><\/p>\n
It was nearly Buck Williams\u2019s turn at the head of the line at the Pan-Con Club counter \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Buck has clawed his way back to the terminal at O\u2019Hare and worked his way into a line at the counter.<\/p>\n
This doesn\u2019t really make sense \u2014 the airport is clearly closed, it\u2019s runways cluttered with burning wrecks and a still-unknown quantity of its staff vanished or dead.\u00a0All<\/i>\u00a0the airports are obviously closed. Faced with an unprecedented local disaster as well as a mysterious and unprecedented global disaster it hardly seems likely that a Pan-Continental Airlines customer service agent will be able to offer much assistance, so why wait in line to get to the counter?<\/p>\n
<\/a>Yet this irrational behavior on the part of Buck and the others in line is one of the first things in the book to ring somewhat true. This might actually happen. Faced with an overwhelming, incomprehensible situation and carnage on a massive scale he sees a line of people and a person in uniform with an official-looking badge of some sort at the head of the line. What are they in line for? Who knows? But surely all these people wouldn\u2019t be in line if it weren\u2019t for something important. And if he doesn\u2019t hurry up and grab a spot in line then others will just get there ahead of him.<\/p>\n
Buck thinks of himself as a man of action, and confronted with the situation before him he acts. He gets in line. Others, frantic, may still be wandering in a panicky daze \u2014\u00a0We have to do something!<\/i>\u00a0Buck\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0doing something. He\u2019s waiting in line.<\/p>\n
It never occurs to the authors, or to Buck, that he might be in any way obliged, as an able-bodied young man, to participate in the desperate rescue efforts going on all around him. On the other hand, back on pages 10-14, Buck Williams personally witnessed an all-out nuclear assault in which the entire Russian arsenal was spent but no one was killed or even injured. After seeing something like that, he may no longer be able to appreciate the significance of a mere few dozen jumbo jetliner crashes.<\/p>\n
During that nuclear assault, Buck had kept his wits about him enough to remember that he was a reporter. He observed and reported. But now his only journalistic instinct is to hurry back to the office, ignoring everything that\u2019s happening around him.<\/p>\n
Our hero journalist does not behave like either a hero or a journalist. Instead, a bit absurdly, he sets out to charter a private plane by getting into the very long line at the counter of an airline that does not provide such a service.<\/p>\n
The further I get in this book, the more Buck reminds me of Arthur Dent from Douglas Adams\u2019\u00a0Hitchhiker<\/i>\u00a0series. The main difference being that Arthur, at least,\u00a0realized<\/i>\u00a0that he was a confused and selfish man overwhelmed by the absurd events unfolding around him. And Buck, unlike Arthur, really\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0a jerk, a total kneebiter.<\/p>\n
Left Behind,<\/i>\u00a0pp. 68-71<\/b><\/p>\n
Buck Williams\u2019 role as a journalist provides a useful device for long stretches of exposition without departing from the protagonist\u2019s point of view (one of many tropes\u00a0borrowed from Sydney Watson\u2019s\u00a0earlier rapture novels).<\/p>\n
Jerry Jenkins\u2019 clumsy employment of this device often results in strange passages like this one, in which Buck reviews his notes from an interview with the Magical Jew, Chaim Rosenzweig, wherein the miracleworker discusses an obscure Romanian politician.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bit odd for Buck to be reviewing this particular section of this particular interview just now. He just received an e-mail from his boss telling him he\u2019s in charge of investigating and reporting on the worldwide mass disappearances. You and I might consider that to be his most urgent priority. The disappearances, after all, are a top candidate for Biggest News Story of All Time.<\/p>\n
But neither Buck nor his boss considers this the most important story. The editor is more worried about a pair of Jewish conferences gathering soon in New York City. (Jews in New York \u2014 now\u00a0that\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0news.) Steve Plank is convinced those wily Jews are Up To Something and\u00a0no<\/i>\u00a0story is more vital than prying into the secrets of their international conspiracies.<\/p>\n
(Inexplicably, the planning of these conferences isn\u2019t even slightly delayed by the mass disappearances and the resulting shutdown of air travel. Even as our hero goes to great lengths and great expense to charter a private plane to NYC, everyone else \u2014 Jewish nationalists, Romanian diplomats, members of the Parliament of World Religions \u2014 seems able to continue their travel plans to that city without interruption or delay.)<\/p>\n
Buck\u2019s own obsession is with the Romanian, mentioned briefly at the end of his boss\u2019s long rant about the Jews. This was the literary equivalent of Roger Ebert\u2019s \u201cUnmotivated Close-up\u201d rule, so Buck astutely realizes that any person thus singled out must be more significant than he at first seems.<\/p>\n
Add to this that the man\u2019s name is Nicolae Carpathia. It\u2019s almost impossible to read that without hearing a swell of ominous organ music on the soundtrack. (Frau \u2026 Blucher!<\/i>)<\/p>\n
Nicolae Carpathia\u00a0is, in fact, the Antichrist. This has been made explicitly obvious to the reader, but it\u2019s something that Buck could not yet have any way of knowing. Perhaps this shows his vaunted journalistic instincts at work. Others might see the vanishing of billions of people as the bigger story, but the rise of the Antichrist to worldwide dominion is just as newsworthy \u2014 and Buck is onto that story long before anyone else.<\/p>\n
By fortuitous coincidence, Buck had already learned a great deal about Carpathia. It turns out that in his interview with Rosenzweig, the doctor had gone off on a tangent about one of his hobbies. When he\u2019s not busy inventing\u00a0miracle formulas that make the deserts bloom, Rosenzweig apparently likes to study \u201cthe lower house of Romanian government.\u201d Who doesn\u2019t?<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t feel bad that you don\u2019t know\u201d such things, Rosenzweig tells Buck:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 even though you are an international journalist. This is something only Romanians and amateur political scientists like me know. That is something I like to study.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We\u2019ll get back to Carpathia and what Rosenzweig had to say about him soon, but I need to post this now so I can get back to one of my favorite hobbies. I like to read up on Estonian appellate courts.<\/p>\n
\n*
** NOTE: Linkrot killed the midi file of Bach\u2019s Toccata in Fugue that I included as a link on every mention of the name of Nicolae \u2026 Carpathia<\/em>. So no you\u2019ll just have to imagine ominous organ music playing every time the name is mentioned.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
** *“It never occurs to the authors, or to Buck, that he might be in any way obliged, as an able-bodied young man, to participate in the desperate rescue efforts going on all around him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":67431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLBCF: Get in line<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""It never occurs to the authors, or to Buck, that he might be in any way obliged, as an able-bodied young man, to participate in the desperate rescue efforts going on all around him."\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LBCF: Get in line\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""It never occurs to the authors, or to Buck, that he might be in any way obliged, as an able-bodied young man, to participate in the desperate rescue efforts going on all around him."\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-07-12T21:35:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2024\/06\/WWB-1.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"258\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"385\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/\",\"name\":\"LBCF: Get in line\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-07-12T21:35:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-07-12T21:35:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"\\\"It never occurs to the authors, or to Buck, that he might be in any way obliged, as an able-bodied young man, to participate in the desperate rescue efforts going on all around him.\\\"\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/07\/12\/lbcf-get-in-line\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"LBCF: Get in line\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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