least two factionsa productive, isolationist sect of woman-worshipping pagans and atheists versus a brutal, interventionist patriarchic cult that worships the Hebrew and Christian god Yahweh.'
'That's a pretty baldfaced mixture of blasphemy and treason, you feeble-minded, Bible-burning Satanist!' The color of Lenny's face verged on ultraviolet. He turned to the audience. 'Do I throw this miserable sleazebag Antichrist out?'
'
' the studio thundered.
'You're getting close, gutterbrain,' he said to Tom. 'One more bit of sacrilege, and you're finished.'
Tom smiled, addressing the camera. 'Consider this. At the outset, this country's coinage depicted symbols of liberty-goddesses offering gifts of bounty, eagles flying majestically free, native Indians still noble and unbowed.' He put an ankle up on his knee and leaned comfortably back.
'Then in 1909, Victor Brenner designed the Lincoln cent. It was the first depiction on official U.S. coinage of a dead U.S. statist. It was a clear victory for the patriarchists, who'd had the generic term for a masculine deity on several coins for half a century-sometimes right next to Lady Liberty herself.' Russell looked straight at Lenny. 'I don't have to remind you that World War One began five years later, or that the United States was dragged in three years after that. Both five and three are numbers sacred to the Goddess.'
'You're not only a syphilitic little jerkoff,' Lenny shouted, 'you're a shitbrained
' He whipped his head about to stare into the camera. 'Do I throw this godless son of a bitch
'
'
' The audience was eating it up.
'I suppose this anti-American mystical babble will end with you describing how communism is a superior form of government because it's free of religious taint.'
Russell smiled that beautiful smile. 'Actually, Beaver, despite their professed and official atheism, the Communist bloc nations were seized and are still controlled by an ancient hierarchy of renegade druids. Holy men who betrayed their Goddess to seek power and conquest through magick.'
'Druids?' Lenny didn't even try to contain his shock. 'Tree-worshippers? A bunch of looney-toons with leaves in their hair in control of the most brutal and powerful nations on earth?'
Tom looked as pleased as a first year chemistry student showing off the smoking ruins of his lab.
'Look at the flag of the Soviet Union. The symbols are right there.'
'Beaver' Lenny buried his face in his hands, shaking his head from side to side.
'It consists of a golden sickle and hammer surmounted by a star, all on a field of red. The standard explanation of its proletarian, revolutionary derivation is nothing more than a smokescreen-much the same as the explanation of the Great Seal of the United States. There is a second, hidden derivation.'
Russell looked toward the camera and raised fingers to count his points.
'One-the golden sickle was used by druids to lop mistletoe off oak trees in a symbolic recreation of the castration of Cronos by his son Zeus. Mistletoe is a phallic symbol, so watch out next Christmas-or Yule. Two-the hammer is suggestively phallic and crossing the blade of the sickle as if about to be cut.'
He held up a third finger. 'Three-red is the druidic color of death and life; it is the color of the food offered up to the dead during Hallowmas. And four-above it all is the five-pointed star-the pentagram, symbol of the Goddess, whom they still feel required to acknowledge. It is the single universal symbol of all magic, good or evil. You see it on scores of flags, even that of the U.S. And by the way, Beaver-red, white, and blue are the traditional colors of the Triple Goddess.'
Before he could begin to use the fingers on his other hand, Lenny rose up to holler, 'Are you implying that the Cold War has been nothing but a power struggle between bricklayers and tree-trimmers?'
'Not at all.' Tom's smile remained just as broad. 'While there have been minor skirmishes in which the leaders of one God State threw their slaves into battle against the slaves of another God State,
