The title is defined as an uncanny feeling which one experiences in watching or being part of a scene that seems to be a replica (sometimes distorted or minimally modified) of an event that one has witnessed or been part of before in the past. While it may occur without any specific etiology or disease, it is characteristic of temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsy and often associated with epiphanies and extreme religiosity. An electroencephalogram is a useful test to diagnose it.

Last night, I had a series of dreams and since I am a believer in Fraud (Freud) and its banality and misguided enough to believe that public confession absolves one of sin and responsibility (like Tim Geithner), I am writing this article. It all began because I have been debating the legality and morality of the drone killing of Awlaki and Khan, two US citizens who preached Jihad against us and our USA, in sermons and slick magazines but not by fighting or killings. The legal and moral quandaries arose because they were US citizens and not involved in clandestine or overt spying or revealing the secret identity of our secret operatives, which is a prerogative of only our elected vice president or assassinating foreign leaders and foreigners on foreign soils, a right only granted to our elected president. Us common people are only allowed to kill combatants, and only on foreign soil and only chosen air-forces can bomb our ships and kill our sailors with impunity, if they subsequently apologize for their premeditated mistake and offer compensation.

Thus while I was asleep, US citizens lost their right to free speech and cannot always exercise their first amendment to the Bill Of Rights of the US Constitution, and can be subject to capital punishment without indictment, trial or conviction by a US court of law and without public disclosure of culpable evidence. Henceforth, the US will elect an executive by national elections via an electoral college and such executive will hold the title of Terminator, instead of president and subject to a limit of two terms in that position and be above and exempt from all US laws.

That part of the dream or nightmare bothered me quite a bit more than most citizens, but the rest was even worse. I felt that I was present right at the earlier history of humanity. I saw this Jewish man of Jewish faith, advocating reform of the day to day operations of the Jewish temple and religion and criticizing its leaders and even an occupying foreign government. He was being dragged through the streets, deprived of food and clothing and subjected to enhanced interrogation. They drove nails through his hands and feet but there was no immediate serious organ damage or failure so it wasn’t torture and it was before they wrote the Geneva conventions. Some expert wanted to try water boarding, or as some John or You would call it - enhanced baptism, but instead some Dick said, “By George, I’ve got it. Let’s put some thorns on his head and hang him up nailed to the cross with minimal clothing and out in the open”. Anyway, this guy died like many in Bagram and Guantanomo, and some intelligence pilot operative said, “Well, we’ve silenced the prophet and his propaganda and broken the back of these insurgent Christians”.

The next scene of my dream I saw the ancient serpent called the Lernean Hydra. It had thousands of heads and it was trying to devour an aging maiden well past her prime dressed in star spangled cloth. With a sound of reverberating trumpets, St. George on his elephant (Republican) charged to the rescue with his mahout Tony (New Labor) in the front and Dick Lone Cheney, his Dung collector and a man of thousand faces, skulking behind. George yelled curses and threats, but on seeing the dragon, he went AWOL and ordered his troops to commit harakiri. The battle went on ceaselessly and a new champion came on the scene wearing Harvard crimson. He rode a donkey (Democrat) and this son of Poseidon and the mortal Alcmene was named Hercules Hussein. Because he was the son of Poseidon and not Zeus, like the chosen Hercules, he did not know which of the Hydra’s heads was truly immortal. Thus every time he cut off one of the hydra’s heads, two more grew to replace it.

In the next cycle of REM sleep in that same night, I saw a man riding a flying donkey in the sky and looking triumphant as he carried the head of a Gorgon called Osama (Medusa). He was the son of Hades, king of the underworld and the mortal Dana. His name was Perseus Hussein and he thought that by cutting off the head of the Medusa, he had reassured his reelection as Terminator. As he rode his flying donkey high up in the sky, he did not notice the trailing drops of blood which fell continuously on the soil of the Middle East over which he flew on his prematurely triumphant journey. For every drop of blood generated a new gorgon to terrorize America in the future. And even as he flew over the native soil of his own America, a falling drop of blood on the ground sprouted a Teapartier (a stunted growth product of a mutated Republican embryo). If the drop of blood fell on a Democrat or an Independent, it changed him or her into a stone statue, and thus unable to vote.

The dream continued and I saw a chap looking like an early Plantagenet, maybe Henry the Second. The difference was that instead of a reddish freckled complexion and a round head, he had a darker one and an oblong head and his name was Henry Hussein. He set out not sixteen constitutions aimed at decreasing interference from Rome, but twelve conflicts ranging from Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen, aimed at increasing his temporal power and promote conflict with Islam. He was annoyed at Thomas Becket (once a friend), Archbishop of Canterbury, and spoke, "What miserable DRONES and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!", or as translated in colloquial American, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" and thus the Terminator Pharaoh’s will was written and done.

Then I woke up and mulled over my dream or nightmare, because assassinations do not silence ideas and movements. And especially not when there are in this world, millions of emotionally charged, intellectually deprived, religiously devoted, blissfully ignorant, temperamentally gullible, fanatically vengeful and unforgettably wronged, but well acquainted with their own histories and still experiencing its fallout (unlike Americans). It is these repeated feelings of deja vu or repeating events in life, which convinced me to get an EEG to rule out my having epilepsy (recurrent seizures of the psycho-motor type). Perhaps, if my taking medications will cure the national malady then I will proudly say,”I regret that I have but one medicine to take for the good of my nation”.

PS. Don’t worry readers, I have Medicare Part D and am partial to donuts and an expert in negotiating torus topology with my bare teeth.