President Nelson Muntz sez...

"Stop torturing yourself! Stop torturing yourself!"

I heard this story once.

Or, maybe it was more of a metaphor. Actually it may have been some kind of street-allegory I overheard standing in a Shaktipat line with a friend of mine waiting to get walloped with a peacock feather. Which is a much longer story.

Anyway there’s this parable about the trader and the soldier. Longtime friends, each was a master in his chosen profession.

One day they were out at the bazaar and the trader found a vase of surpassing beauty, crafted with great skill. He smiled to his friend and said, “Let me show you how a professional bargains.”

He asked the shop owner, “How much?”

“1,000,” came the reply.

“That is an insult for which I should rip the living heart from your chest,” the trader snorted. “I offer you 300 for this shit bucket.”

“300!” the owner said. “I can hear you, but can no longer see you for an offer of 300 is venom spit straight into me eyes. And yet if I must use naught but my ears and nose, I shall still track you to the end of time and strike off your head for offering me any less that 900.”

“*900!?” the trader nearly fainted. “When you should be offering me 900 to haul away this rubbish, bury it and spare you the shame of the world knowing you had ever shown such trash as this in the window of your shop? Were I not robbed of my reason my staring too long at this repulsive thing I would not now offer 400. Take it quickly before I regain my good sense and smash it to atoms.”

“400?!”

Well, you get the point…except when the trader hit 500 he changed his tone. The owner rolled out his top shelf bluster, but at 500 the trader just said, very calmly, “I shall go no higher.”

And when the owner tried another tack, the trader turned to the soldier and said, “We’re leaving.”

And they walked out. They got halfway down the dusty street before they heard the shop owner shout out a VERY dirty word and say, “All right. All right. 500.”

Well the soldier was very impressed with this technique, and had seen a magnificent and cunningly crafted sword in that same store, and resolved to himself to go back the very next day and put into practice what his friend had shown him.

And so he did, and they danced the same quarreling dance of offer, aggrieved shock, affront and counter-offer as the owner and trader has danced the day before.

Then the soldier announced he was leaving and walked out. And walked. And walked. And peeked quickly over his shoulder. And strained his ears for the sound of the shop keeper chasing him down. And walked some more.

In fact he walked all the way across town to the home of the trader. His friend invited him in and the soldier sat and explained all, shaking his head in confusion.

“What happened?” he asked. “I followed your methods to the letter.”

“And…”

“And the shopkeeper never came after me.”

“Ah, the trader said, “let me explain.

“You understand the art of war, my friend, but I understand human nature. When I told the shopkeeper that I would pay no more than 500, I meant it sincerely. It is a striking piece, but when I saw it I decided that 500 was a fair price and that I would rather walk away from the deal than pay more than I felt it was worth.

“What did you make as your final offer to the shop keeper for the sword?”

“300.”

“Would you have paid more?”

The soldier nodded.

“And that, my friend,” the trader said, “is the difference. The shop keeper knew I would never have returned, and that my price was fair, so we struck a deal. But like me, the shop keeper is an expert in the art of human nature. He knows you will pay more, so he knows you will eventually come back and pay what he wants – perhaps even his original asking-price – and that all you have to do is wait.

“You must decide in your own heart what you are truly willing to pay, and then truly be willing to turn your back and walk away from it without regret if the price is just high.”

There may have been more, but at that point I got belted with a big-assed peacock plume, and lost the thread of it.

So what does that have to do with John McCain?

Everything.

Because McCain has no fixed ceiling on what he is willing to pay to be President…and, I would argue, on an almost metabolic level, on what he is willing to pay to stop the government from using torture as a tool of statecraft.

I don't pretend for a minute to understand what John McCain went through during his 5 ½ years in Hanoi but it’s safe to say it left the deepest possible mark on him that an experience can leave on a human. An episode that laid scar tissue down into the marrow. It....reformatted him into different kind of man.

He understands torture as well or better than any America. He understands that as an means of extracting information it is at best unreliable and, at worst, worse than useless.

But as an instrument of terror, it's very effective. You can make a man do anything, say anything, agree to anything if you know what he dreads. If you know what lurks behind the door of his personal Room 101 you can make him dance.

Well, for the porcine, young Yellow Elephants of the GOP, being made to walk their loose, brave wartalk is their greatest fear. They thought this war would be fought on the cheap and easy by the little people. And as long as the military was kept packed with disposable lower-caste members they were free to bloviate as loud and proud and arrogantly bumper-sticker-stupid as they liked...knowing they'de never have to actually pick up the tab.

For the Administration -- the People of the Lie -- they live in terror of the moral rot that has eaten out their hearts being dumped out on the sideway for all and sundry to stare at.

They live in a world where the resources of the most powerful nation on Earth have been bent and perverted to cover up their spiritual leprosy, and it is still not enough.

Even with a core of obsequi-bot followers who will believe any Jesus-flavored lie Dubya snowballs into their mouths, it is still not enough.

Even with a prostrate press, it is still not enough.

However high the wall around this Administration may be, however tightly tuckpointed the stones, the groundwater in every direction now stinks of their deathcult lies and madness. However tightly they squeeze, they can't control it and it scares the shit out of them.

And with John McCain, given his history, one might reasonably speculate that his exposed nerve is torture itself. Both on a personal and a patriotic level, what could be more horrifying to McCain than his government -- run by his Party -- not only engaging in torture, but first hearing the Republican President spit in his face and lie through his teeth about it,,,and then listen to his Republican Vice President kick him in his already bruised and shattered ribs by moving to sanctify and protect torture as a matter of national policy.

So one might ask why? Why does Cheney have such a fetish for protecting something as medieval and grotesque and anti-American as torture?

I mean other than the obvious fact that Dick Cheney is one evil motherfucker?

One possible answer might be that it gives them leverage over McCain. Remember these are people who looked at the blood and carnage and national trauma of 9/11 as a political opportunity. As a chance to put a hammerlock on the conscience of the nation, and twist and wrench our limbs with fear until we scream and writhe and the cartilage pops just to get what they want.

And what is the topic of torture but the rawest possible tissue McCain has?

And what is holding out the threat of vetoing his amendment to stop his government from torturing human beings but the Bush Administration pounding on his already crushed skull with a length of rebar?

For five years, George Bush has profligately shat all over John Mc Cain and everything he claimed to stand for, and yet they need him. Now that the noose is tightening and the issue has transcended the conduct of the war and become one of the personal credibility and integrity of the President, they need him to hide behind. He has been left free to nitpick and criticize the on-the-ground particulars, but the White House desperately needs McCain’s medals, biography and reputation to lay down suppressing fire long enough to get Bush safely away.

In other words, behind closed doors, I can easily imagine Cheney slapping McCain across the mouth, screaming…

“Say it, bitch!

Say ‘George Bush is a good and decent man!’ Say it or we’ll throw the whole Rove Machine behind Santorum. Say it or we’ll open a hundred Abu Ghraib and start feeding hajis through fucking meatgrinders!

And it’ll be your fault, McCain, because you could’ve stopped it. Right here, right now, you can stop it all.

You can ride into the White House on a white horse as the fucking savior of the Universe in ’08.

You can keep Blackwater from cutting the nuts and fingers off them little ay-rabs kids.

All you have to do is play ball for a coupla more years and you can have it all.

You can save the fucking world.

Just say, ‘George Bush is an honorable man.’”

And he will say it. Again and again. Because however much McCain is an expert at the art of war, no group specializes in and exploits the darkest side of human nature more deliberately and effectively than the monsters of the Bush White House.

They know when it comes to stopping torture and winning the Oval Office, there is no price so high that McCain won’t pay it. Which gives them leverage, and because they are men without morals, they have no qualms about leaning hard on that lever.

And so however badly they abuse him and everything he loves, he will always come back tomorrow on bended knee and pay whatever they ask