Simpering Hack

Earns his keep.

The Bush Presidency has failed.

The Iraqis Debacle froze it into an upright position in which it was paralyzed but could mimic a little life around the edges, and Katrina delivered the killing roundhouse. And for the next two years we will be dragged through the slowest series of Standing Eight Counts in modern political history.

And we are must endure this particular species of agony for no other reason than hateful people vote. Stupid people vote. Christopaths vote. Racists vote. The fearful vote. Cowards vote. Loonies vote.

And they all vote fucking Republican.

And astride that maggoty pile of failed humanity, feeding off of their radiant dumbassery by feeding them oily lies, are the Conservative Pundits. Living large because no matter how incompetent a writer or commentator you are -- no matter how many times your simpleminded, declarative sentences blow up in your moon face and Americans die -- there will always be lucrative coin to be made shoveling honeyed shit and howling mendacity into the furry ears of the pig people.

And no one does it in more modulated, pastel tones than David Brooks.

I would guess if you ask Bobo to describe the subtext of his latest embarrassment -- “Ends Without Means” -- he may very well say that it is taking Bush to task.

Mildly.

However if the pulp-slicer at the NYT were mis-calibrated even slightly, and the last two, short paragraphs were pared off, you may think that the column was a rave. A species of schoolgirlishly swooning creative typing where reportage on the Leader's pantherlike body language was apparently much more important than mentioning the fact that what he was saying was, uh, nuts.

And if the typesetter at the NYT were a little stoned and making a little merry, you could almost imagine, with some VERY light editing, that Bobo was interviewing another leader in an earlier age.

It might read a little like this --

…
A leader’s first job is to project authority, and Der Fuhrer certainly does that. In a 90-minute interview with a few columnists in the Cheneybunker on Tuesday, Der Fuhrer swallowed up the room, crouching forward to energetically make a point or spreading his arms wide to illustrate the scope of his ideas — always projecting confidence and intensity.

He opened the session by declaring, “Let me just first tell you that I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions,” and he grew more self-assured from there. I interview politicians for a living, and every time I brush against The Leader I’m reminded that this guy is different. There’s none of that hunger for approval that is common to the breed. This is the most inner-directed man on the globe.

The other striking feature of his conversation is that he possesses an unusual perception of time. Berlin, and modern life in general, encourages people to think in the short term. But Der Fuhrer, who stands aloof, thinks in long durations.

“I got into politics initially because I wanted to help change a culture,” he says, referring to his campaign against the instant gratifications of the 1920’s counterculture. And he sees his efforts today as a series of long, gradual cultural transformations. Like many executives, he believes that the higher you go, the further into the future you should see, and so his conversation is filled with speculations about the long-term effects of deep social trends — the current religious awakening or the politics of volunteer armies.

All of which prepares him to think about Der Totaler Krieg as a generations-long struggle. He asked us to think about what the world could look like 50 years from now, with Islamic radicals either controlling the world’s oil supply or not. “I firmly believe that some day Fuhrers of the Fatherland will be looking back at this period in time, saying, ‘Thank goodness they saw the vision,’ ” he said.

Sitting between busts of Bismarck and Nietzsche, he continued, “My hope is to leave behind something — foundations and institutions that will enable future Fuhrer to be able to more likely make the tough decisions that they’re going to have to make.”

“Ideological struggles take time,” he said, explaining the turmoil in Russia and elsewhere. He said the events of weeks or months were just a nanosecond compared with the long course of this conflict. He was passionate on the need for patience and steadfastness. He talked about “inviolate” principles written upon his heart: “People want you to change. It’s tactics that shift, but the strategic vision has not, and will not, shift.”

He was less personal and less assertive when talking about those tactical decisions made day to day.

We are now at a moment when many of the people who support his long-term goals, and who have stuck with him as the situation in Der Totaler Krieg has deteriorated, fear the war is irreparably lost. The general view among many National Socialists is that Der Fuhrer set out grand goals, but never committed resources commensurate with the task.

Der Fuhrer was pressed about troop levels on the Eastern Front repeatedly during our interview. His general response was that during WWI, tactical decisions were made in Berlin. “I thought it was a mistake then, and I think it’s a mistake now.”

So on troop levels and other tactical issues, Der Fuhrer defers to his Generals, who is in the field. He asks questions but does not contradict the experts. If his Generals asked for two more divisions tomorrow, Der Fuhrer would deliver, regardless of the political consequences.

But the Generals do not ask (and maybe none are available).

…

And the sad truth is, there has been a gap between Der Fuhrer's visions and the means his administration has devoted to realize them.
...

No, the sad truth is, Bush is a world-class coward and megalomaniac.

He had a big, simplistic, idiot “vision” for the world that was pre-cooked and spoon-fed to him by Cheney and Perle and the rest of the Neocon Thug Right, and a complete lack of conscience that lets him casually conclude that he above all other humans has the right to bomb and torture the broken world into a Jesucratic Utopia.

And if the world doesn’t appreciate an conform to his weaponized benevolence, and reacts against it? Well, he just needs to keep bombing until morale improves.

This is the behavior of a sociopath.

But because Bobo is a Conservative, and modern Conservatives are hardcore worshipers of Authoritarian Power and will always put their dogma ahead of their country or planet even unto death (your death), he simply finds it “assertive” and leaderly.

To be crystal clear, Bush is not Der Fuhrer, and never will be.

He is a spoiled, third-rate frat-rat and Bobo is his weedy propagandist. He is a punk, whose colossal stupidity and arrogance rams the entire globe, head-first and repeatedly, into one cinderblock wall after another, and who reacts in textbook dry-drunk fashion: Denial, lying, bullying, word-parsing, peevish rage, throwing underlings under the bus…followed by denial and we’re back to the top of the order again.

Bobo is talking to a failed leader who, to put it simply, has declared for three years that he will hammer ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag or kill us all trying. Who fires anyone who points out that what he wants to do is impossible, and is willing to slaughter an unlimited number of young America men and women in pursuit of his insane “vision”.

In a word, Bobo is talking to a nut, in the depths of his bunker, incapable of admitting error, raving about the purity of his vision and his own 1000 Year Mayberry Reich.

Which is a helluva story.

Too bad Bobo’s head is too far up the Dear Leader’s hindquarters to notice.