Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"I saw Satan laughing with delight,

the day, the music, died." Edition *

No, I did not watch Richard Bruce "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" Cheney on Luke Russert's Dad's Memorial Tree Fort today because there is no lead-infused nuclear blast goggles thick enough through which one can safely observe that rancid bag of flag-swaddled evil when his blood-drunk madness at full boil.

But the gist of it was, apparently, we want Dick Cheney on that wall.

We need Dick Cheney on that wall.

And Dick Cheney has neither the time nor the inclination to explain himself to you because:

Waterboarding is not torture.

And because:

[The Torture Report is] a cheap shot piece of political business that was not bipartisan nor was it involved any discussion of the people involved in the program.

And because:

I have little respect for the United Nations or for this individual who doesn't hear a clue and had absolutely no responsibility for safeguarding this nation and going after the bastards that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

And because:

There's no pardon needed. No crime was committed.

And because:

Saddam Hussein had previously had twice nuclear programs going. He produced and used weapons of mass destruction. And he had a ten-year relationship with Al Qaeda. All of things came into play... When it was time to get into the business of deciding the importance to go after Iraq, we did the right thing. I believe the it was, in fact, the right action then and I believe it now.

 Of course what should have happened, did not happen:

Because this isn't Hollywood.

This is the real world.

And here in this very real world -- in this country, at this time -- we give our monsters the run of the place. We let them have their own teevee networks, their own publishing houses and newspapers, their own churches, their own political party and to them is ceded around 70% of the on-camera real estate during what I took to calling The Mouse Circus 10 years ago when I started writing down what I was seeing on our national Sunday Morning Gasbag cavalcade.

The deal which Conservative struck with the devil long ago was really very simple; in exchange for giving their leaders money and power and unswerving fealty, the rank-and-file were forever relieved of the burden on admitting error of any kind, ever.  They would never have to suffer pangs of conscience...because their conscience would be methodically cauterized.  By excising their basic humanity, they would never again be forced to apologize or atone for a fucking thing...and and never, ever have to own up to the fact that Liberals have been right about their filthy "movement" all along.   in exchange for the right to never, ever admit they were wrong about anything,

And so, with the perfect totalitarian logic, we arrive now at that place where, in order to protect the Big Lie by which they live, Conservatives must now actively celebrate sadism and torture,  They must cheerfully dance around the rack and the gibbet as they were maypoles, and they'd fucking well better mean it or the magic will not work,

Conservatives have made themselves into the perfect, mindless tools for the annihilation of everything they pretend to hold dear, and they did it voluntarily, with their eyes wide open.  They did it without one of them ever being waterboarded a hundred times or twisted and manacled to a dungeon ceiling for days on end.  

In the other hand, I would be willing to bet real money that if Dick Cheney were suspended naked and freezing from the ceiling in shackles, forced to shit himself, repeatedly waterboarded and occasionally beaten with, oh, say, a claw hammer, eventually he would sign a piece of paper making a very sincere and detailed confession reversing everything he just said on Meet the Press and, if told to do so by his torturers, take the blame for the assassination of John Lennon and a head of state to be named later.

Because forcing someone to say exactly what you want them to say is the only function of torture.

After Cheney slouched off in the general direction of Bethlehem the studio crew Febreezed the worst of the sulfur and brimstone out of the air, one of the Bush Administration's most accomplished sociopath -- Dan "Baghdad Bob" Senor -- was invited on camera to prove to viewers once more time that, in D.C., there really are no professional consequences whatsoever for Conservatives liars.

And just like David Brooks, Mr. Senor squared his shoulders and bulldozed right past the mountains of inconvenient facts -- right past the simple, self-evident horror of what the Bush Administration had done -- so that he could quickly plop every Conservative talking point onto the table, 1...2...3...

See, The Torture Program was actually awesome!

DAN SENOR: Well, look, I think the actual program, the integrity of the program, the report does not actually produce anything that undermines it.

However, even though The Torture Program was awesome, talking about it gravely imperils ourbravefightingmenandwomen! (about whom Mr. Senor never gave a single shit while the Bush Administration was getting them slaughtered in their hundreds during Operation Enduring Clusterfuck):

DAN SENOR: It's one thing to release the report. It's another thing to release those graphic details, those very vivid descriptions which I do think will have implications for American fighting men and women overseas in the battlefield to provide that fodder for our enemies that, you know.

And in flawless unison with every other Bush Regime dead-ender from David Brooks to Gretchen Carlson...What About The Droooooones?

DAN SENOR: No, you know what we have been doing? We've been using drones to blow up terror operatives--and their families at picnics and weddings...

The Citibank Reacharound Act of 2014 got virtually no coverage, and what there was amounted to nothing more than another absurd round of the Beltway's favorite decadent parlor game:  False Equivalence.   In this week's episode, the Citibank Reacharound Act of 2014 was used as a vehicle to demonstrate that Elizabeth Warren is really pretty much just the Left's version of Ted Cruz:

After which everyone jumped into Mrs. Alan Greenspan's vintage 1931 Isotta Fraschini and drove down to the track, where they all took turns drinking champagne from the hollow place where Dan Senor's should should be, while betting other people's money on presidential horses which do not exist yet, in a race which will not be run for two years.

Over at Crooks and Liars, they have irrefutable evidence that still more monsters roam unfettered, the Earth and are still able to get in front of an audience of millions whenever they feel like it.

And everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Because best lack all conviction, while the worst are still full of passionate intensity.

Because there is still a Club.

And you and I are most definitely not in it.

*If this sounds familiar, it's because I actually appropriated Mr. McLean's entire song back in 2005.  Which, when I looked it up, reminded me, jeez, I've been at this a long time.