* and here's the ending of Drifty's bit on the cheney/hume interview:
"So for those of us with functional cerebral cortices that watched Cheney being interviewed by his own penis and wondered what possible purpose was being served – who was being swayed or fooled by this ridiculous fraud, the answer is...we’re asking the wrong question.I probably coulda said it better, but he has more time than i do...
The rank and file of the Modern GOP – people that have blindly stuck by the Bush Junta despite a daily avalanche of proof of their treachery and criminality that is simply breathtaking to behold – these are not people for whom facts and figures and causality and honor have any meaning.
These are not people of reason, but of ritual.
Sorta Obsessive Compulsive Christalopithecene, who don’t notice or care about the actual lies and treasons of their Dear Leader, but only freak out when the proper rituals are not followed to counter-hex those lies. It is very Old Testament and very schizophrenic, this idea that if you just follow the proper sacraments perfectly, and make the proper sacrifices just so, the High Priests of your Party and Faith will keep the raging Death God you've created out of your own nightmares at bay.
So, for example, part of that ritual is to “Bring out the Gimp”.
When polls show that 98% of African Americans loathe the GOP to the point they wouldn't scrape a Republican off their shoe and feed it to an alley rat…they trot out one of their “Fo’ Rent Two-Percent” hirelings like Ron Christie to spout Party Dogma as if that proves something.
When the GOP claws its way to power by gay-bashing but they have to pretend they didn’t…they trot out Andy Sullivan to show that their Klan is an Inclusive Klan.
When they need to lay on a light coating of “bi-partisan” shellac over the latest pile of dogshit they’re flogging as Kobe Beef Tenderloin Medallions…they trot out Kapo Joe Lieberman who will cheerfully sell out his own Party, anywhere, any time.
Which to an averagely bright eight-year-old would prove nothing except how desperate you are to cover the stink of the massive corpse in the middle of the room, and how pathetically you go about trying to do it with a doily and a schpritz of Lie-Sol.
But none of this has ever been about proof; it is entirely about ritual.
These are solemn rites performed for the Party Golem -- the Men of Mud with no thoughts but the thoughts they are told to think by the Dear Leader, hard-wired with the Prime Directive that Liberals are Always Wrong, Liberals are to Blame for Everything, and that the Dear Leader is a Plainspoken Man and a Per’fessed Christian and therefore is simply incapable of telling anything other than the Unvarnished Truth.
They are brought to a semblance of life by the stamp of hate and fear and greed that the Roves and Dobsons affix to their steeply-sloped foreheads. They are animated by Majyk Conjure Bile words by the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh; the demigods who casually burn yesterday's Scripted Verities, carefully inscribe on Hate Radio Parchment what their thralls are supposed to think today, and slip the new talking points into their mouths.
Their eyes flutter – the Party Golem – and they roar out into the streets to obediently scream today’s lies, which may or may not completely contradict what they were screaming the day before.
These people are not recruited for their critical thinking skills; they are useful only for their stupidity and meek submission to Conservative Authority. For the manipulable hellfest of bad religion and ugly ideology that packs their Creationist Bell Jar skulls. For the leering, jeering delight at that particular bloodthrill pleasure knucklewalkers get when they can pound the shit out of people who are better, smarter and more honorable than they will ever be.
But here's the catch: The rites must be observed.
And if the proper Kabuki is not performed with all deliberate speed, the rank-and-file will start rubbing their little, dry hind legs together and making little frightened chirping noises. Not out of any concern for the “truth” -- they don't "do" truth -- but out of a growing fear of being stranded out in the big, scary Liberal World with no one to tell them what slogans they’re supposed to shout.
So when the Vice President shoots a man in the face, and the story stinks on ice seven different ways, another meaningless bit of theater must be enacted: the “Candid TeeVee Conversation”.
The liar summons the fake press to “tell his story” with just enough truthiness to shut the drones up. A well-compensated peon asking his liege lord softball questions with no substantial follow-up of any kind on any matter.
Me, I have always found that lag time between Republican Lies and the reprogramming of the Republican Golem to be a useful barometer of just how much trouble the Administration is actually in at that moment, because you can always tell when something has gone horribly wrong with the slow and dirty job of reformatting the opinions of the Party Meat.
Since they are unwilling or incapable of thinking for themselves -- many believing free and independent thought to be, in fact, a Snare set by the Devil -- when a glitch pops up, they return to their default setting of running in tight, panicked verbal circles, mindlessly screaming Liberals are LiarsLiarsLiars until they are told what to think and say and feel and blame by an Authorized Party Technician.
Which, in this case meant that Deadeye Dick had to sit still and at least pretend he was fielding real questions from a real reporter long enough to satisfy the minimum needs of the ritual. So that tomorrow or next week when Scotty Dog is “peppered” with questions from thirty yards away, he can say, “The Vice President already covered that” a million times.
And it must be terribly frustrating for not-so-Heart-Healthy Dick not to be able to bust out and just say what is so clearly gnawing and stinking away at the inside of his skull like a rabid skunk.
That, “What I say and what I do is none of anyone’s fucking business. Not the Democrats, not the gibbering monkeymass ‘public’, not the tinned-eel sycophant ‘press’ and certainly not the Dimwit Dauphin.
"Look, I’m trying to get shit done here.
Shit you people are all too fucking stupid to comprehend, but lemme tell you, dismantling the entire United States government and replacing it with a Chief Executive Emperor right in front of your eyes is not a job for a pussy, so quit jiggling my elbow with your stupid questions and your mock surprise and STFU!"
But he must instead bite his tounge and fake contrition.
Because in the end, even the Dread Lord Cheney must bend a bloated knee to a slightly higher power: the empty rituals that keep the Obsessive Compulsive Christopaths from twitching out of control."
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