No lie too lame

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out


All of what most of us say and do and believe has nothing to do with reason or even with facts. That anyone can, as many obviously do, blame the 2001 attack on Democrats as part of a belief system under which our country is divided by phallic metaphor between tough and wimpy, hard and soft, unbending and flaccid, is evident. The cornerstone, the unquestioned first principle is that Democrats are Liberals and liberals are defenseless and advocate defenselessness -- history and dictionary be damned.

Of course the attack was aided and the attackers abetted by the refusal of the Republican government to pay attention to warnings and the effective shutdown of anti-terrorism planning. Why it was the Democrats' fault that the airlines weren't forced to incorporate reinforced cabin doors, I don't know and why the myth persists that Democrats resisted counterattack I don't know either, other than to say this is a nation of insane people.

So why is it surprising that yet another insane billboard has cropped up in Florida, with yet another picture of those tired towers burning and the fully expected and indeed inevitable plea not to vote for Democrats. It wouldn't be surprising even had Bush admitted responsibility, admitted incompetence or even complicity. Democrats advocate defenselessness, unilateral disarmament, appeasement and general flaccidity and they would in the minds of the mindless even if they were all Goosestepping down Pennsylvania Avenue in black, shiny boots and even though the party supported Bush's programs in near unanimity. Belief is truth and truth is belief.

"Liberals get abjectly hysterical whenever the truth about them is pointed out,"

reads a comment at Republican website Lucienne.com. Hysteria of course is a familiar condition at such places; obsessively so, albeit mostly unnoticed except when projected onto others. The calm, dispassionate commentary by Republican agitators and polemicists, it's implied, should be an example to abjectly hysterical Liberal hotheads like -- well, like me. Of course the hysteria is theirs, the truth is not, and so it will remain until the inevitable collapse of the United States into an authoritarian, aggressive, nationalistic, xenophobic cauldron of irrational right wing idiot rage; flags flying, neon crosses ablaze and the twin towers forever smoking on billboards in the hot Florida night.

Burning