Comforting a Fellow Liberal On Saturday Morning

Liz - Being aware was insanity inducing back then.

I knew the war was bullsit. You knew the war was bullshit. Joe Biden knew the war was bullshit. Hillary Clinton knew. Everyone knew. And yet, it was as if every person with a glimmer of awareness in the country felt like they were the subject of some kind of sick psychological experiment.

We were being told that we needed to close our eyes tightly to see what they saw. We needed to demote reason and common sense as tools for interpreting the world and rely instead on fairy tales, magic dust and their gnostic interpretations of some ancient texts written in a long dead language.

Up was declared the new down.  Fear became the new courage, and we were all told to burnish our fear and keep it close. Because fear meant that you were vigilant and concerned about security. Patriotic.  A lack of fear made you suspect.

Fear so totally gripped some people that they were eager to close their eyes and yell out, “Yes, I see it! I see the magic yellow cake. I see the Iraqi people thanking us! It is beautiful.”

And they did see it. Because they needed to see it. Even today some people are as addicted to that fear as the most pitiful crack addict is addicted to crack. It has warped them. They are a new type of American creature; Homotimidus: Fearful Man.

And, perhaps, that was the most un-American part of the whole episode. How quickly we divested ourselves of the legendary courage of our pioneer forefather and mothers. How quick we were to spit on it and wipe our asses with that antique fabric that our less fearful grandparents carried with them to this new world.

Rick Jensen, Hannity, Limbaugh and people like them were village idiots elevated to lords of misrule. Only it was not a one day celebration of upsidedown perversion. It went on for years. It continues even today.

And so for 8 years a formerly fearless people have been turned into slaves of fear. Maybe this election means that we are finally striking off those chains.

I hope so.