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8.31.04 Republicans on Valium, or Something

Who are these people, this Republican sect of the Americanist religion? They have gathered in liberal New York City, days before the 9.11.01 anniversary, to pay homage to W's one fine moment. Like the Shiite militia in Najaf, they hunker down in their sacred place. The world is against them, but they turn inward. ("Protesters? What protesters?")

Like a group of mullahs who have fasted too long on their way to Mecca, they chant on and on their devotion, not to Allah, but to their grand ayatollah.

There is a legend that, in the late 18th century, the ambitious Russian official Potemkin built fake villages in Crimea and Ukraine to impress his boss and lover Catherine the Great that the "new Russia" was thriving under his leadership.

And so it is that the flailing Republican leadership has built a Potemkin village -- a bubble of unity and diversity, where they bob their heads and drone on about how little W is keeping us safe from Satan. ("Protesters? What protesters?") Meanwhile, the neocons are plotting the invasion of Iran and the dismantling of Social Security. The economy limps along. Osama bin Laden runs free. And our natural resources are being sold off to the highest campaign contributers.

What vision does McCain have that he puts up with such humiliation? (See the Bush ad where W kisses him on his bald head.) Is this what being "independent" means? What kind of mood-altering drug is he taking?

We all know Giulliani is probably more ambitious than independent. Now that he and W are 9/11 "war" buddies, he undoubtedly has his eye on the Attorney General job. But he perverted his meticulous prosecutor's reasoning by linking the horror of 9/11 with the defeat of Saddam Hussein.

Potemkin village. Pod people. Does it make a difference? People's whose minds are conditioned to think infomercials are documentaries and reality TV is about, well, reality are not going to think there is anything odd going on.

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