There But for the Grace of God Scoot I...

Here's where we stand in our great nation today: if you question or criticize the government and its actions, you will be duly branded a traitor in virtually every public forum available to said government and its slave media. But if you actually do something treasonous—i.e., compromise national security by exposing the identity of one of your government's secret agents—you will be elevated and rewarded; and if some activist judge or an attorney we forgot to fire happens to catch you and prosecute you, no problem: you will escape the velvet chains of minimum security prison, thanks to the beatific hand of the Compassionate Conservative. Of course, it helps if Congress happens to be occupied with another vacation or else running for President.

Prime Minister Stoltenberg, I'm ready now—give me a call.
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On Keeping a Dead Body Upright

Before he ever told the first of his innumerable lies to the people of America and the world, George Bush had to lie to himself.

A lie--let alone a compulsive habit of lying--needs constant support, which comes from lavish expenditures of physical and mental energy. In short, a lie takes a lot out of you, because it demands unceasing attention. A friend of mine once told me, "lies have short little legs--they can't go very far on their own power."

So a lie must be dressed up, ornamented, disguised, and above all, carried. And an entire network of lies, such as the Rove machine has manufactured these past six years—that requires an unending and vigilant maintenance program of ever-increasing complexity. You need an entire department, a full arm of your bureaucratic machine, to uphold and coordinate your lies.

It is much like the effort involved in keeping a dead body upright. All the while, as you pour more and more energy into keeping the program of falsehood standing--as you sacrifice your life-force to the cultivation of the superficial--the core slowly and silently rots.

This is the course of inner death, the story of sacrifice, the discordant song of suicide.