Dick Cheney, ACLU Man of the Year
Dick Cheney gave us back our civil rights today. Thanks, Dick. The Vice President tells us that he does "not believe it is wrong to criticize the war on terror." Golly gee willikers, Sir. You mean that you DO affirm the principles of the Constitution? That's swell.
The noblesse oblige of the statement, the sense that we are being allowed the right to dissent by a belevolent leader, isn't even the most egregious thing about it. It's the continuing assertion that this is a "war on terror." Cheney is allowing us to criticize, but not to question what's really going on. If we do that, then we are cowards who are jeopardizing the morale of the troops.
This is a brilliant execution of the Straussian philosophy of obfuscation and a nice bit of sleight of hand. We watch the left hand giving us our civil liberites back (we were watching something else when these disappeared. Probably CSI Miami) while the right hand creates the illusion of a war on terror.
Cheney does skillfully what the President does clumsily. If you watch Bush closely enough you can see the strings. He doesn't fully understand the act. He's been well-coached by the Straussians, but he doesn't seem to know what he supposed to show the audience and when to use misdirection. He says things in public like: "in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
You can almost hear Karl Rove groaning. "No, George," he pleads. "Don't tell them how the trick is done. They like to think that the lady really got sawed in half."
And when Bush says that "any activity we conduct is within the law," he reveals what Cheney's misdirection is meant to conceal. It is the ultimate Straussian fantasy of kingship through deceit, legitimized by perverted Platonism.
At least when Louis 14 said "l'etat c'est moi," he wasn't trying to pretend differently. Thank god we have the President to reveal (to "slip" I should say) what's really going on in the White House.
The noblesse oblige of the statement, the sense that we are being allowed the right to dissent by a belevolent leader, isn't even the most egregious thing about it. It's the continuing assertion that this is a "war on terror." Cheney is allowing us to criticize, but not to question what's really going on. If we do that, then we are cowards who are jeopardizing the morale of the troops.
This is a brilliant execution of the Straussian philosophy of obfuscation and a nice bit of sleight of hand. We watch the left hand giving us our civil liberites back (we were watching something else when these disappeared. Probably CSI Miami) while the right hand creates the illusion of a war on terror.
Cheney does skillfully what the President does clumsily. If you watch Bush closely enough you can see the strings. He doesn't fully understand the act. He's been well-coached by the Straussians, but he doesn't seem to know what he supposed to show the audience and when to use misdirection. He says things in public like: "in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
You can almost hear Karl Rove groaning. "No, George," he pleads. "Don't tell them how the trick is done. They like to think that the lady really got sawed in half."
And when Bush says that "any activity we conduct is within the law," he reveals what Cheney's misdirection is meant to conceal. It is the ultimate Straussian fantasy of kingship through deceit, legitimized by perverted Platonism.
At least when Louis 14 said "l'etat c'est moi," he wasn't trying to pretend differently. Thank god we have the President to reveal (to "slip" I should say) what's really going on in the White House.
posted by Feemus at
2:28 PM
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