Bullshit Protector

A 73-year-old veteran of (probably) the Korean War sits listening to President Bush speak with clearly labeled "Bullshit Protector"(s) covering his ears.

The picture is courtesy of Atrios, via DailyKos.

Even the older vets as well as Gold Star mothers are abandoning ship. The "reality-based community" has returned with a vengeance, as the lost Iraq War overtakes and swamps the lies that spawned it.

Now, of course, there are some who will say all the bullshit about WMD's and the al-Qaida connection was not the same as lying, and there's a best-selling book out right now that sort of backs that up. Harry G. Frankfurt's little 67-page wonder, "On Bullshit," asserts that unlike a lie, which is a deliberate statement of untruth, bullshit "is produced without any concern for the truth." In other words, the bullshitter doesn't fail to tell the truth, because he doesn't even try.

I think it's an overly fine distinction, and it doesn't really matter to me that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice and the rest of the professional bullshitters sincerely believe in their version of "freedom" and "democracy." They're living in a dream world, or to put it another way, their lives are bullshit.

I'm awed by the need of these people to construct their own little world. It persists in spite of every fact you can throw at it, and every dose of reality provided by the combat in Iraq. Argument is futile.

The administration clings to its bullshit, based on unexamined premises and unacknowledged consequences, as if it was a life raft. And it'll be the death of them.

We know what we've got to do, folks, so let's do it. See you in Washington D.C. in late September.