Insanity

The ever-incisive Glenn Greenwald has both the story of Cheney's most recent psychotic episode and its meaning. Greenwald says:

"The interview Cheney gave to pool reporters on his plane yesterday as it returned home from Afghanistan is striking in several respects. Initially, as Dan Froomkin notes, Cheney demanded that journalists not identify him by name when reporting on the interview (but instead refer to him only as a 'senior administration official'), even though Cheney himself makes unmistakably clear in the transcript that it is him."

(snip)

"Cheney's petty demand that he not be identified -- like a petty tyrant's demand that his name never pass anyone's lips -- is just an assertion of secrecy and authoriatarian power for its own sake (even under the rule of Emperor Hirohito, 'commoners were no longer forbidden to speak his name or look at his face'). But unlike Hirohito, Cheney is an elected public servant of American citizens and this attempt to prohibit journalists from attributing his own words to him is just bizarrely megalomaniacal and contemptuous, particularly in light of how he virtually went out of his way in the very first sentence to make clear that it was him."

Mr. Cheney forgets himself, and why he hasn't already been impeached is a mystery to me.

In large measure this country has recovered from the intense bout of mental illness we suffered in the wake of 9/11. But a significant number have not recovered, and the highest members of the administration seem to be getting worse by the day. The president contemplates an unprovoked nuclear war against (another) oil-rich country. His second banana demands that journalists treat him as they would an ancient oriental despot.

This is all clearly Code Blue stuff, but the problem is the Congress we elected to take care of the situation, that we assumed would take care of it, spends its days debating non-binding resolutions and talks about revising the 2002 Authorization to use force. They appear helpless to do anything about the madness at the top.

We're still in very deep trouble, and it hasn't gotten any better since October.