Reader Mail: "Because Arlo hasn't added a comments section yet:

I like what you said about the Bushies' purported moral clarity. I have something to contribute to this subject. Really. Check it out:

I pretty much completely agree. I further think that the neocons' exclusive commitment to dispassionate objectivity is a result of a condition of a priori certainty and can only further yield results that necessarily validate that (or any other, frankly) style of thinking employed. In other words, if you wake up with in the morning in possession of a deep, unthinking understanding that you are a good, right-thinking person, then you will hear very little criticism throughout your day and the disasters that your behavior produces are likely to be somebody else's fault. Everything, in fact, that happens during the day will be taken as positive supporting evidence. Obstacles will be things that are either ignorant of their obligation to get out of the way or represent an immoral resistance to inevitable good. The rigidity of the worst conservative mind as at its base an involuntary Platonic fixation on the phantasm of absolute forms. It is a mind misled by the popular notion of a natural moral instinct and enslaved by the passions of fundamental truths. A slave who loves his master['s] idea is unlikely to understand or undertake the risks and uncertain rewards of seeking escape. And, as Rush Limbaugh's remarks on the Abu Ghraib photos demonstrate, a slave who loves his master cannot be relied upon to recognize his master's brutality.

Conversely, the progressives' current tendency toward pragmatic utilitarianism may be a philosophical cathedral but boy oh boy is it defenseless against fanaticism. In no time at all they find themselves dislodged and marching in the streets and helpless, helpless, helpless to influence, in even the smallest sense, the course of events, the deployment of power.

I also think there is another sort of analysis that could be of service here. Because we have no way of knowing if in reality the neocons are as certain of our collective destiny as they appear to be, we are left to consider their public proclamations - that is, their proclamations to a public that is legally empowered to remove them from office, but a public they regard with general disdain. And when you sit down cross-legged on the floor and listen to this administration start to speak, what you get is a kind of religious, patriotic My Pet Goat. A child's story of World the bad, America the good, World the scary, America the brave, How will this World War end? America the Mission Accomplished. It is a variation of themes we've heard since childhood and as a society we cannot be relied upon to accurately measure just how far the wool has been pulled over our eyes. What currently makes the political discourse in this country so painful, however, is that in telling these stories Bush and companions are absolutely volcanic in employing the most sacred expressions of our republic: open new frontiers to democracy, free the slaves, freedom of expression, sacrifice of life in pursuit of liberty, the provision of righteous justice, equality of opportunity, etc. etc. etc. It is a story for a domestic audience only, for the rest of the World isn't fooled at all. They see exactly what has happened. We, on the other hand, are turned one against the other; We've all heard this story from other mouths in other generations, but this time some believe the last four years a sacrilegious horror, and some believe that the president is accurately giving voice to the causes of the time (I fall into the former group by virtue of my conviction that liars are successful because they tell you precisely that thing that you most want to hear. Even God is rarely so accommodating.) That's what I love about Bush's assertion that "everybody" thought Iraq possessed WMDs is not so much that it is a deliberate lie, or that it is deliberately inaccurate, or that it is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts as we all know them, but that it is typical of the public face this administration presents and that it is what this administration does best: It's storytelling. And in a way, if you think about it, it's preemptive storytelling. The nerve!"