Twisted Logic!

Pushing the limits of rhetorical credulity has proved one of the Bush Administration's most effective tactics. At a time when leftist postmodernists argue against objective truth and rightist anti-intellectuals promote proven lies as absolute truths, reality has become marginalized by legitimized frauds.

In this twisted post-objective world, White House spinners see every screw-up as a golden opportunity. Not only did he not lose the election, Bush and his media organs drone on, he won a mandate! If WMDs weren't found in IRAQ, it just proves that they were moved to Syria--not that the war was based on lies. The former detainees who claim they were tortured at Gitmo? They "hate America," says Bush. Besides, they had been "trained in some instances to disassemble [sic]--that means not tell the truth." Why did the military release anti-American terrorists? They don't have an answer to that. Ye.

Propaganda, like any other drug, dulls the mind and destroys common sense.

Purveyors of propaganda, like pushers of narcotics, seal their doom when they start partaking of their own product.

Politicians live or die on their sense of what the average voter cares about and suss out their take on any given issue. Republican leaders put a thumb right on the national pulse after 9/11: Americans were willing to do just about anything in the name of fighting terrorism, including going to war against two countries that had little to nothing to do with the attacks. Working up the gay-bashing anti-abortion bigots proved equally potent in 2004. But victory wasn't the blank check for which they'd hoped. They lost touch. They believed their own hype. They overreached.

People don't want Social Security to be privatized. Nor will they accept, despite Rumsfeld's oughta-be-classic channeling of Rudyard Kipling "it's dangerous to civilize nations," an endless occupation of Iraq. Failing an increasingly elusive military victory against the Iraqi resistance, the American public is looking for any excuse to cut and run. Revelations of systemic torture of innocent civilian detainees by American troops at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram provide a perfect reason for immediate withdrawal. There are neither WMDs to find nor hearts and minds to win, so why the hell are we there?

It's American common sense at its finest, but Bush is too self-benumbed to see it.