The Reality Assassination

There’s a reason why Keith Olbermann ends his newscasts by noting how many days it’s been "since the declaration of Mission Accomplished in Iraq."

History will record that day, May Day 2003, as the Republican equivalent to the Kennedy Assassination.

It’s the day that reality died.

Previous Bush-era dealings with theater could be excused. The way his bully boys attacked the Miami vote count — that was a real political dispute. The thing with the bullhorn — that was real rubble behind him. All the breathless reports from the embedded reporters — people really were dieing along the road to Baghdad.

But this? The President in a flight suit, then standing in front of that huge banner reading Mission Accomplished? This was pure theater. And everyone knew it at the time.

The true extent of the deception was not revealed until much later. How the Abraham Lincoln was turned around so TV cameras wouldn’t catch San Diego in the background. How the sailors had shore leave delayed for the stunt. Who put up the banner.

And the ultimate lie — the war was just getting started.

What the left now calls "Codpiece Day"
(because of a detail on the standard flight suit Bush wore in the
plane) did not pack the emotional wallop of November 22, 1963. The
reaction was, in fact, the opposite of that horrible day in Dallas.
May 1, 2003 was designed as a celebration. We were all supposed to feel happy,
and thankful, and oh be joyful.

The analogy, like the events, are opposites, as though one were a Bizarro World version of the other. But which one?

There was no political price to be paid right away, in either case. Bush won the
2004 election as Democrats stepped right into his trap, running a
Vietnam War hero (who beat a Vietnam War protester), debating the
Vietnam Era rather than the present day. No wonder young people felt
like tearing their hair out (mine was already out). The whole 2004
campaign was a fantasy, on both sides.
The bastards got away with it.

Of course, the left got away with it in 1964 as
well. Johnson crushed Goldwater. Even though Goldwater was telling the
truth about Vietnam, that we should either fight to "win" (whatever
that meant) or get the heck out of there, not get pulled slowly,
inexorably into the quicksand.

Then the next Congress, how much like a fun house mirror of the 89th Congress that
affair was. Instead of the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the
Freedom of Information Act, and the War on Poverty, the 109th Congress gave us Terri
Schaivo, Roberts and Alito, torture and domestic spying
approval, the old Rubber Stamp. Not to mention Abramoff, etc. etc. etc. (Although, given that the 89th
Congress’ initiatives all came from the Executive, perhaps they were
not so different.)

Now it’s 2007, the equivalent of 1967 for the former generation.
Conservatives are waking up to the chances they have lost to make change, the
opportunities they are losing, and will lose. The political abyss yawns
before them. They approach the next election with trepidation, a sense
of dread. Maybe Fred Thompson is really Hubert Humphrey in disguise.

It drives them crazy. That’s what’s going on among conservatives right now. Not just their political and media elite, not just the activist bloggers. Honest to goodness rank-and-file conservatives, who believed in Nixon, or Reagan, or this President,  are losing the political religion of a lifetime.  While their party moves further-and-further into the reality distortion field, desperately looking for another Ronald Reagan as liberals a generation ago vainly sought FDR.

So it is that Talk Radio, that rock and roll of the right, goes into acid mode, haties replacing the old hippies.

While here in the American suburbs, where the power really lies, we suffer the trips of the kids, chickenhawks this time squawking for war rather than draft-age "cowards" looking to Canada for escape. We grow ever-more disgusted with the whole thing. But what can you do?

Were I playing "the spin I’m in," it would be Frank Sinatra, ol’ blue eyes, and that classic "In The Wee Small Hours."

(Turn down the Limbaugh in there! Damn kids. That better not be any of that hillbilly heroin I’m smelling!)