Had me worried there for a minute.

WTF happened to the formatting? My shit's hard enough to read as it is!

Quite related to all of this, Brad at Sadly, No examines what he calls American elites' "nationalist narcissism. They believe not only that America has the right and the duty to be the 'dominant' country in the world, but that every other country in the world should be talking forever about how wonderful we are." It's not hard to understand the source of their need to constantly have affirmed what Newsweek's Howard Fineman this week calls "our special destiny" as he frets that Obama is failing to salvage it by not keeping the U.S. at the Center of the World. It's the same need that makes John Bolton and his comrades endlessly try to prove to the world how tough and brave they are even as they hide from and cower before Terrorists. There are many reasons why America is a country perpetually at war, but this warped and broken psychological state -- weak and frightened individuals cheering on faraway wars as a means of feeling tough and strong, all justified by our own Supreme Specialness -- is one of the leading causes.

I thought you were an attorney? When did you start practicing psychology?

There's more to being human than is contained in APA-style psychology, dear brother. Why do you never consider the power of myths? They've been around far longer than any pseudo-psychologizing.

Here's the mistake I see many on the Left making on a daily basis.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls and the other desert scrolls were unearthed at midcentury, scholars discovered that one of these early Jewish writings, called "The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness," was sheer Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrian influence, particularly on the Hebrew community, is represented in the work of the Essenes. We have, therefore, in the Bible itself, this concept of the world as wrong. Consequently, throughout the Old Testament one reads of the kings who, in the sight of Yahweh, do well to wipe out the nature religions. These stories represent a tension between two totally different mythologies. One is of the goodness of nature, with which individuals try to harmonize themselves. That is considered a virtuous and healthy and humanly sustaining act. The other sees nature negatively and the person’s choice is to say "no" to it, and to pull away from it.

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I deem this distinction of mythologies very important. We have the nature mythologies, which put us in touch with our own nature. But there also exist, one must note, antinature mythologies. These are the mythologies of the nomadic people.

When you live in the desert, you cannot depend on Mother Nature very much and the social awareness of the situation is accented. The God of this society may be negative to the desert. Among the Greeks, the two attitudes tend together. From this integration we see the reemergence of the notion of the Goddess. In India, for example, after the Indo-European invasions--around the time of the Hebrew invasion of Canaan, in the thirteenth to fourteenth century B.C.--we see a reemergence of the Goddess cult.

It is worth examining the idea of deity that is found in these Mother Goddess religions. The word "Brahman" refers to something that is beyond all concepts, and, in this regard, there are two ways of interpreting the word "transcendent." One signifies something that is out there and so transcends this place here. In that sense, Yahweh is transcendent. Yahweh is, it might be said, a supernatural fact, up there.

The other way of reading the word "transcendent" is that of Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, as the ultimate mystery of being that transcends all conceptualization, beyond thought, beyond categories.

48 Thou Art That

That is the notion that is found in the Upanisads. In India, when the female power of the Goddess revived during their period, there was some realization that the ultimate mystery is found in the mystery of one’s own being but that mystery is deeper than any individual’s thinking can go.

This spiritual experience has been termed Gnosticism, from the Greek gnosis, or knowledge, and it describes this intuitive realization of the mystery that transcends speech. For that reason, the language we use in speaking of religious mystery is that of metaphor.

Metaphor is the language of myth that remains, as we have observed, a still widely misunderstood term. Even many so-called well-educated people think that "myth" means something that is false--that is, a lie or distortion about some person or event.

But that misunderstanding arises, as we know, only when we misread metaphorical language. All of our religious ideas are metaphorical of a mystery. It is vital to recall that if you mistake the denotation of the metaphor for its connotation, you completely lose the message that is contained in the symbol. (Campbell, J. (2001). Thou Art That: transforming religious metaphor, pp. 47-50. New World Library: Novato, CA.

Bolton's bullshit has more to do with his devotion to a masculine antinature war god, one that demands absolute devotion in its effort to dominate all things feminine, esp. Mother Nature.

If Bolton believes what he's saying, he is, as you describe, a coward. But as you expertly demonstrate, his cover story makes no sense. So, IMO, he's doing what he's always done: consciously propagandizing aka fear-mongering.

Facts don't have anywhere near the power to jack electorates that myths do. I'm continuously amazed that you seem to take the propaganda bullshit seriously. Here's a thought: he's lying!

I'd put your assertions in the conditional, then demonstrate his history of jacking us with myths of WMDs in the "wrong hands," and conclude that he's firing on us with weapons-grade propaganda, not baring his craven soul.