It's hard to say whether the "good" folks at the NYT have some invisible but powerful threat hanging over their heads (tucked away in those secret files in Cheney's office?) or whether they're still shell shocked and so deeply in denial of their grief over 09/11/01 that they're simply not playing with a full deck. One way or another, the NYT, once the great lady, is rapidly becoming the babbling elderly relative who talks on and on, but has lost touch with day-to-day reality. We love this older person, but it's time to stop hanging on every word waiting to see if there is still some wisdom hidden in the chatter. It's just senseless babble.

Let us also remember that unlike those of us who live in what seem like safer places, the members of the New York and Washington press corps still have their view of the world shaped by the fact that they were directly affected by the events of September 11, 2001. They continue to live in the two most likely targets for future terrorist attacks. Beneath it all, they are scared to death of another attack. With that underlying perspective, they believe they are doing rational analysis and the rest of us just don't understand how terrified we should be of terrorists and terrorism. They earnestly believe the rest of us are out of touch with reality when it is they, themselves, who are living in a terrorism-induced "la-la" land. Thus are they and will they continue to be willing to support and repeat ad nauseum any ideas and approaches that make them personally feel safer. They believe themselves to be rational and logical but fail to see how their entire perspective is skewed.

No, that's not mythology. It's a psychological dysfunction. These right wing wackos have fallen vicitim to an ancient defense mechanism that's buried in all of us. Within the deepest systemboard-level mechanism of our brains is a program that seeks to protect us from extreme physical or psychological pain (in a computer, this would cause the system to shut down and restart). At some point, when these folks were young, they tried to use clear, logical, rational arguments to win some point with significant adults in their lives (most often parents) and got verbally or physically beaten down so severely and painfully that the aspect of their personality which allows for rational argument was locked away within an internal dungeon. Thereafter, they simply haven't had access to it (although it may pop out in the personality change they undergo when they're under the influence of alcohol or other mind-altering chemicals). A standard side effect is that, when pressed to use that missing piece, they react with beligerance and anger (or depression in some cases). It's not that their attitudes are dishonest, exactly. It's just that they are incapable of anything else. This is the way the world looks to them (a bit like an old computer monitor with one color missing - despite normal input everything looks wierd. No matter how you try to adjust the input you get the same result up front). The reason they've been taken so seriously over these past few years is that so many Americans, especially from certain regions of the country and the suburbs of our large cities have had the same kinds of experiences growing up and thus have the same pieces missing. It's up to those of us who are capable of logic to point out to them that they're wrong despite their angry reactions and undermine them with logic and honesty until the few of them who are capable of doing so realize that something is out of whack with them and they seek help to find healing and get their missing pieces out of their internal jails and back into their everyday lives and their perspectives on life. (And if you find yourself feeling explosively angry reading this, I just bumped you up hard against your own missing pieces. GET HELP. Life is so much better and easier when you have access to all the things God designed into you).

More than any other group of people in the nation, the inner circle media of the East Coast and many of our politicians including the president himself, are still, within the depths of their souls, scared out of their minds by what happened on September 11th. But they're also in total denial of that fact. So their actions from that day to this have been akin to whistling past the graveyard late at night.

Their fear and their inability to look in the mirror and realize how it has shaped everything they've done from that day to this is the reason why they remain devoted to the authoritarian ideals of Cheney/Bush/Petraeous (or whomever the next puppet/general will be).

The echo chamber reporters and political insiders can't see things critically because they need to believe. They want to believe. They have to believe. To let go of their faith in the current approach feels to them as if zombies and ghouls will suddenly arise from the graveyard, snatch them and their loved ones and rip them apart. Of course it is the nature of such things that their dysfunctional/shadowed behavior contributes to the liklihood that what they fear most will, indeed, happen. If we don't take things out of their hands soon, they will inevitably take us from debacle to disaster.