first made me aware of this. First election I voted in was between Reagan and Carter. They both put up speeches the night before election day: Carter's a rational account of the situation and what he would do to handle it. Then Reagan came on with a huge American flag behind him and told stories about how American could be great again, along with some recollections of his good friend John Wayne. I went to bed thinking, boy, will that clown Reagan ever lose big. Thus began my education into the realities of mass delusion.

For adherents of American conservative philosophy, there are few ways in which a person can act in and affect the world outside of himself other than war. If the philosophy you espouse asserts that each of us acts alone and only for our own benefit that philosophy precludes the sort of large acts such as working for elderly care, the environment, care of the sick or even helping children other than your own. If you give up on affecting larger change the result is hedonism, which results in the greed and secret sex scandals we see so often in right wing elite. If don't give up on affecting change the world in larger ways (and most of us desire to do something larger than ourselves before we kick off) for people of conservative philosophy that pretty much leaves religion and war. I see in George Bush a man who yearns to be great and do large things, but whose limited capacity and political philosophy prevents him from understanding or working for the common good.

Ronald Reagan also yearned for a sense of world community, but could not admit of any philospohy that would bind us together other than a larger common enemy than the one we then faced -- communism. So Reagan often wondered out lout "what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by a power from outer space, from another planet....Wouldn't we all of a sudden find that we didn't have any differences between us at all, we were all human beings, citizens of the world, and wouldn't we come together to fight that particular threat?"

Yeah, but shouldn't we be searching for ways to do that without the need for extraterrestrial enemies?

In the disorder Glenn describes paranoia is important, but the fear of others is obsessed upon in part because there is no path within their ideology for seeking common ground. Acting for the larger community, except helping co-religionists or allowing the invisible hand of the marketplace to do good, is socialism, and as a result forbidden. Doing nothing with your life except to pursue hedonism leaves an ultimately empty feeling. Conservatives are emotionally boxed in by their own ideology.

"That is exquisite. Captures it exactly. Gads! Indeed" is my comment (didn't get the html tags right: need a way to edit these after posting!)

-Another example of confusion about a clearly defined protocol within the government, expressed here by one of the faux warrior theorists, is that the president, specifically George W. Bush, is our "commander in chief."-

Is there another 'president' (small 'p' for an even smaller man) in history that has publicly used the term 'Commander-in-Chief' more frequently than the Decider?

you wrote: It's as if they compete to become Supreme Nerds of all history,

It's as if they are wanting to be a Chief Nerd who never grew up.

It's embarrassing to have to tell them how 99% of the world sees them?

That is exquisite: it captures it exactly.

Gads! indeed!

I think that the evil genius of Dick Cheney was his ability to exploit these people that Glenn has brilliantly figured out. They were Cheney's "useful idiots". They served him well in increasing the power of the executive branch.

Is that why The Sims is so popular? I guess it must be our innate need to fight the Great Evil Enemy that compels us to... make our characters use the bathroom and go to work every day. Yuh. I know I am waiting for Nintendogs: Dog Fighting edition, to make my life complete.

In other news, I think the need to believe that you are fighting an evil enemy is much more important when you are actually doing the fighting. When you've got blood on your hands, and sometimes the blood of innocents, it makes it easier to sleep at night to think that you are doing it for good. Here in America, it is considered heretical to criticize our troops, even though they exist for the sole purpose of killing other people. What a strange paradox that in a society that supposedly loves peace, we are universally expected to unquestioningly support those of us whose duty it is to make war. I suppose, then, that the people sitting here in America, rooting for the war without getting any dirt (or blood) on their hands, may be supporting the notion that the enemy is evil because they feel as much latent guilt as the people fighting on the ground.

I have previously stipulated that I served in the Air Force and did a tour in South Vietnam from summer 1967 - 68. I was there for Tet.

My father was in the Army during World War II. He was assigned to a Boston coastal battery; he went through Utah Beach; he was assigned to Patton's command as a captain; he was part of the relief force for Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge; and he was on the German border when the war ended.

I don't come from a military family, but my brother and his son are Navy veterans, and a few uncles and some other in-laws also served.

I'm only setting this history up to say that people who do not serve just don't know what they're talking about.

But, Lordy, how they do go on.

All they can do is yap, attach themselves to some heroic tall tales or set of mythologies, fall for a fake war leader, and, while they're at it, ignore the perspective of people who are actually familiar with the terrain - because they've walked the walk at some time in their lives.

It think it's extraordinary, given what kind of bile came out the Vietnam War, that people my age are so at odds with each other after all that went down then - that we've allowed this rank manipulation to have occurred, and, that we've allowed our troops to be abused the way they have been. We have allowed ourselves, after all that happened 35 to 45 years ago, to be divided in a way that the best dystopian writers could never have imagined.

Another slice of American pie.

Talk about lessons learned.

If these yappers, the faux warriors, choose not to serve (or respond to a draft), then when they talk of military service, it can only be an abstraction, comprehensible to them in their little caucuses.

Aside from the strange political or psychological need to immerse themselves in pipe dreams that they are Napoleon, or Alexander, or William Tecumseh Sherman (or Bill Belichick), it's nothing but virtual reality, a game of pinball, or a movie.

There actually used to be a time when Americans were pretty fussy about certain protocols having to do with basic citizenship, such as how to display the flag.

Now I'm not carping about how we should do it (or argue that everyone should enlist), or say that Congress should once again divert our attention from critical issues by having another debate about flag burning. I'm just saying a lot people don't even know how to handle this basic symbol of nationhood any more.

But you do learn some of these things in the service.

And so, over the years I've always been amused (more than incensed) when I see the flag hung from a horizontal bar rather than a flag pole, like they do in the House, and you see it with the stars in the upper right hand corner. The stars should be in the upper left hand corner; that's the way it's done.

Another example of confusion about a clearly defined protocol within the government, expressed here by one of the faux warrior theorists, is that the president, specifically George W. Bush, is our "commander in chief."

This a small big lie, peddled by the super patriots, and they know it, because, strictly speaking, only if you are in the uniform of the armed forces of the United States of America - that is, actively serving - are you required to regard the president as the CIC.

No civilian, regardless of service history or the lack of it, is required to jump out of bed in the morning and regard the president this way.

People who say this are misinformed. They could also be liars or fakers.

It may also be that such people don't know how to handle the flag.

But that's not my problem.