Nazis? Wimps. Commies? Wussies. Total war with highly industrialized militaristic societies? No problem.

Twenty guys with boxcutters and an audacious plan? PANIC! Kill and maim tens of thousands of innocents, shred our Constitution, bankrupt our economy and ruin our international credibility (and wet our collective diaper).

Thank goodness we have the fightin' 82nd chAirborne to save us all. May their steely resolve and steadfast courage never falter (until they run out of Chee-tos or the draft is re-instated).

Bravo Glen.

-The highest priority must be to prevent the Republicans from winning the presidency in the upcoming election.-

Indeed, and your comment brings to mind one by a poster on another thread who suggested the upcoming presidential election might be a 'cakewalk'.

Danger: not so.

With all of the already well-established voter-caging practices and other known and unknown subterfuge now underway and expected to get underway by the GOP, it is surely folly to take the position that 'all is well, just wait till November'.

In fact, a victory at the polls in 2008 will require a landslide of historic proportions to compensate for all the electoral fraud expected. Success in the 2008 election hinges on turnout, a really big turnout.

Fortunately, the 70% of Americans who have had more than enough of a criminal enterprise taking over their country seem to be getting that and appear eager to show it, if the turnout so far in the primaries is any indication.

Remember, if its close, the Supremes could well rule in their favor again....

So, lets not go getting all complacent.

I think the phenomenon you identify is central to our predicament. I wrote this about it back in September:

I recently pointed to an interesting article about a scientific study that found real differences between liberal and conservative brains. You should read it your own self, but the upshot is that us liberals are, for reasons not yet explained, far more comfortable with ambiguity and complexity than our conservative counterparts.

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Big duh, you say.

Then I marveled at the immediate popularity of newly announced Republican presidential candidate and empty Gucci Fred Thompson. Some polls already put him in a virtual dead heat with previous frontrunner Nineleven Giuliani.

How can that be? Thompson was, by all reports, a zero as a Senator. He has admitted that he doesn't go to church. He has said virtually nothing about anything, and what little he has said has been fluffy nonsense. His entire candidacy seems to be a bet that he can convince enough Republicans that he is a smart, tough-as-nails straight shooter because he has made a career of playing smart, tough-as-nails straight shooters on the teevee.

And then it hit me.

I suddenly understood, really for the first time, how Reagan and Arnold parlayed their cardboard screen personae into elected office.

When presented with the conflict between the reality of who these actors are and their manicured screen images, we understand and accept that there is a conflict. We understand and are comfortable holding two facts that point in different directions. But conservatives cannot live with an unresolved chord. And they resolve it by rejecting the possibility that there is a difference between characters and the actors who play them.

Think about the overwhelming evidence for this hypothesis. It is why Ronnie continued to play cowboy (in the wilds if Santa Barbara) well into his dotage. It is why Shrub bought hisself a (horseless) ranch in Texas and clears brush every few weeks. If you play a cowboy, you are a cowboy. Now it is working for Fred Thompson -- if you play a straight-arrow prosecutor, you are a straight arrow prosecutor. The tassel-loafered, adulterous pro-abortion lobbyist? That's some other guy.

Suspension of disbelief, the goal of actors and filmmakers, is a meaningless concept for this audience. They have no disbelief to suspend. For these conservatives, separating person from persona is a bridge too far.

...

Want more evidence? Look at the contrasting relationship between liberals and actors. If we thought like they do, Martin Sheen would be our nominee. Every liberal I know gets teary-eyed at the thought of Jed Bartlett as President. But we understand that Bartlett was a character, played by an actor. And despite the fact that Martin Sheen has been a real-life political activist for years, we extrapolate precisely nothing about his suitability for high office from his fine performances on West Wing.

More? Remember when Dan Quayle took on Murphy Brown? The fact that the sitting Vice President of the United States was jousting with a fictitious character about unwed motherhood never seemed to register with the social values crowd.

This explains so much. It is perhaps confirming evidence of a Unified Field Theory of Wingnuttery. It is of a piece with the Manichean worldview Glenn Greenwald has been talking and writing about (we are good, ergo nothing we do can be bad). And I have chipped away at this question before myself. But it has never really resonated like this for me before. And, of course, it makes Fred Thompson's appeal obvious -- they really think they are voting for District Attorney Arthur Branch.

...

Is it any wonder the Republicans keep flocking to empty suits whose resumes are found not in the Congressional Record but in IMDB? Hollywood deals in exactly the unambiguous, airbrushed heroes these conservatives want -- the kind that does not exist in the complex, unscripted world of actual people.

And in October I talked about the same Lieberman-at-the-movies moment:

In isolation, this anecdote is merely a bit creepy. In the context I have been talking about, I think it is pretty strong evidence of the very mental infirmity I am talking about. It seems pretty obvious to me that these contrived Hollywood victories occupy far more real estate in Senator Lieberman's head than all the bloodshed and immorality that define the reality of Iraq.

We know that a defining distinction between Hollywood propaganda and reality is the fact that the outcome in jingostic nonsense like "Behind Enemy Lines" is never in doubt. But think about how Dubya and his crusaders talk. It is painfully evident that the possibility that the "good guys" might lose simply eludes them. They simply cannot distinguish between Hollywood and reality. They are somehow missing the filter that divides the library into fiction and non-fiction -- for them, books is books.

There's more. I think this same pathology is what is behind the way they always accuse us of hating America simply because we dare to find fault. We know that it is possible to both love and find fault with our country. But for the those who, as Jon Stewart pointed out don't have gray matter between the ears (they have black and white matter), love and criticism are simply incompatible. Our ability to simultaneously hold conflicting thoughts must seem as foreign to them as a bird's ability to see magnetic fields is to us.

Except that we are not up in arms about "Winged Migration."