Phonies and fools

An interesting result of the pace at which national and world events are assuming front-and-center positions on the radar screen this summer is that they point out the hollow nature of the Freedom-Hater vision.  If a set of principles has to be defended alternately by disingenuousness and random outburst that reveal what is really going on in the FHer's mind ("I voted for it before I voted against it," "At this point what difference does it make?", "In five days we begin the fundamental transformation of America," "If you try to build a coal plant, you'll go bankrupt"), its basic incoherence at some point becomes clear to all who care to see. That's where we are now.

Sometimes mere facial expressions speak volumes.  Such was the case with the H-Word Creature at a book signing yesterday.  She'd already begun the process of walking back her "don't-do-stupid-stuff-is-not-an-organizing-principle" remark, but knew she'd still have to deal with more fallout from it.  Someone asked her about seeing the Most Equal Comrade at Vernon Jordan's dinner party that evening, and she said she was quite excited about the prospect.  It was the countenance she wore while she uttered her claptrap, though, that said it all.  Bug eyes and a smile that looked like it was surgically permanent.  No one who isn't up to his or her eyeballs in Kool-Aid is buying it.  This woman wants to be president so bad she pees singularly focused ambition, and whatever kinds of humiliating little dances she has to do - and humiliating little dances are something she knows a lot about - are just part of getting to the objective.

Then there's the MEC and his attempt to weasel out of his culpability for the horror of contemporary Iraq.  Talk about a tortured narrative:

Obama now claims that what the military calls the "Obama bugout" was actually Iraq's idea, not his. Iraq, according to the President, refused to negotiate a reasonable status of forces agreement. So, Obama now says, we had no choice but to leave.

"Do you wish you had left a residual force in Iraq?" asked a reporter recently. "Any regrets about that decision in 2011?" Obama quickly denied any fault: "Keep in mind, that wasn't a decision made by me. That was a decision made by the Iraqi government." A few days ago, another reporter asked the same question. Obama elaborated: "What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision (emphasis added). Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. So let's just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis -- a majority of Iraqis -- did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq. So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong."

Bogus? Was there any doubt about Obama's intentions, regardless of the consequences? On July 3, 2008 Obama said, "My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war." What about a stay-behind force? He called it "a strategic error for us to maintain a long-term occupation in Iraq."

There's something pathos-evoking about watching such figures approach their denouement.  They'd really hoped that they and their warped vision of societal organization could squeak through without having their mettle tested by reality and human nature.  At this juncture, they look so small, so desperate to squelch the doubt that they've begun to entertain.