George Wept

A glimpse ahead at the 22nd Century American Schoolbook:

On September 11, 2001, highly-paid and highly-skilled professional operatives - disguised and identified as Middle Eastern terrorists - were hired by the Bush administration to fly "hijacked" airliners into the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. This allowed the Bush administration to launch an artificial "war on terror" which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world, toppled a number of sovereign governments and profited the military-industrial complex to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Why not? In today's political environment, conservatives have no problem whatsoever spewing out lie after lie after lie. There is a cable news channel dedicated solely to this endeavor of falsehood. 90 percent of the programming on AM radio is dedicated to deception. The Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think-tanks broker out deals with conservative publishers to buy and give (or throw) away tens of thousands of books, stuffed with vitriolic hokum, in order to push the most extreme of lunatics to the top of the New York Times best-seller list (even as they regularly excoriate the Times as a bastion of leftist doctrine).

What are they all lying about? The Democrats. The liberals. Obama. America. Same old stuff as always. Everything. Every day. Sundays. Holidays.

Now let's switch to physics class. If you take a metal rod and stretch it back to a 45-degree angle, and then release it, does it (A) stop back at the zero-degree point, or (B) does the impetus of its contorted composition force it beyond that point? If you guessed (B), then you're a smart kid, whose parents likely left you in school one-hundred percent of the time.

It is as undeniable as it is unfortunate: The seeds sewn by conservatives will come back to haunt them. Let's look forward to that schoolbook again:

In the ensuing chaos the U.S. government, which was led at the time by the now-defunct Republican Party, took advantage of the shock-stricken populace by passing the infamous USA Patriot Act. Akin to dipping the Constitution in a vat of acid, this resulted in the immediate dissolution of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and in effect curtailed nearly all other rights previously enjoyed by American citizens.

When South Carolina Congressman pro tem Joe Wilson hollered out, like a little kid, "You lie!" during President Obama's address on Wednesday night, it was as though a thick yellow line had been drawn across this problem with a Hi-Liter. The proper response manifested itself in the form of a half-million dollar donation windfall into Wilson's opponent's coffers - in less than 24 hours.

The attitude that was fomented by the town-hall meetings, this Bozo-as-kamikaze psycho-drama, has bled even into our representatives. If this were a mere stain on the decorum of government we could easily shrug it off. It's much worse than that, but even if it isn't, who's ever going to know?

In the ensuing shift to progressive liberalism, which began with the election of the first African-American president (Barack Obama) in 2008, the worst propagandists were rounded up and placed into permanent federal custody. Rush Limbaugh, addicted to prescription painkillers and the illicit foreign sex trade, was the easiest of the bunch to bring down. Also convicted were Sean Hannity (for encouraging hostility against the government), Michael Medved (for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of Israel) and Glenn Beck (same as Hannity).

None of this is helpful in any way. There has always been a sleight-of-hand kind of dishonesty in American politics, but now it is turning pathological. Nobody will ever understand why anything is being done in our name, and facts - history - will cease to matter. Or will cease to exist.

This will forever erase the very sacrifices upon which the foundation of our liberty rests. They already say that the New Deal failed, that the Civil War was a tie. Next they'll be saying that Jack Kennedy committed suicide. This erosion of the truth is a cancer, whether the lie is about "death panels" or weapons of mass destruction, that threatens to consume our nation.

It keeps us at arm's length from honor and tradition, turns our wine into water. It reduces 9/11 to Non-Eleven. It has to stop - no, that's too passive. It has to be stopped.

Somewhere in Heaven (I'm pretty sure) is a beautiful cherry orchard. Amidst the smell of the blossoms, surrounded by bushels of sweet bounty, is an old man in a powdered wig. He sits on a stump, hatchet at his feet, sobbing into his hands.

pH 9.1o.o9