All it takes is my soul?

Our nation stands today at a remarkable crossroads. We are in the midst of a battle for the very soul of reason in this election. And we must stop considering the GOP as a conservative organization. The sad reality is that the current iteration of the republican party is in fact a pre-enlightenment reactionary group: Machiavelli would be proud of the cunning treachery with which the GOP has gone about its business.

The clearest and only needed example of this is the insistent lying of the McCain/Palin campaign. With reason they believe that anything that stands in the way of their ascension to the throne can easily be wiped away by total fabrication. People don’t support the bridge to nowhere? Well then the VP didn’t support it either. People think Washington is too reliant on corporate lobbyists? Well then McCain doesn’t have 7 of them on his advisory board. People want change? Well then the McCain ticket provides it in spades.

The sad part about this is not that may succeed, but rather that by every indication, it WILL succeed. You see, we have been down this road before. In fact, as is now clear, and was to some of us at the time, the entire occupation of Iraq was perpetrated on a foundation of utter rubbish. And were there consequences for the Administration? No, they maintained the presidency and the congress at the next electoral referendum.

What is then exceedingly clear is that there is absolutely no reason for the GOP to cow to the truth. In our political world, truth has become an abstraction. Like a country of amnesiacs we can be certain only of the present as we watch constructed narratives unfold independent of any past reality.

In this brave new world the surest path to success is to free your reason from the constraints of conscience and to loose your soul from pangs of guilt. In this brave new world laurels are replaced by words not hollow but filled with the burning air of fabrication.