Back in the 50s or early 60s there was a study done on UFO cults, and what happens when the predicted day passes without the UFOs landing and carting off the faithful. Well, for those who are home caring for mom or whatever, they wake up and say “Wow, I wasted years on those idiots”. But for those waiting together with other believers, they come out believing even more strongly. (The politically immature might see echos of this in the diaspora.)

Bush surrounds himself with true believers, and while some of them may occaisionally exhibit a kind of feral canniness, they are universally dumb as a waterlogged post. So dumb, they think they’re smart.

Now, just today I was thinking that I may have stayed too long at the fair. I work for a whole bunch of GS-13s and above and the majority (90 %) cannot tell good work from bad work. If a stay a couple more years, I will have a nice retirement. But, it is really hard to work for these nincompoops. Earlier (but even as late as the 1990s) the worker bees (career) such as myself were able to get our work done while maintaining a high quality in spite of the idiots who got the political jobs. But, it is harder and harder to do quality work with all the obstacles put in front of us by the “stupidvisors” that have arrived in the last six years. I may fill out those retirement papers tomorrow to retire on Friday. If they try to make me feel guilty for leaving them in the lurch, I will just ask them, “What have they done for me lately.” This inhumane, soulless man who is President and started this illegal and immoral war, murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis . . . is my boss . . .

What kind of example is being set for the children????!!!!!

It’s an interesting question, and I’d vote for this hypothesis put forth by Meyerson:

..The alternative reality conveyed by the Republican media — Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk — has created a Republican activist base that is genuinely not reality-based, and from which the current generation of Republican pols is disproportionately drawn.

What’s interesting about this is watching the various Republicans in Congress struggle between reality and fantasy. There are probably phases of waking up from the effects of the brain-washing that I wish someone would elucidate. Senator Hagel is one to watch.

From what I know of authoritarianism, true authoritarians never wake up, they simply dig their heels in deeper, and I suspect that’s a lot of what’s going on.

I’m reminded of the Clinton impeachment. Despite overwhelming public support for Clinton, the witchhunt continued, unabated. I was tempted to write letters of encouragement to the Republican leadership of the time, calling them to continue digging, continue going after the man. Keep digging your own graves politically, in other words. Sure enough, the public saw through what was happenning and tossed many of these idiots out of power with the next election. I’m sure these True Believers never knew what hit them.

What’s amazing to me is how the set of Republican presidential candidates for 2008 are offering themselves up as no real alternative to the failure of the last six years. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on a Democratic landslide in 2008, simply because the Republicans, for the most part, are steadfastly unwilling to recognize reality. Maybe we should start a letter writing campaign along the lines of what I described above, to make sure these idiots run off the cliff.

The answer is that they do not know how to change and believe they are fighting the good fight. Another part of the answer is because there is money in it for them. Its their paycheck.