“Step away from the library paste…”

I’m tired of being treated like an idiot.

Not by the people who know me – if you know me, you know I’m an idiot. On a deeply personal level, I could be reasonably construed as an idiot. But in the details, and the way I run my life in the world at large, I try to keep the idiocy under wraps; steer a straight course. Pass, as it were.

That’s why I get pissed when strangers (salesmen and politicians, usually) automatically assume I’m an idiot, and treat me like one. And I’m not just pissed for me, I’m pissed for everybody. Who dares assume my fellow Americans are, collectively, idiots?

Telemarketers aside, I think it’s probably Karl Rove and some of them college-educated neocon fellas that used to run DC back in his first term when W was still wet behind the ears. Oh, how they dared. And until pretty recently, America has been happy to allow itself to act the idiots we’re being treated like.

Personally, I don’t mind so much when a Karl Rove or Dick Cheney gets out there and says something outrageously insulting to my intelligence. I recognize the malevolent genius at work behind the hooey and I have to at least admire the craft.

It’s when Dumbleyou does it – wags his finger and talks down to the camera – that it really boils my nanny! It’s much worse being treated like an idiot by somebody generally acknowledged to be an idiot himself. It’s doubly insulting.

And all the insolent Village Idiot hilarity was on display today at Bush’s press conference about – guess what – national security and the bang-up job he’s doing on it. Bush always speaks to a roomful of reporters in the disapproving, sing-song cadence of a kindergarten teacher who’s just walked back into the room to find the whole class eating paste, and this was no exception.

What really rubbed me the wrong way though is the bullshit they’re peddling; even without Bush’s Sesame Street delivery of it, the actual text of the GOP’s message is so nakedly disingenuous that it could only possibly be a total crock of crap. I mean, think about what they’re selling to their loyal third – two ideas are pounded home relentlessly:

Liberals are Soft On Terror And Will Endanger Your Lives!

We Must Attack Them There So We Don’t Have to Fight Them Here!

Let’s start with just the concept of “soft” on terror. Does Bush’s insistent 30-ish percent base honestly believe that Democrats – patriots all, not to mention seasoned, professional political hacks of the first order – look at 9-11 and say, “Eh, that wasn’t so bad. I’m sure the terrorists had their reasons, maybe we should have hugged it out with them.”?

It’s just plain old good policy to be out for terrorist blood right now, so terrorists’ blood it shall be! Bipartisan resolution passed, drinks are on the house.

How can anyone be so stupid to not see through ‘soft’ on terror. “Not only is my opponent soft on terror, but he doesn’t think puppies should be cuddly. Plus I understand he is pro-cancer!”

They’re the same thirty-third percentile who think indefinitely policing a country the size of California halfway ‘round the world is somehow making it safer for us here in the USA.

How does anybody honestly believe that John Q. Jihadist, who killed 23 civilians in a suicide blast yesterday in downtown Baghdad, would have detonated himself in Times Square instead if we hadn’t happened to stop by to stay in Iraq three years ago?

The whole concept is as logically inconsistent as ‘soft on terror.’ It doesn’t hold water, 2/3 of us know that, but the GOP keeps successfully repackaging it and handing it back to us anyway.

The British didn’t find out a damned thing in Iraq about their recent terror scare. They found it at home, using weapons of mass intelligence that we apparently do not possess, or at least have chosen to no longer wield, in favor of proactive military dickswinging abroad.

In spite of all of that, Bush’s poll numbers on terror took a healthy bump-up after the British plot was revealed. WTF??!?

All I can think of is that we – my fellow Americans – went out and made the Village Idiot king. Maybe we are as stupid as they treat us.