pith…

The soap opera organ announces
what we can hardly bear to hear.
A metal-aproned matron
summons the skin ribbon
she left on the seat of a Galaxy 500,
circa 1969. Her tremolo
is a casual torture. We mistake
her voice for a choir of a thousand
muffled mothers and wobble dutifully in
to an Easter dinner of wood duck
and greens. There are no roses
around our scarred 3D hearts
or arranged in the centerpiece
that absorbs what words we can pick
from our teeth. We are weary, heavy
weary, of managed creation and sick
from songs that tempt us simply
to silence. We scrape cold beards
of frost with manicured nails,
screeching at the April windows.
Our fathers were fools to store
their small-grained harvests
in such broad-slatted barns.
We watch the mess heap up
with the snow and the hyphens.
Nobody clears the faux-oak table
but the talkative furniture
does our screaming for us
and a phatic nation learns to curse
in shrunken frontier tongues.

.

joesmith

.

© joesmith, from “The Way the Worlds Comes In,” an upcoming volume of collected poems.

I save the spaces.
No, I’m no bent surveyor
with a three-legged stare
bent on destiny, unsettled
by innominate expanses,
undone by an absence
of fences, parsing the plenty.
We know how that was
manifest. I’ve never been
enamoured of wrought
geometries and plaid
is a bad parody of place.
I save only the spaces:

triangulate spans between
the bridge trusses where
swallows play no-touch tag,
the cracks under windows
where the wind wriggles in,
those gaps around the sink
where prehistoric beetles
pass like Hermes from world
to world, lulls in a song
where notes go to compose
themselves, the fissures
in a hammerhead stamped
out from tempered metal.

I make a man inhabit
the middle of this room
and wait to arrange nothing
but occasions to empty.
When he’s finished shaping
a proper container, we carry
slim air where it’s needed:
for earthquakes or murders,
to bend the paths of bullets,
to reverse the sad collapse
of width. Yes, I guess
I have to catch him first.
A space is a saving.

.

- joesmith
© 2010

I

Here in the town of the common and the good,
only the flashes reach us. There’s no thunder
rumble, no sound to savor, no low music
to score the out-of-favor soul. No, first
it’s the din, carried air away east, then rain
broken in waves on main street curbs
where urges are nearly two blocks long.

Homines urbis mundi,
park in the lines diagonally.
Turn right or left one-way
at the pagoda that would be green.

At the Pix they’ re playing last year’s winner
of something like a fig leaf, somewhere in France.
A yo-yo in the hand of the boy on the bike
who ups and downs for most the day, metal playing
in his head and a knack, at ten, for squaring
every stimulus. Not much to do for the dudes
at Dave’s Music. They swap names of shared lays,
grow their hair pretty long and each one knows
where the other one lives.

Before the show, tattoos for all.
The low whir of the master
inking permanence to your arm.
We need this town
like you need that tattoo,
a black widow you designed yourself
for Bill the Renaissance Needle to etch.
An artist, says the ‘Nam vet
with the vulture on his knee.

II

A caudal of the flocked
hum hymnals to the wind,
grace notes for toothless grinding,
communal gurgles for the state.
We barter our hearts like borrowed garments
and run to each other as slow-mo lovers
in a misfed reshoot of a colorized film.

The town’s name came from their language,
not the painted faces, not the pox, nor
the slaughter, never the whooping fans of earth.

We must please the unseen
keepers of grids that plot
our soddled odds and finagled
every street. We watch parabolas
fall up across the sky, a tired arc
as rising star, as arbitrary schism
between ground and zero aim.
We’re gods, goddammit, less
their distant entertainments.

- joesmith

.

Copyright, joesmith. Please.

“It was intelligence and nothing else that had to be opposed.” – Søren Kierkegarrd

The wind is against me
on my pedaled way to work.
A bus almost clips me
cutting in to its shelter at the curb.
A Benz would prefer to run the light
and me over to waiting one second more.
The finger inside shows off its white
length behind smoked sloped glass. Every car
would rather rattle my irksome bones
across the avenue (like bar dice slammed out
of their leatherette cup) than notice
I’m next to naked without their metal
to enfold me. I am only sure
that winter will be worse and that words
meant to comfort are drab impostures.

The wind again is against me
all the chilled way home. A horn
reminds me how much I need
a light to flash my presence. (More
would, of course, be better, but the bushes
here, if they burn at all, burn away to ashes.)
But I remember you said you had a “crush”
on me and I begin to wonder in spite
of the wind and the traffic and the cynic
on my bike how old is too old to feel like
a first-kissed kid getting red in public.
I can’t help but think this
Spring might arrive a week or so early
or listen when you tell me “It’s o.k. It’s O
K.” I can even believe you mean each letter.

.

joesmith

Alert as the light that changes color
with the weather atop the building
some mistake as electric, we’re mingling
our blood and juices without the dolor
that ought accompany a great big age
of disease. We are lovely here and welcome
the change we bring to each brown room.
In the phone booth, we tear our pages
from the musclebound book, feeding each
to the other our spare and crinkled names.
Ecstasy is this and we, we are sudden
and hairy on the fair political body.
We’re slick in the acidic rain, slippery
as a morning mood. We bite and wrestle
like wiry otters, loving mud and burning
wet without a stick of weathered wood.

.

joesmith

When I’m done, love, when
the impalpable me has made his sullen exit,
scrape clean the meat from my bones. String it
in ribbons in the back yard trees. Wait
for morning rain and hear the glorified pigeons
attempt to sing. Summon then the odiferous
ones, the shunned ones, the old utilarians
who speak to no one, but whose sense
of dread and laughter and occassion
are legendary, who are wise to abhor
what rots in vain and dirty remembrance.
Then turn and hum a tune of your invention.
Ignore the slight song at your back
and follow your salted path home.
Rend there my considerable fat.
Sow it along the mud-slicked riverbank
for the wading birds to pick at and increase
their wanting knees. Arrange the bones
in an open field in the shapes of some ruined
ancient alphabet. Change the readings
to the cycles of your joyous body. They may
amuse the high birds of prey, confuse
the headings of curious pilots or commune
with an alien moon. Reserve a single
fibula for sharpening the knives with which
you dice our daughters’ green meals.
Just make use of me, somehow. Please.

Half-full of someone like a mother
or her lover unbuttoned in dad’s
traveling robe, turned around
in an instant, to the strained grace
of pointed cameras. A kleptomaniac
of attention, eyes pinched in to lit
aluminum, hoarding the latest loss
of memory in a cipher nation of nervous
oblivion, entertaining what remains
of the children. Bozo is staring at his
shoes again, doing his damnedest
to pronounce gratuitous, scratching
lotto tickets at the high white counter,
slurping the last from his super monster
size cup, wondering where he can go
to cash in his principle and who made
off with his only Sunday suit. Conception
was a talk show. Celebrities appeared
from the workshirts behind the louvers
in accordian closet doors. He knows
he’s responsible for his bad reception.
He wants to edit his inheritance, stuff
his finger up an aperture, sleep through
the whole morning. No, make that afternoon.

While listening to BBC news coverage of Iran on the radio this morning, the words “Revolution speeds evolution” came to my head. At the time, the words fit the current Iran situation very well and time will tell whether there is a revolution, a new election, or crushed hopes and lives. Since it rang in my head, I scribbled it in my ever-present notebook for later reference. As I scribbled the, I thought this must have been said before.

When I got to work, I googled the phrase, searching various combos for 10-15 minutes, thinking full well that those simple words had been written before. By somebody, sometime. More likely many times.

I was surprised when I found nothing. It’s SO basic. Too basic. Certainly too basic not to be found. It strikes me as such a fundamental truism that it almost goes without saying. A bromide at birth.

The fact that I was pretty sure such a bromide had been born before is conditioned by the lateness of human times, the “been there, done that” attitude to which one is prone in these late days. The post- after the post-modern, if you will, or maybe the post-post-. Who can say? Even the identifiers of “ages” can’t keep up. All I can say is this old horse feels like he’s always chasing a moving post, racing to, but never reaching, the starting gates where a race should begin.

Nevertheless I wrote it. Maybe I should copyright it. But what does copyright mean any more? In this not-world yet hyper-communicative ether of twitter & ilk? Words are open source. Now more than ever. Once released out to the ether, the interwebs (as the clever kids call it), words are community property.

And, after all, they’re all already in the dictionary. Already written, already t/here. Been there, done that, as it were.

Been there, done that? NO. NOT that post-y, unearned cynical pose that may blind us (especially the pre-jaded young) to very fundamental, wholly non ironic, potentially useful TRUTHS.

When we’re too jaded for fundamental truths, small or large, bromidic or aphoristic, we’re truly lost.

But I’m joesmith. A bromide at birth. What the fuck do I know that hasn’t been known already? Too basic to bother, but still do. Too common to claim ownership of anything, let alone three simple words. But yet…

Sometimes a bromide fits the bill.

Revolution does speed evolution. I’m with you in spirit, people of Iran. If I can, I’ll assist however a common man can. May your God be with you.

In a bold sign of thawing relations between the countries, Presidents Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez announced today that the state of Texas would be traded to Venezuela for Jesus Moronta, a slick-fielding, hard-hitting 14-yr-old shortstop phenomenon, cash considerations and an undisclosed amount of raw, premium coca.

There are no camels in this combo crèche,
assembled in Malaysia, cooked in Singapore.
Pieces of play, each in place, dominate the living

room, diverting our path to where we cleanse
and empty and brush the store-bought teeth,
neither sneer nor smile from their snap-tight hold.

The lone cow’s head is broken, decapitated
last season, lost in the vacuum or the latest
attempt to gather what mattered yesterday.

The wise men slipped off with the Barbies
on stolen pretty ponies. Mother Mary buries
her myrrh in the ass turd under the straw.

Cuckold Joe measures the price of shame
by the size of his deduction. The Messiah,
in steep need of Miralax, is inconsolable

in his ceramic straw suit. He’s a baby, after all,
a baby gone angry with action-grip hands.
Any question that crawls across the gray terrain

is split at the jointed hip, fractured before seizing
the headless torso of the sole man doll, broken
before hopping the burro, loaded down as beasts will be.

Nobody is born here, really, nor gifts given wholly,
attached to hands as they are in the factory plastic mold.

Neither sheep nor shepherd will be the same tomorrow,
rearranged as they must be. Straight out of the box.

When home, I’m often standing outside my house,
looking in.

Perhaps this is interesting.

Perhaps examination is due.

Perhaps it’s why I smoke, still.

And take the longest shits known to man.

1-10
The Walkmen – You & Me
The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
The Bug – London Zoo
Man Man – Rabbit Habits
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig !!!
Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
Sons and Daughters – This Gift
TV on the Radio – Dear Science,
James McMurtry – Just Us Kids

11-20
Kathleen Edwards – Asking for Flowers
The Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust
Immortal Technique – The 3rd World
Glasvegas – Glasvegas
The Black Keys – Attack & Release
Micah P. Hinson – and the Red Orchestra
Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now, Youngster
Al Green – Lay It Down
Why? – Alopecia
Titus Andronicus – The Airing of Grievances

21-30
Elbow – Seldom Seen Kid
The Roots – Rising Down
Blood on the Wall – Liferz
Cloud Cult – Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
The Mae Shi – HILLYH
Grand Archives – The Grand Archives
The Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound
Okkervil River – The Stand-Ins
Fucked Up – The Chemistry of Common Life
DeVotchKa – A Mad & Faithful Telling

31-50
Lil’ Wayne – Carter III
Hayes Carll – Trouble In Mind
Shearwater – Rooks
She & Him – Volume I
Toadies- No Deliverance
Drive-By Truckers – Brighter Than Creation’s Dark
The Kills – Midnight Boom
Nneka – Don’t Worry in Wari
Albert Hammond Jr – ¿Cómo Te Llama?
Alejandro Escovedo – Real Animal
The Black Angels – Directions to See a Ghost
British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
Teddy Thompson – A Piece of What You Need
The Low Lows- Shining Violence
Amanda Palmer – Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
Sam Roberts – Love at the End of the World
Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple
Nas – Untitled
Spiritualized – Songs in A&E
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Real Emotional Trash

                         .

In a cynic, the heart is a vestigial organ.

                         .

                         © joesmith 2009

Armageddon has come to my chair.

Thrown hair is a result.

Of a mother, she is deadly in no wind.

Always in poor boast, he is Nostra Domus ogling the end of no sea shore.

“Human, All Too Human,” a new mega-multiplayer, role-playing game, was recently released by Nietzsche End Games, LLC.

The game is wildly addictive and takes many months, even years, for players to complete.

In the end, all players fail to kill anyone or complete any defined mission.

Then each player dies. Alone.

With You & Me, The Walkmen built one of the most complete albums of 2008. It’s of a piece, a whole cloth constructed from its simple constituent elements, like a scarf wrapped about the neck and head. Each song’s exceedingly simple elements – the almost off-key vocals, icicle guitar riffs, basso profundo base, basic-chord synthesizer and resonant, mechanical percussion – build moody tunes that are more than the sum of their parts. The mix is just right, with each component pushed to the front, equal on an atmospheric, often restrained, plane. On past releases, The Walkmen have let themselves explode a bit, as with “The Rat” but, across all of You & Me, they’re a band of considerable restraint. The songs are often coiled, ready to strike – like that scarf would jump right off and get all up in somebody’s face, spewing a load of frustration you didn’t know you hid, or jerking tight, angry, right around your own throat – but they don’t. There’s no explosion, no release. To what end? Any release is as at least as temporal as joy in the landscape of You & Me. It all passes. Just keep moving.

Moving on, in time and person, is a consistent lyric image and the album moves well across the whole, from the solid opener through an essential instrumental interlude to the third track where mood and quality is sustained to the end. It’s an album that asks to be heard as a whole, in its arranged order, as much as any I’ve heard for some time. It’s a casually polished piece of subdued chamber rock, where the highs are never too high and the lows aren’t all that bad. It is best appreciated by somewhat alienated folks, people who know they’re as much a part of “out there”as they are “in here,” wherever that might be, apart from their immediate, or even intimate, surroundings. It’s an appropriate soundtrack for passing through the quotidian urban world or shutting out, though not forgetting, that same work-a-day world. Winter is its season. In tempo, mood and existential outlook, it’s a close cousin to The National’s Boxer. If there’s a single shard of lyrical pith, an emotional center to the whole, it’s probably: “And into the fire / I’ll tell you I love you.”

Sarah Palin sure DOES dress nice, but, Jesus, this RNC bill seems a bit much for such a regular person, real American, G droppin’ Hockey Mom, don’t you think? Read the full story.

I guess it was the RNC who wanted to spruce her up? I’m sure she wouldn’t ask for such a pricey wardrobe herself. She’d rather get paid to stay at her own home and bring her kids with her on nice trips because she’s such a devoted mother.

Oh yeah. She would be quite the government reformer.

Yesterday’s report on CNN’s Political Ticker points toward the McCain campaign’s narrowing electoral strategy, with one anonymous source writing off Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado: “‘Gone,’ was the word one top McCain insider used to describe those three states.” Given the state-by-state electoral vote map two weeks before the election, this is a pragmatic approach. But it’s potentially troublesome, too.

Iowa has looked lost to McCain for weeks and New Mexico, with a significant Latino vote polling almost 3 to 1 for Obama, looks tough for him, too. McCain’s internal polling apparently indicates more Obama strength in Colorado than the +4.4% public poll average indicates as of today (Oct 21). Once again, the Latino vote in CO favors Obama by more than 3 to 1.

McCain’s funding may be dwindling, so he has to pick his spots. His cheap use of robocalls (1/4 of $.01 per call) indicates a shortage of money, human volunteers or, most likely: both. Given the state and national polls with just 2 weeks to go, McCain’s electoral vote strategy must be narrowly targeted, leaving little room for error. As the CNN report states: “The McCain strategy depends on holding a handful of Bush ’04 states that are now rated tossups by CNN: Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri and Nevada. It also depends on keeping Virginia…in the GOP column.”

If one believes the Virginia polls that have favored Obama throughout October, settling in to an average of +8% as of today, McCain has quite a bit of ground to make up, especially in Northern Virgina’s “communist country,” where military personnel may be influenced by Colin Powell’s endorsement. But 2 weeks is a long time and I’ve never trusted that this historically Republican, southern state has evolved sufficiently to vote for any Democratic president. I could be wrong. I hope I am.

At an average 11% lead for Obama, Pennsylvania looks like an even tougher job for McCain. That’s as large of a lead as Obama has in Iowa, larger than the current New Mexico spread and TWICE his lead over McCain in Colorado. So, what’s up? Well, with Pennsylvania, McCain can take 21 electoral votes in one fell swoop – matching the total of Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado combined. McCain only has a few paths to EV victory, so, gambler that he is, he is apparently doubling down on Pennsylvania.

Then again, betting heavily on Pennsylvania and Virginia rather than other, tighter battleground states may not be as much of a gamble as it seems. Both Pennsylvania and Virginia use Direct-Recording Electronic voting machines WITHOUT Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail Printers. “Over 85 percent of PA voters will vote on paperless touchscreen machines that are hackable, failure-prone, and fundamentally unauditable.” A bill to add a paper trail and audit procedures to Pennsylvania’s electronic voting was “blocked by House Republicans on a near-party-line vote when it reached the floor.” In Virginia, the majority counties use touchscreen direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines that do not generate voter-verified paper ballots. Instead of creating anything truly useful for officials to recount, the machines simply reproduce data that is already in memory, in effect reprinting the results rather than recounting ballots in any meaningful sense.” Some of these same machines have already been reported to flip votes from Obama to McCain in early West Virginia voting. In WV, the machines produce a voter-verified paper copy of votes. But, like Pennsylvania, the DREs in Virginia have no such paper, rendering any recount impossible.

Watch out for Pennsylvania and Virginia on election day. Both states have easily hackable Direct-recording Electronic voting machines WITHOUT Voter-Verified Paper Records AND neither state requires Mandatory Audits. That is a toxic mix. Check the poll averages in these 2 states the day before the election,. If McCain closes more than a 5 point gap on election day, be very suspicious. And if there’s a large gap between once-reliable exit polls and the actual vote tallies in Virginia and Pennsylvania, be vigilant. If McCain somehow pulls off an historic upset and the results are even slightly dubious, patriotic Americans must be ready to defend our democracy with all we’ve got. Three dubious presidential elections in a row? That’s beyond coincidence, my friends. Don’t let it happen. We may have to tear the White House from Republicans’ cold dead fingers.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

You’ve probably seen, heard or read about the anger at McCain/Palin rallies by now. If not, you should, whatever your political stripe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuSYHnVpYbs

http:/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100903169.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvCpBvwN0e4

The rage from these crowds shouldn’t come as a surprise. Nor should McCain or even Palin take the blame for agitating these fearful proto-fascists. The number of angry, right white folks has grown steadily since the late 80s. They’ve been bred, fed, nourished and constantly shaken by the ever-present, ever-pissed political “entertainment” spewed forth by the Angry AM Army of Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Savage, M. Reagan, etc, ad nauseam…. Limbaugh paved the way, of course, proving that ridicule and slight humor could be mixed with partisan politics for huge ratings and, over the years, AM radio stations have moved significantly to a talk/”news” format. Since 2000, when they couldn’t skewer Clinton any more, when one of their own occupied the White House, and the last vestiges of the Fairness Doctrine were jettisoned, these permanently-pissed ranters have only grown in numbers and rage quotient. It’s difficult to find an AM radio station in rural America that isn’t religious, country or Angry Con Talk.

I’ve listened to these guys (along with Milwaukee’s local versions like Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling, a regular fill-in host for “Rush”) quite a lot over the last 10-12 years. They definitely had an affect on my vote for Bush in 2000 and how I thought the Democrats (NOT Republicans) were trying to “steal” the election by asking for a recount in Florida. From my view today, I’m amazed and wildly disappointed with myself for “thinking” that way. It wasn’t my own thoughts. That’s my excuse. I was stupid, plain and simple. I didn’t take in enough news sources, allowing myself instead to be manipulated by an all too limited number of “news” inputs during that time. I didn’t just agree with Limbaugh, FoxNews, Belling, et al. I believed their words without questioning them and was passionately opposed to a recount, engaging in arguments with co-workers and anyone who took the opposite position in my presence. Until 2000, I had kept a cynical distance from political, staying informed, but watching elections like I watch sports, studying the strategies and handicapping the odds with little or no emotional or partisan investment in the outcome. By 2000, after a few years of AM agitation, I was utterly convinced in the rectitude of George W. Bush and James Baker, whose august bearing added credibility to the fight. I’m over that now, thankfully, mainly because I’ve taken in a broader range of inputs in the last few years, now weighing the Republican complaints of registration fraud against the Democratic fears of voter suppression in 2008.

Given my past experience and the sense that I allowed myself to be manipulated from about 1996 through the Iraq invasion in 2003, I’m especially attuned now to the manipulation and dramtic anger of the AM horde. The crowds at McCain and Palin rallies and gatherings are the result of Limbaugh & Ilk bleatings. Face it, folks, angry white folks make up the majority of the Republican voter base. When it has become “anti-American” to lambaste Bush (a president who is VERY likely to go down in history as one of the worst), to believe “victory” is an irrelevant word in the occupation of Iraq, to disagree with illegal wiretaps in the name of protecting America from terrorists, or to point out the growing gap between the very wealthy and the middle class, we’ve got ourselves a little slice of the Weimar Republic right here in the heartland, especially in the parts of the country of that Palin calls “pro-American.”

Joseph Goebbels must grinning from the 8th circle of Dante’s Hell every time one of them opens their mouth. And Joe McCarthy has got to love this scary bitch.

This anger is not innate nor a result of any real threat to white folks. It’s a direct result of their inputs. People who largely limit their inputs to AM talk and FoxNews — avoiding the “Media Elites,” the “Liberal Media,” Limbaugh’s “Drive-by Media” or simply the “MSM” (that trendy conservo-speak acronym for “Mainstream Media” defined only by whatever the Poly Cons disagree with) and certainly not (Gasp!) reading books — will get worked up rather easily. Hyperbolic opinions expressed at high volume and agitation will do that to a person. (And, yeah, don’t forget the fear-inducing and angry chain emails that apparently make the rounds if you’re on the Right lists or have enough Patriotic friends. I don’t.) No bin Laden, Ahmandinijad, Chavez, Islamic terrorist or “socialist” Democrat could begin to be as detrimental to the civilized workings of American democracy as any ONE of these Angry AM radio wingers. They present themselves as paragons of “Truth” and “Justice” and the “American” way — always in contrast to the Evil “MSM.” Over time, they become a habit, something like a self-righteous friend who makes sense every now and then, even if he is pissed off most of the time.

As election day draws closer, the AM anger is boiling over like never before. Tune in to any of them in the next week or so. Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, take your pick from the 24/7 Conservative Commercial. To a man (almost all men), they’re all positively unhinged. And they aren’t FOR anything this time around. They are only, exclusively AGAINST Obama the __________ (fill in the blank). The idea that John McCain, a man whom the AM Ranters pilloried as recently as May as insufficiently conservative, would prompt these frothing fuckers to slap every red-meat label on Obama that they can — terrorist, communist, socialist — is almost unbelievable. But they’re mad, really mad. And you must be too, they say, unless you’re stupid, liberal, weak, socialist or just plain Anti-American.

It doesn’t matter whether Obama or McCain wins this most momentous election in at least 40 years. These All-American AM radio ranters will still be there, still angry over something, still spewing from coast to coast, still gathering high ratings from people who can’t break the habit of hearing them, still stirring people up, and, worst of all, still undermining the possibility of intelligent political debate across this fine land. They get paid good money to be mad and Radical Right politicians benefit from their listeners sustaining the rage.

I’m not sure where they want to lead people with their 24/7 exhortations, but it sounds like Fascist Land from my car.

“Evil is the exercise of power, the imposing of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion…. The core of evil is ego-centricity, whereby others are sacrificed rather than the ego of the individual.” – Dr. M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie

According to Peck, ego-centric persons are utterly dedicated to preserving their self-serving image. They cultivate an image of being good, right, God-fearing citizens. They specialize in self-deceit and thus are People of the Lie.

If that doesn’t describe George Bush, I don’t know what does. Why do I think that? Read the books and the Jost, et al. sociological study below. They paint a convincing mosaic of Bush’s non-rational, Manichean world view, in addition to the reductionist mindsets and authoritarian personalities that constitute the majority of contemporary Political Conservatives:

A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency – Glen Greenwald

Conservatives Without Conscience – John Dean

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 – Bob Woodward

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition – Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, Sulloway

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency – Barton Gellman

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule – Thomas Frank