I finally accepted as fact that someone or some entity had been spiking my Coke Zero with LSD, or a similar hallucinogen.  There was no other way to explain the surreal headlines: the health care reform that existed in name only, the financial regulation bill that changed nothing.  It was Alice In Wonderful, 1984, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test all rolled into one.  Surely the nation’s Swami of sincerity, the President himself, the man I voted and wrote for when he was a candidate, could not have let these masterworks of doublespeak come to pass.

And so, accepting my altered state, I knew that the only thing to do was to stay away from the keyboard and the Coke Zero until I “came down”, as I understand it’s referred to.  Whatever else I may have done in my imperfect life, I have never dropped acid, so it was an unfamiliar state to me.

But the hallucinations persisted.

I thought I saw Elliot Spitzer, the disgraced ex-governor of New York, on CNN, commenting on a debate between Harry Reid and Sharon Angle, in a race that, at the time, was neck and neck.  The damned drugs must still be running through my system, I reasoned, while realizing that reasoning was not going to be a strong point while the damned drugs were still running through my system.  There was no way, from what I had seen and heard of her, that Angle could have been nominated, let alone been in contention for one of the 100 seats in our nation’s most august legislative body.

I saw Linda McMahon, who I could have sworn I’d seen at the receiving end of a piledriver while surreptitiously watching professional wrestling, running for Senate as well.

I saw an ad in the New York Times that shamelessly announced that Pee Wee Herman was coming to Broadway.  Or on Broadway.  In the state I was in, I couldn’t be sure.

I saw Juan Williams, admittedly a man who never saw a media outlet he didn’t plug himself into, get fired from that dyed in the wool defender of free speech, NPR, for saying something that every westerner who’s ever flown has thought.

I saw Clarence Thomas’ wife, a woman ironically named Virginia, rekindle a fire that had long been put out, a fire that could do nothing but hurt her husband and remind the nation that his sitting on the Supreme Court was an aberration that never should have occurred.

And so I waited, and waited, and waited some more.  I checked the pharmacological literature, and it became clear that enough time had passed for the drugs to exit my system.

Then, just the other day, I read that the United States had coerced Israel into taking actions that would result in the resumption of Middle East peace talks by giving them 20 war planes

And I connected my recent non-stop cognitive dissonance to the current chatter about something called “the new normal”.

Finally, an explanation.

Now the question is, how does one detox from this “new normal”?

                          

Additionally, this past Monday’s column would seem downright prescient if corruption wasn’t so damn predictable.

The audacity of the discrepancy between Rod Blagojevich’s public persona and his private indiscretions is breathtaking, so much so that it goes well past the lines of power crazed denial into an area that requires a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders wielded by an ultra-talented shrink, in order to figure out what’s going on in this man’s head.

Blogo’s dramatic cries of innocence , which I’d guess he and his advisers created in a shocked stupor, couldn’t pass a skunk’s smell test.

The political Governor is in dire need of a mechanical governor. His engine needs a major ethical tune-up, and his psyche needs to spend some time in the garage with a master mental mechanic who tinkers with it mercilessly.

I wish it was as simple as the reaction I overheard from a 13 year old watching a news report of the unfolding events, who nonchalantly declared, “what a dope”.

But I think it’s part of the deeper and darker pathology of the times.

                          

Michael Milken, who in 1989 was indicted on multiple counts of racketeering and securities fraud, and subsequently copped a plea, has morphed from a felon into a respected philanthropist.  Richard “Dick” Morris, caught nibbling on the toes of a hooker in 1996 while a top level strategist for President Clinton, is now an esteemed right wing commentator. 

They were the pioneers.  Edwards and Spitzer followed in their footsteps.

We’re now entering prime time in the lack of shame phase that occurs during the decline of an empire.

Take Bill Clinton; he too was ahead of his time, so to speak.  Hillary, in forgiving him his sexual addiction in order to fulfill her own addiction to power, was ahead of her time as well.  This is not a knock on forgiveness, a necessary grace that permits humans to err, learn, and grow.  This is a knock on shamelessness, and an accompanying lack of personal humility.

Which brings us back to two currently disgraced men who both aspired to the highest office in the land.  One day, sooner than you might think, they’ll be disgraced no longer, and they’ll aspire once again.

They will declare their past travails to be, not just sins that have been repented, but necessary experience for leaders in a world that lacks an ethical compass.   They will claim, perhaps correctly so, that the pursuit of unbridled desire is an invaluable quality that a candidate should have firsthand knowledge of.  Desire for military might, economic resources, and narcissistic, egotistical living, at the expense of others if needs be.

Edwards/Spitzer in 2016.  The campaign slogan writes itself:

“Lust Is A Must”.

                          

BB-gunn Says:  March 15th, 2008 at 9:00 am LK, love your points as well as the Falcon’s on this, but bring on the intelligent 13 year-old. Despite whatever underlying disorder or syndrome that may or may not exist, it is clearly not debilitating enough to mask the difference in Spitzer’s own mind between right and wrong. Hell, he was certainly capable of exercising that discernment in his judgment of countless others. Thus, sane enough to stand trial both in court and in public opinion, and “dopey” enough to commit the act and get caught.

LK Says:  March 15th, 2008 at 8:13 pm Excellent refinement BB. He may be mentally ill by my standards and in need of treatment by clinical standards, but that shouldn’t allow him to claim being temporarily unable to tell right from wrong, although I doubt his core vanity would allow him to plead anything resembling insanity, even if it meant not saving his sorry hypocritical self.

The image isn’t pretty, and may be ultra-cold, but Spitzer shouldn’t be exempt from picking up the proverbial bar of soap in the communal shower. Resigning in disgrace isn’t doing penance; whatever the modern version of the stockade is, coupled with lashes administered by every citizen he betrayed seems appropriate.

George H.W. Bush just called and said I needed to work on the forgiveness thing.

                          

His disingenuous automaton-like statement to the press this afternoon set back the cause of the good guys who rode in to clean up this town by at least a decade or two. His purposefully vague wording, which I’d guess he and his advisers created in a shocked stupor, couldn’t pass a skunk’s smell test.

The political Governor is in dire need of a mechanical governor. His engine needs some modulating, and his psyche needs to spend some time in the garage with some master mental mechanics tinkering with it mercilessly.

I wish it was as simple as the reaction I overheard from a 13 year old watching a news report of the unfolding events, who nonchalantly declared, “what a dope”.

But I think it’s part of the deeper and darker pathology of the times.