I wish I had a good comparison to offer, like maybe a Fellini film, but any Fellini film I can remember makes a lot more sense than what’s going on in Washington right now. A brief recap is always good for a little perspective. Here’s what we know for sure. 1. The Bush gang sent the troops to Iraq, a country which everyone knows never has posed any threat to the U.S. and has no connection to the 9/11 thing. 2. The Bush gang says it did this on the basis of information that Iraq was either harboring or developing weapons with which to attack the U.S. Just for good measure, in promoting the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, the Bush gang’s public rhetoric made vague illusions to the idea that Iraq was connected in some unspecified way to Al Queda and 9/11, even though no one, not even the Bush gang’s staunchest supporters, ever believed it. 3. The Bush gang now admits that the information on which it claims the invasion and occupation of Iraq was based is not true, but the guy who thinks he’s president says invading Iraq still was the right thing to do, and we’ll just have to trust him that there’s a real good reason and he’s protecting us from terrorism. 4. A guy named Wilson says he told them and gave them evidence a long time before the invasion that Iraq wasn’t assembling any nuclear weapons. In retaliation for telling that story, the Bush gang destroyed the career of Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent and continued to claim that Iraq was a powder keg ready to explode in our country. The U.S. congress bought this preposterous story, and stamped it’s approval on the thing called the Patriot Act, everyone maintaining total deniability, if not complete denial.

5. Based entirely on the Patriot Act, the Bush gang started rounding up people all over the world it claimed were terrorists. The most obvious bad guys in this round up were placed visibly in dog runs at Guantanamo, but the rest were shuffled to secret prisons in numerous locations around Europe, Africa and the middle east where they were tortured until, presumably, they either died or told their captors what they wanted to hear. This is called rendition and it’s nothing new . Many predecessor administrations have done the same. It’s like teenage sex. It’s always been there; we’re just talking more about it these days. The difference is that the predecessors were more interested in keeping it quiet. When Bush got caught, he readily admitted it.

6. There’s that annoying little thing about the National Security Agency wiretapping American citizens. We even know that some of the calls intercepted began and ended within the U.S. They weren’t all international calls. We already knew that the government was spying on American citizens in their activities promoting things like peace, the environment and the welfare of animals. Your government thinks these people are potential terrorists. The next time you go to a meeting of SYRCL or the Sierra Club, look for the person in the room who might be an Al Queda operative. Chances are, he’s really an FBI agent.

A lot of people, including John Dean, who ought to know one when he sees one, are saying Bush committed an impeachable offense when he secretly authorized these wiretaps 30-some times, but when he got caught, his response was something like, "Yeah. I did it. So what. I’m gonna keep doing it. I can do anything I want to protect you from terrorists, because I’m the President. And remember, I am protecting your right to privacy." For those who need to hear it, that’s not a direct quote; just a paraphrase.

That’s what separates the Bush gang from it’s predecessors in the White House, and it’s what makes the current political climate in the world unlike anything that’s happened before. The Bush gang may go through some minimal motions of concealing the lies and deceit, but when they get caught, they’re up front and belligerent. Someday, one of these guys, maybe even Bush himself, will write a memoir in which he admits that the whole thing was just a scheme to get the oil money, they didn’t care who they screwed or how many people they killed along the way, and they knew all along that the American people lacked the huevos and the representation to do anything about it. The biggest robbery and murder caper of all time, and the only guy who gets arrested is Tom DeLay.

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Okay. I’ll admit this Christmas thing has a lot more legs as a news story than I ever expected. I thought Falwell was just blowing smoke, as usual, to see his name in the papers again. Jerry probably thought the same, but it took off like a bottle rocket. How many people really care whether you do or you don’t use the word "Christmas" when you offer greetings of the season, even if your offer of such greetings is calculated only to move the merchandise? A few weeks ago, I’d have said "No one," but some very groggy hibernating bears apparently have awakened. It still isn’t clear what they expect to accomplish, especially in their obvious semi-functional state, but the idea seems to be "If you don’t want to say the word ‘Christmas,’ just shut up. The fundamentalist protestants are taking this holiday for themselves. It could be a big financial hit to the merchants whom the religious right usually support with enthusiasm.

People like Falwell, O’Reilly and Robertson are just entertainers. They found a riff which resonates with their fan base, and they’ll ride it until it dies. But the people dancing to that riff scare me. These are people whose spiritual beliefs extend no further than the idea that God is a guy with a long white beard who lives in the sky. They congregate on Sundays to bask in the company and approval of other people who believe the same thing. It’s easy to understand why they might feel a little insecure despite the reassurance of Jerry, Bill and Pat. If you want to celebrate, rejoice and be generous at the end of the year without acknowledging that guy in the sky, there’s no telling what they might have to do. Remember, these are the people whose approval is the only visible means of support for the guy who thinks he’s the president.

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