Seemingly clueless tyrants

I guess there's going to be more endless talk about how this administration is oblivious and distant, unresponsive to crises and always playing catch up. When Katrina hit, Precious Leader was AWOL as usual, Kindasleazy was hitting the highlife in New York and Cheney was nowhere to be seen. Very reminiscent of 9/11 when Bush did his bunny hop around the nation and the total silence just after the tsunami.

Ah, but there's a method to this madness.

It's true that these royals lead isolated, compassed lives. Hey, what is the cost of a loaf of bread anyway? Indifference to their fellow human beings is the norm, empathy doesn't exist in their world except as a photo op. Detached, bored with having to stand in front of cameras, it's high comedy to see them struggle to both appear sincere and not look at their watches.

To me there are several dynamics that enable them to be smug and arrogant and so seemingly uncaring as the world lurches from one flaming disaster to another. Now watch this drive!

They're not really in charge of much.

Oh, they get to order their immediates around and get to schedule some stuff and look all important when the cameras are rolling. Reporters scibble while listening to the World According to Von Rumsfeld, Kindasleazy can flit around the globe and gladhand while doing her lecture thing and Ashcroft got to sing! But the people we see are just the visible side of a monstrous, hidden agenda that this entire foul smelling government pays obeisance to. They can breeze along because they're safe in the knowledge that they ain't pulling the Big Strings. They're there when all this manufactured shit hits the fan and are content to stand back and allow it to unfold.

Enter the spin machine.

Always going to be people who see through the bullcrap, always going to be people who couldn't give a flip, always going to be bobble headed true believers, and we all live in the World of Spin. The administration can absolutely count on spin and propaganda to offset their failures, to burnish their images, to disappear things, to make stuff look ok. Little Boots could eviscerate a puppy in prime time tomorrow and by Saturday he'd be a champion of animal rights. They know this. It's how those thousand points of lies just faded away and why, we've always been at war with Eurasia!

And oh, our minuscule, easily manipulated attention spans. Blase attitudes amongst our Betters count for nought when the Next Big Thing occurs. Especially when it has all these cool explosions. Meanwhile we all just reel and stumble along trying to keep our lives together while the monsters in Washington can afford the luxury of unconcern.

Hey! Another white woman is missing!