True believers gotta maintain their belief system, you know. And now self-identified "conservatives" find themselves in the midst of a losing war—not at all experiencing the glorious triumph of American power they had once dreamed—and at the mercy of a tyrannical government that has spent more money than Imelda Marcos and doesn't even have shoes to show for it.

I've always enjoyed the tales of the end-of-the-worlders who sell all their possessions—or perhaps turn them over to a preacher—as they go off radiant with faith to await that longed-for end of the world or coming of the Messiah at the next lunar eclipse or what have you. Not that I'm not very sad that they were so easily duped but that I find their explanations of "what went wrong" quite instructive—even, if I'm to be brutally honest, a bit entertaining.

So recently I heard some would-be conservative refer contemptuously to the Neocons as "ex-Democrats" and "liberals." How clever! I thought. They're trying to frame this debacle as the work of "Democrats," not "true-conservative" Republicans. So I googled on "Neocons ex-Democrats" and, sure 'nuff, word's going round the bulletin boards faster than cognitive dissonance can set in.

Here's an example that I liked—especially the part about a neocon being "a democrat in Republican drag."

Again for the #th time, a "neocon" is a democrat in Republican drag. They've infested the Republican party to the point of complete corruption. The current Republican party is more liberal than the Democratic party of old. That's appalling. —NiKita writing on a bulletin board

Dear NiKita,

First let me say that I'm the one who decides what's appalling. I'm the appalling decider. That's what I do. And what's appalling is that the Republican political apparatus—including the Christian Right get-out-the-vote machine, the Republican-owned media and the Republican politicians controlling the Congress and the White House, not to mention their conservative-minded supporters back home (along with some Democrats, let me hasten to add)—supported the agenda of the Neocons. And I hardly see that it matters what were their origins.

Would it matter if the Neocons were ex-Martians? Would it explain why they've had—and still have—followers for so long?

Are you saying that the Republican apparatchiks are so collectively stupid that they don't know they've been "infested"? Can it be that they can't detect the presence of "liberalism" when that's practically all they talk about—that is, when they're not talking about gay sex, God and the Bible or off screwing someone both literally and figuratively?

Were the good people of the Red States drugged, do you think? Subversive liberal ex-Democratic infiltrators can do that, you know—put chemicals in the water. Have you heard about fluoride?

Or maybe it was hypnosis—mass hypnosis. That's it! If I even think of the voices of Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney, something in me stirs and I fear I may fall asleep—a nice lulling sleep. Seeing and hearing them on television produces the effect a hundredfold. I can't imagine what it must be like to be in their actual presence. People with hypnotic powers like that can take over conservative minds with the snap of a finger. Zzzzz.

Seeing how it's all turned out, I realize that something has gone wrong. Remaining true to our true conservative beliefs will need some explaining—some explaining of what went wrong. And it's a relief to know that it was the work of ex-Democrats, ex-Marxists and ex-liberals. Though I sometimes wonder whether if they had remained Democrats, Marxists and liberals, things might not have turned out better.

Who did you vote for, by the way?

Related post
Thinking about death? Vote Bush! (8/1/04)

Tags: * framing conservatism neoconservatism humor