Even the Republicans know about the serious business

David Frum, former adviser to Cowboy Dubya, now understands what the evolution of mass politics from actual debate to simple faction-fighting (similar to the Blues and the Greens in 6th century Constantinople) has wrought. "Conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment." It's no longer a means to understand the world, but an ideological identity-tribe which will buy anything, no matter how noxious, that will help them hide from reality. He might have also said "same goes for fundamentalist Christianity".


"Be careful what you wish for, because you will get it and then the Gods will laugh at your dumb ass". Frum points out that the Republicans got what they wanted in the Bush era (i.e. unbridled power), but then after reality didn't turn out the way they imperially/imperiously ordered it to do so, they went to the happy land of Cognitive Dissonance. Frum challenges what a lot of we lefties think, that Bush/Cheney/Blair etc. would have told any lie to get what they wanted:

...conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose. Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves.

That could be a Chaos Marxist aphorism right there. Poor bastards really believed that if the Imperial Masters said something would happen, it would happen, or at least everyone would pretend it had happened. Praise the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies for busting that little bubble.

Let's never let OCCUPY evolve into a market segment. "Socialism" evolved into a market segment, or even a minor religion, a long time ago, but it seems to be recovering during the current brush with reality.