It would be too much to conclude that "they're all in on it," since inside the Beltway there actually are honorable people, but three separate articles about Bush's "Return to The Suck" speech drive home for me the idea that Versailles on the Potomac--and the National Security State that built it--is irretrievably fucked. The whole enterprise is as corrupt, and as self-reflective, as the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. The press, the Presidency, and Congress are institutionally bankrupt. The only problem is that they haven't noticed yet, but the Beltway is always behind the voters. So we really have reached an inflection point of some kind. The future lies ahead!

Take the press. Please. Booman:

Washington Post Endorses PermaWar
They need to admit failure. If you really think about it, Bush's failure signifies a failure of our entire post-Cold War foreign policy. You can blame the neo-conservatives for taking our Establishment off the rails, but the Washington Post waved their pom poms as the Establishment built the apparatus that enabled the neo-conservatives.

Even now they are cheerleading an attack on Iran. The sad fact is that any genocide or regional conflagration that occurs in the Middle East as a direct result of our policies is going to be justifiably blamed on the people at the Washington Post that advocated those policies. And they recognize this. That is why they will do everything in their power to forestall the day of reckoning. And that means that they will advocate a 10-year occupation of Iraq. Because if the day ever comes when they have to account for what they have endorsed, no one will ever listen to them again.

Bingo.

Take what used to be called the executive branch, back when we had Constitutional government and the separation of powers. Please. Fred Kaplan:

Deceptive or Delusional?
President Bush's TV address tonight was the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.

The biggest fiction was that because of the "success" of the surge, we can reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July. Gen. David Petraeus has recommended this step, and President George W. Bush will order it so.

Let's be clear one more time about this claim: The surge of five extra combat brigades (bringing the total from 15 to 20) started in January. Their 15-month tours of duty will begin to expire next April. The Army and Marines have no combat units ready to replace them. The service chiefs refuse to extend the tours any further. The president refuses to mobilize the reserves any further. And so, the surge will be over by next July. This has been understood from the outset. It is the result of simple arithmetic, not of anyone's decision, much less some putative success.

The question could be asked throughout the speech, but particularly at that point: In what world is the president of the United States living?

Versailles on the Potomac, silly! Where everyone knows the truth: That such of our troops as are coming home are coming home for operational reasons. Period. But those who know the truth speak in whispers, and allow themselves to be drowned out by those who shout lies.

Bush is trying to evade accountability just as much, and just as courageously, as Fred Hiatt is. After all, if Bush had any remaining credibility or authority, he wouldn't be hiding behind Petraeus, right?

Take Congress. Please. McClatchy's Joe Galloway:

Extending the war, kicking that can down the road, was President Bush’s only strategic objective... Will Bush get away with this? From all the evidence at hand, the answer, sadly, is yes. Only the Democrats in Congress stand in his way, and they have yet to find their spines, or a semblance of moral courage, or even a sufficient understanding of the Constitution and its clauses on war making and war-financing, to override The Decider.

It’s a long journey from now to January 20, 2009, and the blood of many Americans and even more Iraqis will flow freely and stain the hands of those who allow this insane war to continue at the behest of a stubborn, unseeing, unthinking man from Crawford, Texas.

And I don't see a lot of Congressman stepping up on the accountability front, either.

What we're seeing right now really is exactly like the Emperor's New Clothes, which, if you read it, is a dark fable about groupthink, mutual complicity, and the insularity and sickness of courts. Only the Dirty Fucking Hippies are speaking the truth, and who listens to them? They're not Serious. (Except outside the Beltway, of course).

And now let's look on the bright side. Really:

1. The Press. It's truly amazing, when you think about it, that Kos now has a national presence, and that John Edwards gets interviewed on TPM. Or that TPM drove the US Attorneys story that took down Albert Gonzales. If I compare the situation today to the situation in 2000, it's greatly improved. I would bet that Kos, or TPM, or FDL would have the ability today, which they did not have even in 2004, to put reporters on the ground in Florida 2000. The effect of the "bourgeios riot" might have been quite different if it had been reported that the rioters were all Republican staffers paid to do what they did. (The Times suppressed this until after Bush was safely in office). And 10,000 of bloggers like us--the A, B, and C listers--Lilliputians though we are--have been able to at least restrain the Gulliver of the criminal Bush regime with our threads.

2. The President Assuming that an election is held in 2008, and a Democrats wins, and is allowed to take office, any of them would be better than what we have now, and some much better. Even Hillary is far preferable to Bush, in the same way that the Emperor Hadrian (say) is preferable to Caligula. Of course, there's tremendous work to be done, not only in rooting out the Conservative operatives who have by now infested every level of government, and not only in restoring the country to some minimal level of respect abroad, but in teaching/training/allowing/helping Americans to be citizens again, since thirty years of Conservative rule have severely eroded that capacity.

3. The Congress. Well, Congress. Better already, although let's not confuse "better" with "good." I heard Harry Reid on NPR last night, and I see the argument he's making: With Lieberman voting with the Dementors on Iraq, he's only got 49 votes (and, though he didn't say this, the Fourth Branch of Goverment breaking a tie). And please, let's not mention the Moderate Republicans, shall we? But that doesn't explain Reid somehow managing to pass the loathesome Republican FISA "reform," that made a bad situation worse by giving Bush's Attorney General the power to decide when warrantless surveillance was legal, without a court having any say in the matter. So, square the circle for me, wouldja, Harry? Here, of course, the answer is primary challenges, and that is a bright spot, because we're increasingly able to fund them. More and especially better Democrats.

(I leave out the Bush Court and the various classes of consultants and think tank bottom feeders. They're parasites on the parasite. Hopeless, but kill the body and the head will die.)

The successful parasite not only displays adaptability but allows the host to go on living. The National Security State that built Versailles on the Potomac looks like it's failing on both counts; the question is whether we're able to cleanse ourselves of it before it's too late for us.

The Red States, during the Conservative Ascendancy, were all too successful in arrogating the spoils of the National Security state to themselves; that's where the bases are, that's where the plants are; and, in Congress, that's where the votes are. The parasitism of the National Security State is one reason why Blue States subsidize Red States; our tax dollars are the blood that lets the cancer grow.

At some point, it's going to occur to some smart politician that, as the Republicans become a regional, rump party based in a few Red States, the national constituency for the National Security State rests on a very fragile electoral foundation. That leaves Fear as the only card the Republicans really have to play. Tactically, dynamiting the foundation of the National Security State would be the result of a successful campaign against the Bush Dogs. And strategically, a "freedom from fear" message would return the Democratic Party to its real roots (and perhaps to multi-generational dominance once more) if some Presidential candidate were willing to run on that.

Fear, for now, trumps everything; but we can hope that America can't be kept in a state of fear forever; or that the real fear of losing our own freedoms to a marauding executive of militarists, theocrats, authoritarian followers, and sex abusers may over-ride the fears that are increasingly seen to have been manufactured for political and financial gain.

NOTE I cannot forbear quoting great slabs of Monty Python, the only artists who seem of sufficient scope to meet the exigencies of the present day:

Praline: Look my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one and I'm looking at one right now.

Shopkeeper: No, no sir, it's not dead. It's resting.

Praline: Resting?

Shopkeeper: Yeah, remarkable bird the Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage, innit?

Praline: The plumage don't enter into it -- it's stone dead.

Shopkeeper: No, no -- it's just resting.

Praline: All right then, if it's resting I'll wake it up. (shouts into cage) Hello Polly! I've got a nice cuttlefish for you when you wake up, Polly Parrot!

Shopkeeper: (jogging cage) There it moved.

Praline: No he didn't. That was you pushing the cage.

Shopkeeper: I did not.

Praline: Yes, you did. (takes parrot out of cage, shouts) Hello Polly, Polly (bangs it against counter) Polly Parrot, wake up. Polly. (throws it in the air and lets it fall to the floor) Now that's what I call a dead parrot.

Shopkeeper: No, no it's stunned.

Praline: Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased. And when I bought it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out after a long squawk.

Shopkeeper: It's probably pining for the fjords.

Praline: Pining for the fjords, what kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I got it home?

Shopkeeper: The Norwegian Blue prefers kipping on its back. Beautiful bird, lovely plumage.

Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot, and I discovered that the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been nailed there.

Shopkeeper: Well of course it was nailed there. Otherwise it would muscle up to those bars and voom.

Praline: Look matey (picks up parrot) this parrot wouldn't voom if I put four thousand volts through it. It's bleeding demised.

Shopkeeper: It's not, it's pining.

Praline: It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.

Shopkeeper: Well, I'd better replace it then.

And on to Iran!

UPDATE As The Good Glenn writes:

It's always the same:

(1) If X does not happen by Y date, there is no justification for staying, they proclaim;

(2) X has not happened;

(3) We must stay.

And on and on. Everything they said in unison was completely false. And they do not even have the defense that it was difficult back then to see that it was false. Go read what virtually every blogger was saying back in May and it was painfully obvious that the Establishment was both deceiving itself and deceiving the country yet again. What they fear and hate more than anything is withdrawal from Iraq because staying at least allows them to avoid their own Day of Reckoning: when they are forced to accept how disastrous was the war that they all enabled.